Matching Tracksuits

The Girl is getting control of her hands. They’re still jerky, and this is a cause of great frustration. “Get used to it,” I say. “Not being able to get your hands to do exactly as you wish is something that plagues us for our entire lives.”

But she has, I think, finally realized that those things sticking out from her shoulders are hers and under her control. So she’s reaching for things. She’s holding things. She’s flinging things, though somewhat accidentally.

And once a little almost-four-month-old gets that ability, where does everything go? Straight to the mouth.

Like most--probably all--parents, we have a mobile hanging over our little girl's crib. In keeping with the rest of the decor, it's a Pooh Bear themed mobile, with Pooh, Tigger, Pigglet, and Eeyore swirling around, looking down at usually-smiling L.

But that's very passive--lying there, watching Pooh and friends turn circles over your head.

Taking an idea from Baby Minds by Susan Goodwyn by Linda Acredolo (Amazon), we made it a more engaging--and thus, more educational--activity. All it took was the addition of a long piece of fabric loosely tied to L's left leg, with the other end end attached to the mobile. And voila!

It didn't take long for L to figure it out:

motion of leg = mobile mobile = very happy little girl

And with increased happiness came increased motion, until everything was a blur.

Now that she's got it, we'll change it, attaching it perhaps to her right arm--it will get her used to "real" life...

At first she mastered control of her eyes. About the same time, she worked on controlling her head. The Girl has more or less mastered those skills.

Next come the hands. That's a little tricker -- they still fly around like she's a hyperactive orchestra conductor. But then, in calm moments, she surprises us all and holds her bottle.

A developing child goes through so many “firsts” in that initial year that it’s easy to forget about some of them.

Take for example the first time L grabbed something other than a someone’s finger.

A parent’s finger is warm and I suppose somewhat inviting to be — conducive to being, at least — held. A plush toy? Not exactly soft, but warm I suppose. Perhaps this just means the end of a short era of preferring Tata’s finger to just about anything else?

Another big development is the ability to sit.

It’s a long way from sitting with supports to sitting alone. But like everything else has to this point, I expect the one to melt into the other unexpectedly.

The Girl slept fitfully last night. Friday night she drifted off at eleven at didn't wake up until five Saturday morning. That is a survivable schedule. Waking up every couple of hours is not.

Morning comes and I take care of the girl while K sleeps. After her 7:00 feeding and burping, L lies on the bed between us, looking up at the ceiling, smiling wildly at who knows what. She turns her head and looks at me and an even bigger smile breaks.

Later in the morning, in the guest room with babcia, she looks at the bright morning light coming in through the window. Calm.

A bit of motion and she looks my way. Of course I have the camera...

A change, some rocking, perhaps a nap -- then it's time to start over.

L's 90 day money back guarantee would have expired yesterday. But unlike the magazine subscription we recently purchased, various CDs we've bought, tons of clothes, pipes, pens, furniture, etc., we haven't said a word about taking her back.

It's not a question of depreciation -- far from it. She's far more dear to us now than when we brought her home from the hospital -- so dear, in fact, that we continue to invest regularly in various upgrades. And she attracts quite a crowd:

"[We think] we'll keep her."

L is almost eleven weeks old, which means she's entering that period where every day she does something new for the first time. A few of the recent firsts:

She's slowly discovering that those spindly things sticking out from her sides are arms -- her arms. This morning she tried to bring her hand to her mouth after holding it in front of her, studying it for a few seconds before slamming her hand directly into...her forehead.

L has added a new cry to her repertoire: the "I'm bored" cry. She likes to be toted around the apartment so she can see anything and everything.

Lastly, she's discovered her voice, and learned that it too is subject to her control. And so she's taken to making vowel sounds to show her interest and her joy. We've captured it twice on video.

K is a cartographer. As such, she has an abiding interest in maps. As such, we have a very nice map of the region of Poland where she comes from (and where I lived for seven years) hanging in our forayer.

L is turning into a smiler. It's gone from "Honey, come quick! She's smiling!" to a many-times-a-day occurrence. In fact, she smiles on-cue now. Sort of.

Whenever we hold L so that she can see our forayer map, she smiles -- 99% of the time. We've caught it on video a couple of times.

The question is, what is so fascinating for her about that map? It has nothing but muted earth-tones; it is extremely low-contrast; it is very detailed -- all the things a baby L's age are not supposed to find particularly interesting. But she loves it -- she comes closest to laughing when looking at it.

Maybe she senses that mom's a cartographer. Maybe she senses that its a representation of her roots. Maybe she just gets off on low-contrast images...

It really began some weeks ago -- the first smile, K says, was when L was six weeks old. I didn't see it for some time, because L would smile once one day, give it a couple day's rest, then smile again -- usually when I wasn't home.

And then she began smiling often enough that I saw L with her eyes sparkling above a toothless grin.

But it took some time to be able to capture that on film memory card.

Now, we can cause her to smile -- if she's in the right mood. All we have to do is flash (and hold) an exaggerated smile and within seconds, she joins in.

The best time to get a smile out of her is after a bath. L absolutely loves being bathed, so much so that it is actually an effective calming mechanism.

And when she's calm and smiling, we're calm and smiling.