Powerful association

Luke is maturing rapidly. Recently, his memory and association skills made remarkable milestones, and at times I'm amazed at how much he stores in his little head. He has already developed a little mental map of our neighborhood, and has taken his grandparents to places by the sheer power of his memory, like our neighborhood playground up on a hill, and his favorite train tracks 4 to 5 blocks away. The grands were so impressed by how developed his sense of direction is. (They have never been to those places before having Luke as a guide.)

He also associates places with activities in his own personal life. For example, every time we pass by our church in a cab, even when it's not our destination, he would say, "we are going to church," or "Luke's going to playgroup (his playgroup is at church also)." Trickier situations arise when we pass by places with his favorite play things, such as Tanglin Mall, because every time when we are within a 10-meter radius of it, he would get all worked up to go inside to ride on Thomas the Tank Engine. He has also connected the concept "home" with where we live. Whenever we have hailed down a cab to go home, he would enthusiastically and bossily give directions to cab drivers, "Hume Avenue! Symbody (he can't quite pronounce Symphony) Heigths! Turn right and go down to the car park!"

More so, he makes far more visual-speech associations than a few months ago. He pretend-reads most of his books, and remembers little details such as, "uh-oh, Peter rabbit left one shoe at the lettuce and another at the potatoes!" He has also transformed himself into an indispensable sidekick of my sing-song gig at his playgroup. I play the guitar for the group's song time. Since both hands are engaged, I don't have anytings spare to hold up the lyrics for the songs to the group. Luke made associations of the pictures on the lyrics poster boards AND the sequence of our routine (St. George's prayer, Happy Birthday Song- if there's a birthday, Grand O Duke of York, If you're happy and you know it, Wheels on the bus and so on). He could accurately flash the posters to the right songs...

Um...ok...I just realized I have stumbled into one of the major pitfalls of parenthood - annoyingly braggin' about your kid that is -but gosh, you gotta be amazed at how fast kids grow up!

Speaking of pitfalls, as proud as I am of Luke's well-paced achievements, his powerful associations sometimes do put me in hot water. Today we attended his little neighbor friend Aarya's birthday party. She's indian, and naturally the guests invited are mostly indians. Coincidentally, one of Luke's favorite friend is Ritesh, an indian, who's a project manager at Matt's company, whom Luke endearingly named Teshi. So there we were, weaving our way through sarees and feasting on Aloo Channa and Puri, Luke's little network in his control tower was simultaneously at work. "Mommy, Mommy, where's Teshi?" A little taken back by this surprise question, I said,"Um, Teshi is at home." "But Mommy, WHERE is Teshi?" Luke sounded a little frustrated. As if I have totally missed his point. "Well, um, Teshi is not at the party. He's resting at home." Apparently, Luke's not satisfied with my response and kept imposing his query until the host couldn't help but asked, with a smile,"So, who's Teshi?" To that, I reservedly replied,"Oh, he's just a friend."

For the first time I felt lucky that Luke didn't have enough vocabulary to contend with my explanations...