A baby's life is wonderful and life with a baby is wonderful, too!

Today is the 9th July 2012, a day of celebration. This may not sound like a special date for you and maybe you are now wondering, trying to find some memory of what happened today in history. I am pretty sure however that you won’t think of our reason to celebrate: our little baby girl Apra is today half a year old!

Yes, it has been six months and time has just flown by! It is incredible how you don’t notice that another month is over when you watch your own child developing, growing and learning more and more! It is because you live in the presence when you are with a baby. You cannot do anything else but be there and think of her right now. No chance to get lost in past or future because she catches your attention at this very moment.

Yashendu came back from Europe yesterday and he just marvels at how many things Apra has learned in the two and a half months he was gone.

Her newest achievement is that she found out how to click her tongue. That is something already her German grandparents were doing when they were here in April and wanted to make her smile. Now finally she learned to do it, too, and when she does it, she doesn’t only do it once. She keeps on clicking and clicking until one of us congratulates her – which causes one of her big smiles which in turn makes it difficult to keep on clicking her tongue.

Just some minutes later however you may find her making the funniest of faces, pursing her lips, making them round, then pointy again, putting her tongue out in between them and back in again. She keeps on forgetting how to do it! For some minutes she will be busy and you won’t hear a sound from her until – ‘click’ – there it is again!

I already told you that she pulls herself up into standing if you hold out your hands towards her and that she even takes steps if you hold her. We were joking that she wants to walk before she even learns crawling and it is true – whenever there is the chance to get up and take steps towards a toy or anything else that she saw and wants to discover further, she gets up. When there are no helping fingers around though, she now started to rob herself quickly towards it. Half on her knees, half on her belly, sometimes holding herself with her arms and sometimes pushing too hard with the feet so that the face goes straight into the blanket in front of her. She always plays on beds so she can fall left and right and there is no possibility to hurt herself.

She is very active and tells loudly if she wants to go out or to another room and change place. She often sits on someone’s arm, sees another person walking by and stretches out her small arms as far as she can to make the other one pick her up. In this way she plays with everyone in the Ashram. Sometimes however she just sits back in her stroller while the boys go walking up and down in the garden with her.

Our life has changed incredibly in the past six months and I can tell you, it has become even greater, even happier, with even more love in it. We love watching her grow, seeing every little development and hearing her laughs and chuckles. A baby’s life is wonderful and life with a baby is wonderful, too!