Outside, Eating, and Squealing

Anjali and the carrot.

This week, Anjali has spent many of her waking ~ and some of her sleeping, for that matter ~ hours in the backyard.  With spring and warm sunny days, Papi and Mommy have been in a gardening frenzy ~ Papi with building raised beds, filling them with dirt, and then setting up a thorough, intricate, and precise irrigation system, and Mommy with choosing, designing, and planting the contents of the beds with vegetable, herb, and flower seeds, starts, and transplants.  In the sling on Mommy, in the front-carrier on Papi, or on a blanket on the patio, Anjali has been soaking all this activity up, and exploring nature all the while.  She has investigated herbs, such as "Kentucky Colonel" mint and lemon balm, the crawling vines and leaves of nasturtium and blackberry, and her favorite ~ a carrot straight out of the ground!  The mint leaf was so fragrant that she didn't even bother tasting it the first time around; she just stuck it up to her nose, and, as if immediately forgetting it, dropped it out of her hand.  With the lemon balm I had the "bright" idea of letting her inspect the newly-planted plant itself.  She quickly and forcefully gripped the leaves, and embraced the whole thing, yanking it out of the soil ~ dangling new roots and all!  Lesson learned, on my part.  (Incidentally, the lemon balm looked fresh and good as new by morning.)  Her favorite was the carrot.  Papi had just harvested some we had forgotten about from the previous season ~ a bucket of them, each with soil still clinging.  He handed one to Anjali, who very soon had a face and shirt full of soil, and a new teether.  She carried that carrot around with her, gumming it, for the rest of the day ~ hours after she would have forgotten a toy.

Her favorite sound this week has been the squeal.  She has perfected that near-deafening shriek where one marvels that a note could ever be that high-pitched.  Over and over!  With delight!  We ate breakfast at a restaurant one morning to find ourselves surely labeled by the other diners as "that couple with the shrieking baby."  We felt lucky that the restaurant was quite crowded and loud already, and Anjali was not the only baby.  It seemed that Anjali thought for sure that the couple seated next to us would want to hold her and smile and coo at her because of her prowess at squealing.  All our ears were relieved that she quickly focused in on her own (booby) breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast, Anjali has become enthusiastic about eating her egg yolk.  She has eaten some with gusto at every meal for which she has been awake.  At lunch today, I showed her the chicken leg I was eating, and she had it in her own hand sucking on it in record time!  But for now, we're keeping her to the egg yolk and cod liver oil (which she is also consuming with vigor).

egg yolk

She is working diligently at a position that looks like a push up with her rear-end in the air ~ in yoga, it could be called something like a "downward dog."  Many times in the middle of the night, even, if she gets half-woken up, she will be rolled over and in that position in seconds!  She has also been on her hands and knees, rocking forward and back.  But it seems she has figured out that this is helpful in bringing about some needed relief in the bowel movement department, as I have found her three times now in the process while she is in that position.  Now whenever I see her there, I wonder, "is she working on crawling, or is she going poo-poo?"  Both important learning processes in themselves. ..

Happy spring and happy five months, Anjali!        

    

                     asparagus sticks