Social Life @ One

Aria meets a little Indian boy at our favourite coffeeshop, Barista Crème.

I guess it would be safe to say that Aria’s babyhood so far has been far from normal: dorm living as a newborn, moving cross-country, flying half-way across the world, experiencing three continents, and living more than half her life in India. Her life is far from mundane and we are about to add two more countries to the three she’s already experienced—Scotland and Iceland (we’ll spend a few hours outside the Iceland airport during our layover on the way to NY at a natural hot springs).

Aria’s skin greatly contrasts with one of the workers at the campus where Jayne and Dean live. (photo compliments of Jayne Gilge)

Because of her very fair skin, she can’t help but be noticed amongst the little brown babies here in India. She’s gone through stages of liking the attention and shying away from it. Lately, she’s greatly enjoyed it and can’t stop waving to everyone we pass as we make our treks to the grocery store, vegetable stand, and post office.
One thing I greatly miss here is a church nursery. Aria’s interaction with other babies on Sundays is very limited as we try to keep her relatively well-behaved through the hot church service. From where she sits, she sees all the young children walking around and would love no more than to be able to get up and follow them, even if it means crawling around on the loose gravel. I’m discovering how much of a joy it will be to have a nursery at my disposal so I can actually BE in church when I’m there!

Aria pushing Tejasv around in his ducky walker.

Recently she has had the joy of spending time with babies around her age. She is frequently able to visit the little boy who lives across the hall from us—Tejasv. He is almost two months younger than her, but when it involves his ducky walker, they play remarkably well together. Aria likes it when Tejasv is in the walker and she can push him around in it. Since both our front doors are at the end of the hallway we are able to block off the rest of the hallway and the stairs with our cane chairs and let them play in the neighbour’s house, in our house, and

Manisha shows her affection by giving Aria a big kiss–one of the moments when they’re getting along!:-)

at the end of the corridor. Aria is sometimes very stubborn about leaving them and usually wails when I take her home, or when we need to go out. You’d think I beat her!;-)
Another friend of hers who she sees less often is Manisha, John’s supervisor’s daughter. She is a month and a half younger than Aria, but when it comes to walking, is way past her. Perhaps if Aria spent more time with her, it would rub off, but Aria is not to be pushed. The two babies make a lot of sweet little girl noises together and fight over each other’s sippy cups.
Aria also enjoys being around adults. She loves to go to Jayne’s

Lovely Jayne spending time with Aria in the beautiful outdoors.

house and play with plastic spoons and eat fruity yogurt. It took a little longer for her to warm up to Dean, but now she loves to sit in his lap as they listen to music together. She has her own special chair and spoon at their house and loves to crawl up their stairs, laughing mischievously when she is discovered!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 2:41 am and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.