Pictures say more than a thousand words. You can see how quickly Maanasi is growing up. Most of these pictures we taken in Jan 2008. Maanasi is enjoying her first Sankranti (so are her grandmother and mother). Enjoy these pictures!! Leave a comment for Maanasi to cherish.
It is surprising how effectively Maanasi can communicate to us, not with words but just with sounds. I feel as if infants are born with a complete language of their own and we teach them a whole new language later in their life. She can express hunger, sleepiness, frustration, uncomfortable feeling, pain, happiness, anger, and even fear. I am posting more pictures and videos of Maanasi where you can see and listen to her expressions.
For several years now, I have always believed that "patience" is a "state of mind". When facing a situation where I am bound to lose patience, I constantly tell myself to be patient. I have to confess that I always thought that being patient was a "conscious" decision that I made. However, in the past 24 days after Maanasi's birth, I have learned that patience can actually be a "sub-conscious" decision on many occasions. With Maanasi, I have had to sit up many a night trying to wrap my arms around her to give her the sense of security that she lacks in her crib. I have had to sing and talk to her for several hours at a time, be it the middle of the day or night, to ensure that she is comfortable in her sleep. I have had to change her clothes and diapers several times everyday, and many additional times when she just decided to spit up whatever she ate for no rhyme or reason. In this whole process I have just found out that I never run out of patience (or even get close to it), and I have never consciously thought of being patient. In fact, I have enjoyed every moment of it. The only explanation that I could come up with was that when you unconditionally love someone, then you will have an unending reserve of patience for them. When I was growing up, my parents used to constantly tell me when I did something that they did not approve of - 'you will understand a parent's pain only when you become a parent'. So true. It takes to be a parent to even understand it!!
Enjoy a few more pics and videos of Maanasi. Make sure to leave us a comment.
Everyone had told us repeatedly that our lives will change when there are “little” additions to our family. They warned of sleepless nights, and restless days. They also duly noted that it is going to be fun and a very satisfying experience. Although most of them talked to us about what we will go through after the baby is born, rarely did anyone talk to us about the process of birth itself. They failed to warn us of the extreme emotions that we will go through when the little one comes crying out of the tight space hardly enough to fit a couple of tennis balls. Our little girl arrived on Oct 18, 2007 after several hours of struggle with nature. We decided to call her “Maanasi” (meaning 'creativity of the mind'). Although our little girl was covered up in messy white fluid, it did not stop us from hugging and kissing her. The greatest emotion for me was when I cut the cord. It meant a lot to me. As I cut the cord I realized that my life was about to become different, and all of her responsibilities are now mine.
