She is growing and so is Anirudh

Its been sometime since I blogged about the activities of Nishka. And lest I forget I decided to write today.

Nishka turned 8 months on May 30. She is a very active baby *touch wood*. She loves to snatch/grab any book that Anirudh is reading. There are times when it gets tough to help out Anirudh in his homework when Nishka is awake and nearby. She will lurch forward and grab whatever she can lay her hands on.

She can sit quite properly now although at the beginning of 7th month, whenever she would look up or turn around she would go *dhammu* and wail with big beady tears. And with her pouty style of crying she would look even more cute. She is still not showing any inclination to crawl and me and hubby and for that matter everyone else also thinks that she will proceed to walking straightway. She will hold onto anything that she can find and will stand up. She loves to stand holding the foot of our bed and can cruise couple of steps to the right and back.

She is still to sprout any teeth. Her Dadi-Dadu are a little apprehensive as her 4 days younger cousin Avani has already sprouted 2 lower teeth. Although we keep telling them every kid has their own time lines and they seem to accept but I feel that they are still not at peace inside about it.

I still get those sloppy wet kisses when I get back home. She will initially hug me tight the moment I hold her. And then she pulls herself back, as if to check its mumma only, and then will give a big grin and again hug me tight. This goes on for couple of times and then the kissing starts. She will just eat my jaw, my cheek or my chin. And this is exactly how Anirudh used to do too. This whole showing-love act lasts for good 5-7 min. And I just cannot lay her down on the bed even to go to the loo or drink a glass of water.

If she is in my lap and am drinking water or the plain salted nimbu paani, she will want to drink it too. And I do give it to her. Can you imagine she likes to drink the salted nimbu paani which is fairly khatta? I was surprised when after giving her a sip she wanted more. And in fact finished almost 1/5th of the nimbu paani the first time and continues to do so.

Lately I've noticed that if I want her to eat the salty stuff it has to be nicely warm else she spits it out. So feeding her khichdi is not as painful affair as it was earlier. We had introduced Cerelac for her but she took it only for a month and then has stopped eating it completely. We can't even feed her two spoons of that and there are days when not even one spoon goes in her mouth. So these days I've stopped giving her Cerelac but am thinking of trying again as its been about a fortnight since we tried feeding her that.

She really enjoys throwing toys from her high chair and then looking down at them. I wonder what goes on in her mind at that moment. She still loves to play the bouncing games where she will sit on my leg and keep jumping up and down making different sounds. We play peek-a-boo games where I cover her eyes with a small cloth napkin and she will take it away and give a big smile.

If she is lying in my lap she will push her feet and lean backwards. She can do that continuously for 10-15 min. And that's when I say "Haan nonu. Duniya ulti hai..to usko seedha dekhne ke liye tumhe bhi ulta hona padta hai!" (Yes the word is upside down..so to see it straight you also have to turn upside down).

She has started making a lot many more sounds. These sounds are "De..de..de.", "taay...taay..taay..", "aye-te...aye-te". She makes another sound which sounds almost like gargling sound. And we all just love it.

She loves to climb over Anirudh and seeing them play is just so heart warming. He will let her pull his hair, pinch his cheeks as long as she doesn't wet him with her drool. The moment he can feel any drool he will just run away saying "yuck" :D

We sometimes play "Catch me if you can" with me holding Nishka and trying to catch Anirudh while running softly. Nishka simply LOVES it. She will giggle and laugh so much when we play this game.

Anirudh keeps giving those full-of-love glances at Nishka and telling me "Yeh kitni cute hai na!" and will go and give her a tight kichhi (kiss) if she is awake and she will also try to hug him back by trying to wrap her arms around whatever body part she can hold on to :)

Betu also comes running to give me a hug and a kiss when I come back home but then its more of a 'task' that gets done :P reason I'm saying that is he will come running, give me a hug and a kiss and then run back to doing whatever he was doing.

He still likes me to snuggle with him when its his bed time and wants me to tell him a story. He will specifically ask me "Apni waali kahani sunayo...book waali nahi". I usually make my own stories right there and then after asking him 1-2 characters around whom the story should revolve. He loves hearing me weaving new stories every time. And these are the moments that make me realise he is still a 8 yr old and not a 18 yr old which he usually behaves as.

We introduced Anirudh to "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" by Jeff Kinney since approx 3-4 months and he loves reading them. So much so that he finishes a book in 3-4 days max. and then he starts demanding for another one. I'm trying to introduce him to Famous Five series by Enid Blyton which we loved as kids. But so far he hasn't liked it much. But I'm still trying to get him to read that. Let's see how much I succeed.

We have to travel to Bangalore this weekend. First air trip for Nishka and I'm hoping she is fine through the flight. She will also get to meet her cousin Avani. I am so curious to see her reaction to see someone her own size :D

At her 7.5 month appointment she weighted 7.5KG. Doc wants us to increase more nutrients in her diet by way of improved diet. We are trying to do that. Lets see how her 9th month appointment at the end of the month goes.