Answer to the Question: Does Apra ever cry?

I am a very open person and I like sharing my life openly. Not even 24 hours after Apra’s birth we uploaded her picture onto this website, in a blog entry in which I told you about our luck to have a daughter. I have shared stories and pictures in the weeks and months after that on this blog and we have uploaded hundreds or pictures on Apra’s gallery. As our friends and family members are spread all over the world, we recently started a facebook page where we want to share Apra’s daily pictures with everyone and where we have posted her monthly videos, too.

I know that people love seeing pictures of her. We had such a great response to the facebook page, hundreds of people shared her pictures and also on our own photo gallery, people comment. We get emails of people writing how cute she is and how much she shines and laughs. There are really so many laughing pictures of her that people have even asked me ‘Does she ever cry?’ Another person asked ‘Does she even have time to have a bad mood?’ and someone else asked if we could send them a picture of her in bad mood or crying.

I honestly have to tell you that we cannot send you such a picture! Our little girl has a very, very happy nature. Her first picture was one with a big smile, just some hours after her birth. She laughs, she giggles and she smiles. When she is busy examining some new item that came in her hand – be that a bowl, an empty water bottle or anything that was lying in her way – she is serious, interested, curious – but still in a happy mood.

Of course I cannot say that our baby never cries but it is on rare occasions. And on those occasions we don’t stand in front of her with the camera! We try our best to calm her down and to make her laugh again. Someone will pick her up, give her something new to look at, make a funny noise, swing her up and down or walk out of the room to change atmosphere and do something else. Usually she is quiet within a minute or two.

We know already that she has a strong will: when she is tired, she gets impatient and fights with sleep and manages to stay up for quite a while until our efforts to make her sleep are successful. When she is hungry, she gets even more impatient and screams to get your attention and to feed her. This is how there are sometimes three people busy feeding her in our dinner or lunchtime: the moment after she swallowed what you have put into her mouth, she will demand more! You cannot be quick enough to fill your spoon again – so it is good if another person is there with another spoon full of vegetables or lentils.

She tells already where she wants to go by stretching out her hands towards people or doors. When we put her down on a carpet or the floor, she crawls there herself and with a hand as support, she can already make some shaky steps towards her goal, too. Here are many hands to help her reach where she wants to reach – so why would she cry?

Why would she need time to be sad or in a bad mood? Is this not a funny attitude that some hours of bad mood have to exist in one day, too? But really whenever it happens that she is not as happy, we just do everything to make her feel better – and don’t take pictures in that time.

Whenever you will come by at the Ashram you can play with her yourself you will see that whenever she just makes the first noises of crying, you will try to distract her and make her laugh again – because her laugh is just the greatest thing in this world!