Baby origami

Lila is almost four months old and some baby moments have already become memories. One thing that comes to mind: we don't swaddle her anymore. These are photos from a mock swaddling session more than a month ago - the actual swaddling normally happened when she was already asleep and with the lights off, to ensure that she had a good night, but for obvious reasons I couldn't photograph that (it's the usual sleeping baby measurement problem).

I couldn't do a great job with her awake and kicking and taking pictures at the same time (me, not her), so I also included a little chart (from the Aden + Anais site) of how it should be done, in case you want to try that at home.

I really did a sloppy job here, but at least she had fun!

First puzzling chats about identity and skin color

Yesterday night, and again tonight, we read this book: "Ci sono gli orsi in Africa?". It is the Italian translation of a book by Satomi Ichikawa and like I often do with books in Italian for the kids, I ordered it without knowing much about the content. It is very hard to find good books in Italian for the youngest readers and often there aren't any reviews available online at all, so it is hit and miss. Mostly miss, actually, and this is a source of great frustration for me, but let me keep this rant for another post.  Because this is a translated story I could rely on some information from foreign sites, like Amazon, and after reading a couple of reviews I decided to give it a try.

The plot: Meto is an African boy living in a village on the African savanna. One day a group of tourists comes to visit his village and among them is a little girl with a teddy bear. Meto looks with curiosity at these foreigners who wear too many clothes and take lots of pictures and he is especially fascinated by the stuffed bear, because that is an animal he has never seen before. After the tourists have left, Meto finds the girl's bear abandoned on the ground and decides to try and return it to her. He rushes after the jeep taking shortcuts and meeting various animals - all of them just as puzzled as he is by the bear. One after the other they start following him and they help him get to the girl just when she is about to board a small airplane that will take her home. The girl thanks the boy and gives him the ribbon she wears in her hair as a gift for his own pet, a baby goat that he had shown to her back at the village. The teddy bear has a red ribbon too, so now they match. The end.

In a way this book is exactly what I was looking for: the illustrations are beautiful, the plot is simple and there is a pattern in how the story is presented - all things that help me keep the kids interested while I try to teach them some Italian. However, the book is quite stereotypical - or perhaps you could say downright  racist - in how it represents the interaction between the western tourists and the African villagers. As I was reading to them, translating to English after every sentence, I wondered whether I should say something about this and what, but our discussion about race was in fact initiated by Rajiv himself, in a very unexpected form.

Me - "Meto is a little boy who lives in Africa"
Rajiv - "He is African-American"
Me (to myself) - "What the.. !!"
Me (loud) - "Actually he is just African, he lives in a village in Africa, see the village in the picture?"
Rajiv - "But mamma, you have to say African-American"
Me - "Well, no I really don't, because the boy is not American at all. African-American would mean that he lives in America but maybe his family came from Africa, you know, a long time ago.."
Rajiv (obviously not convinced) - "Ah.. Uhm.."

I can surely expect him to come back at me with that one when I least expect it, but for the moment we were able to move on. It's beyond me though, why he would think that the proper way to refer to a dark-skinned person should be "African-American". From school? Half of his teachers are German and might have some strange ideas about politically correct speech, but given that we all live here in India this is especially bizarre.

Moving on, this picture:

Here I asked the children whether they could see why Meto thought the tourists were strange and I must have said something about how the tourists looked like us, because Rajiv said "They look like Indians!". While trying not to fall off the bed, I said "Uhm, really? You think they look.. Indian??". And he said "Yes, like us, and we live in India."

The fact that they are white doesn't seem to be a factor for him this time, even though it is something that other times we talked about and he does notice it. He can arrange people by gradation of brown, all the way down to white/pink. He notices this much more than me and I think in part it is because it is important to him that he is not exactly the same color as his mom and not exactly the same color as his dad, but somewhere is between. On the other hand, I remember how a few months ago he saw a quite dark Indian woman wearing jeans and with her hair in a pony tail and he said "Mamma, you look the same!".

Obviously Rajiv's world is a very confusing place and I don't mean it as a joke. My children are my favorite people to talk to, because they are never boring. Lots of stuff to think about.

Childcare update

I think I haven't mentioned this yet. We are transitioning from having a nanny to having both children in the daycare center near home that we - Rajiv especially - love so much. Rohan is still too young to go there, as they generally only take children older than two and a half, but now that he is almost two they are willing to make an exception. It will be only for a few months though, until we leave Canada. It's too bad for the boys, because they really like it.

Rohan already knew Appu's school from having dropped him there in the morning several times and picked him up some times too, so he was well prepared for it. In fact it almost seems as if he has been waiting for this opportunity all along :)

Normally the first day it's easy to leave a child at daycare, because there are children and toys to play with, but then once the child realizes that he is going to be there the whole day without his parents he becomes more tense when he enters the daycare and it takes a little while to adjust. This anyway has been our experience so far after every change of care. But so far, Rohan seems to really like his new school - although admittedly this is only the third day. We were told that he gets a bit sad about an hour before we pick him up, but that's because it's hard to go the whole day without "latte".

I was a bit worried of how Rajiv might react to having to share his special school, teachers and friends with his brother, especially given all the fuss we are making about this. But Rajiv is not the kind of boy to point out this sort of thing. If it does bother him, he will "misbehave" in some way and it's up to us to understand. So who knows what he thinks now? It did help, I hope, that yesterday Rajiv got to be the center of attention because of his birthday and he got a card from all his friends, so he knows they all still like him :)

Sono un genio..

Ho convinto i bimbi a mangiare i broccoli cuocendoli semplicemente al vapore e lasciandoglieli intingere nella salsa teriyaki. I bimbi adorano intingere - qualunque cosa in qualunque altra cosa - e adesso Appu mi chiede ogni giorno se ci saranno i broccoli per cena - ma non ho ancora ripetuto, per non rovinare l'effetto ottenuto con tanta fatica :)

Those in the photo are my two little boys, eating STEAMED BROCCOLI dipped in teriyaki sauce. Why didn't I think of this before?

Why they need to eat standing up, I don't fully understand, but it might have to do with being able to hunt for the best piece in the steaming basket - or maybe they just want to make it clear that they are free to leave at any time, who knows.