Dear Shobha,
Here we are at another monthly letter. Eight months old. I’ve got to work on figuring out a way to slow down the calendar. Each month seems to just fly by.
This past month brought us your first Christmas. Your father and I packed you up and we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Webster for the holiday. Santa must’ve thought you were a very good girl because you got a lot of new clothes and toys to play with. Fortunately, he didn’t wrap much of it either. One present that was wrapped, I held in front of you to see if you’d open it yourself. After finding it of little interest for several minutes, I started to unwrap it for you, just to give you a little help. Once it was halfway unwrapped, you suddenly showed interest….. in eating the wrapping paper. I’m thinking next year will be a different story.
This month’s biggest achievement is that you’re now sitting up on your own. Every so often I would sit you down on the floor to see how you did on your own. One day you would topple over without support and the next day you just sat there all by yourself like you’d been doing it all along. The first week or two you would wobble a little bit and occasionally lost your balance, but now you’re an old pro and love sitting by yourself playing with all your toys.
Now that you’ve mastered sitting, you’re already moving on to bigger things and have started showing interest in crawling. You can push yourself off your belly up onto your hands and knees, and even rock back and forth a bit, but soon your legs slide out from underneath you and you’re on your belly again, a few inches back from where you started. So far, if you wanted to get to anything that was behind you, you’d be all set. Going forward is still going to require more practice.
Another thing you’ve mastered this month is blowing raspberries. Week after week you’d watch me and you’d scrunch your little face up trying to figure out how I was doing that. Well, my dear, you’ve certainly figured it out. And with gusto! It seems your motto this month has been: when in doubt, blow a raspberry. I’m so glad you’ve found this new method of expressing yourself. I just wish you wouldn’t do it with a mouth full of cereal and peas.
Speaking of food. Your diet has expanded to consist of several different fruits and vegetables, most often blended with rice cereal. You’ve gotten to the point that you’re eager to have solids and as soon as you’re in your high chair with your bib on, you open your mouth wide in anticipation. I used to have to try to pry your mouth open while not smearing food all over your face but now you eagerly open up for your dinner each night. Besides the standard pureed baby foods, the other day I was eating an apple and you were paying such close attention to me that I offered some to you. My goodness. You grabbed that apple and started sucking the juice out of it like it was the best thing ever. Personally, I don’t blame you. A real apple is a lot more appetizing looking than pureed baby applesauce.
This month also brought us a visit from your Ammachi and Appacha. They were stopping in New York on their way to India and we were happy to have them stay with us for a few days. They haven’t seen you in person since early July and they were so delighted to see how much you’ve grown and how happy and healthy you are. Because they live so far away, you’re not as familiar with them as you are with your Grandma and Grandpa here in New York, but this spring you’ll have lots of time to get to know them when they return from India and stay with us for a month.
I must admit, this month has probably been somewhat overwhelming for you. Not because of all your achievements, which I’m sure are enough on their own. But because Santa must’ve thought Mommy was a good girl too because he brought me a brand new camera. I’m so in love with this camera. Not because of any specific quality of the camera itself, but because it takes such beautiful pictures of my favorite subject: you. I’m just hoping your first complete sentence isn’t, “Mom, would you get that darn camera out of my face?”
You may not be able to say it yet, but the look is the same: “Mom, would you get that darn camera out of my face?”
Love,
Mom
Dear Shobha 