Stella Laughed!

Geoff and I went away for the first time with Stella this past weekend.. I was a little nervous about what to pack, so I 'overpacked' and in the end I wasn't short of anything (except for trousers for myself! I only had the jeans I was wearing & loads of tops!). Joyce came to hold her granddaughter and allow us time to pack on Thursday morning... I took some pictures of her in her cute little birdie outfit:

We drove as far as Stillbay on Thursday to go and visit Jackson & Meshell and introduce Stella to them...
Geoff took Stella on a beautiful walk to the milkwood forest:

In the morning we put Stella in a fancy chair in our room to take some photos of our little princess:

I took the opportunity of travel time & other quiet time to work on Stella's baby blanket that has been in progress since I found out that we were going to be having her in our lives.... It still needs about twice as many hexagons as I've crochet-ed, but I'm getting there slowly but surely!

Stella laughed for the first time last night -- her first proper, from the stomach & in response to something laugh :) ...and we managed to catch it on video! :

The video shows Stella's Nanny holding her & her Bumpa making her laugh... well done Bumpa!!!!
(Listen out for hiccups in between!)

Colleen shared a link with me about a baby's first laugh & how it is celebrated by the Navajo people.

Here is an excerpt - FIRST LAUGH CEREMONY:

The Navajo have a tradition of celebrating a child's first expression of joy[...]. The Navajo believe that prebirth baby showers are premature and can bring evil to a child. Instead, they celebrate a child at its first laugh. The child is thought to assume the personal characteristics of the person who makes him laugh. [I was told] that for this reason, they always try to keep stingy relatives away from the small babies. [...]

The Baby and the Holy People
In Navajo theology, babies share a special relationship with the Holy People. Before each child is born, he sits with the Holy People and is granted a certain amount of time on Earth. Reluctant to leave the holy ones, babies must be coaxed into the world with songs. Infants are thought to share a special language with the Holy People, which is why they are unable to communicate with us. Gradually, as the child learns to talk, he becomes part of the human community and relinquishes this connection to the Holy People. Each person then spends the rest of his or her life trying to recreate the intense bond of infancy. Traditional parents do not trim their child's hair until he has a strong vocabulary because the hair is thought to be an extension of thought, and disrupting these early thoughts may prematurely cut the connection with the Holy People.

A medicine man [said] that when a baby laughs for the first time, he signals that he is ready to learn to speak. Thus, in [...] interpretation, the child states his readiness to enter the human world, and the Navajo celebrate by welcoming him to the mortal community with a First Laugh Ceremony. Source
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