Hero

Today was a big day for our Small Kamal, and he took it all in his usual mellow, happy stride. 

He rolled over for the first time today, from tummy to back, a week or so ahead of the earliest time we'd been told to expect this. Where our baby books have all cautioned us that this particular milestone could be very alarming for a baby, Kamal looked briefly astonished, and then just pleased. 

 Kamal's pleased face

Later we put him in his Amby Jump Jump for the very first time, and he bopped around looking pleased. 

Then we took a stroll down the creek trail behind our house to check out how high the creek had risen after the recent heavy rains we've had, and he watched the rushing water and a couple of guys speeding by in a canoe, and he looked pleased. 

This is actually a photo from three months ago, of the very first stroll we took with Kamal down the creek trail, when he was twentysomething days old. Look how small he is!

Later we put him in a Bumbo seat for the first time, and he sat in it looking pleased. 

I'm amazed, daily, at the gladness and calm with which Kamal confronts a constantly growing, shifting, leaping-and-bounding perspective on the world. His wise, patient, gracious, enormous soul looms over and surrounds his tiny, his perfect little body. Transition after transition presents itself to him, and he moves through each of them with grace and a joy that's beautiful to watch. 

Of course, I guess after surviving being shoved, squeezed and, in Kamal's particular case, vacuumed out of the cozy body that's been your only home for your entire nine-month existence into a glaringly bright, noisy, weird-smelling hospital room that as far as you know is the whole entire world, most transitions after that aren't going to shock you. Whatever the reason for the remarkable way he welcomes this life he's chosen, he's a hero to me.