I'd finished burping the girl; something was holding her attention; K had the camera:
Things went well for a few moments, and then L got testy.
But she's still gorgeous when she's positively wailing.
Photo session
the girl
After Burping
82 minutes under the wire
Does it count?
“Hold Your Head Up High…”
A newborn holding up her head -- one of those milestones we all know about. When L was first born, her head bobbled back and forth, giving cause for alarm a couple of times: when you have an energetic baby who still doesn't have control over many of her body's muscles, you get some literally breathtakingly jerky motions.
L has been holding her head up for a moment here, a moment there, for a couple of weeks. The other night I got a couple of good shots when she was in a good belly mood.
First Outing
K and I bundled L up Sunday afternoon and took her on her first outing: a walk through a local university's botanical gardens.
We made a couple of loops around the trail that runs literally over the river and through the woods. Toward the back, there is a historic log cabin.
L, though, was unimpressed: she slept through most all of it.
Being house-bound is perhaps the most annoying difficulty of having a six-week-old infant. To date, it is certainly more difficult on K, who has been home with L since her birth and can go an entire day without leaving the apartment. That explains why she's so eager sometimes to run to the store to pick up that forgotten ingredient for dinner -- to go anywhere is a treat.
It's something we're both anticipating with smiles.
What We Know of the Future
K and I look at L and try to imagine what she'll look as a toddler. As a young child. A pre-teen. And so on. I can't get much beyond the young child.
There are, however, a few things K and I are sure of.
She'll have an inordinate number of bad hair days, thanks to that swirling cowlick just beside her right temple and another more toward the center of her forehead. In adolescence, they will likely drive her to angry tears at least once.
"That's all assuming she's the type to be terribly worried about her physical appearance," one might suggest.
No, they'll upset her no matter what -- they're that bad.
Grandparents’ Visit
The Visit
As a kid of ten, summer seemed endless, as did the school year. And that’s reasonable, for one year then represented ten percent of my life.
My folks are coming for a visit today — the first visit in two weeks. And today, of course, L is six weeks old.
Two weeks since they’ve last seen her. She’s fifty percent older. She’s probably close to a pound heavier and a couple of inches longer.
“Everyday something new” we read in all the baby books. And that’s not surprising, for even now, each day is more than one percent of L’s total life.
Napping with Dad
When I arrive home from work, K and L have usually just finished the four o'clock feeding/burping cycle. Occasionally, I get home in time to do the burping.
A couple of time, I've managed to get back just as L's going to sleep.
"What a convenient time to be sleepy myself," I thought last Friday, the last time I came home to find L's eyes droopy.
And K crept in with the camera...
Eyes
When L was first born, she didn't open her eyes in the light for many days. When it was dark, slits would appear in her never-used eyes sometimes, and occasionally, she would open her eyes almost fully. (You can see a little of this in "Pink Thing.")
When she finally did open her eyes in lighted spaces, it was only for very short periods of time. And since the muscles in her eyes had not developed at all, she didn't really look at much of anything. Nor would she have really seen much then except blurs.
Now she opens her eyes and looks at things. When K or I is burping her, she often is looking here and there, fascinated by who knows what. Probably everything, since it's all literally new to her.
K or I can get down and put our face about six inches from hers, and when she's not already captivated by something in her field of vision, she'll look directly at us as we talk to her. We move my head a few inches to the left -- her eyes follow. We smile -- she does nothing. Yet.
Step by step. Stimulus by stimulus.