I thought it would be time to give you an update about our little Apra. She is now five and a half months old and still the happy girl with the smile that she showed already within the first hours of her young life. Other than her smile however, she has changed so much, it is really incredible!
Our baby girl is now able to sit on her own, without any support. For weeks she has been rolling around on the bed already, going from back to belly and back again and you can see how much she enjoys the change of perspective she gets from this. For us this means that we cannot leave her lying on the bed without us being close anymore – but we actually hardly ever did that anyway!
More than that, she now even started making sincere effort in sitting up on her own. She rolls around from the back to the belly and you can see how her muscles are trying to push her head and upper body up to sit. If at that point you just lend her a hand – no, even only a finger – she will grab it and manage to sit up. When you give her your hands while she is sitting, she will either take them in her mouth, just like pretty much everything you give her, or she will start pulling herself up to stand. With holding on to your hands she can get up and even manages to take steps towards another person. Reaching there, she will laugh, smile, look around and wait for the applause of everyone in the room!
Yes, she is a proud girl and we love to cheer her on in every of her efforts discovering her world. When she once again achieved to come back up from a half-lying position, she looks around who has been watching, did everybody see what I just did? And if even one of us says ‘Wow, Apra, great!’ in Hindi, English or German, she flashes her big toothless smile.
We see this smile very often because you can make her smile and laugh very easily. Make a new noise, hold her up in the air, repeat a noise each time when you come close to her face, tickle her under her arms or at the belly or get excited and make her excited with it. She will smile and laugh every time. Purnendu got her to laugh hard just by asking her again and again ‘How loud can you laugh?’ in a funny tone and then laughing himself. They both laughed so hard that after some minutes they were lying next to each other on the bed, exhausted, gasping for air but just happy.
Another thing that is guaranteed to make her happy is water. She loves when we shower or bathe her and we especially bought a small pool for her to sit and play in. When we saw how much fun she has in there, we wanted to get in with her and this is how we now have a big inflatable pool which we can put into the garden, fill up and jump into in the evening. I am sure she will learn swimming soon because she already now is very eager to get into it once she sees that there is water in it! She splashes around, kicks in the water and we have to take much care that she does not swallow the water in her excitement.
While we only go for swimming every once in a while, there is one ritual we enjoy at least twice in a day: eating a meal together with Apra. We started feeding her solid food. Well, more or less solid. The fact that she has no teeth yet reduces the items that we feed her to the water of lentils, the sauce of vegetables and soft fruit. Her gums are surprisingly hard already so she can even chew pieces off food items already. But as she does not know how to process them further, we would have to get them out of her mouth again, so we take good care to stick with soft food. She loves mangoes though and so Ammaji daily cuts the mango pieces for us and gives the stone with plenty of fruit on it to Apra. Our baby girl will then be busy sucking at this for some time, obviously getting mango all over her face, hands, clothes and her immediate surrounding.
When we have guests at the Ashram, they enjoy watching this spectacular celebration of food. And Apra enjoys watching them! She takes in everything that goes on around her and of course looks at new people with much interest. Having been around so many people from the beginning, she is not shy to go to strangers either. She will sit on everybody’s lap, play with people, pull their hair and listen to what they have to say. She may not fully understand that yet but we have heard them say that our baby girl is really fast in her development, already doing all these things. She ‘talks’ a lot, starts getting up and walking and is so alert and that when she is not even half a year old. It is not only she who is proud when she stands on her short but strong little legs, it is us, too.
Being with her, playing with her and laughing with her are the best things that I can imagine spending my time with. Every of her actions makes me happy and her smile makes my heart overflow with love.
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