What Baby Knows, What Baby Doesn't Know - Part 1

Most new parents are obsessed with their baby's development, and I'm certainly no exception.  I'm always on the lookout for the first signs of burgeoning skills and am constantly trying to teach Grace, even though I know she's too young to pick up on most things.  When I hold her, I tell her about noses and ears, fingers and toes.  Walking her around the house is time for an introduction to colors and shapes.  It'll be months until those lessons start to sink in, but there are other discoveries she's made about the world that are already easy to see, where she's moved beyond pure instinct to a more developed level of understanding.  Of course, there's plenty more concepts that are still well beyond her grasp.

What Grace Knows - Navigating Daddy

Grace sees me not so much as a person, but as equal parts restaurant, jungle gym and mattress.  Whether hungry, sleepy or looking to play, she knows what she wants when she wants it, and how to move around me in order to get it.

Feeding position
(were you expecting me to
dangle her from her ankles?)

My daughter is mostly pretty quiet, but when she's hungry she lets you know it in the form of unholy, slasher movie level screaming.  The thing that's impressive is that she's learned to stop freaking out when I get her into feeding position, sitting down with her cradled in my left arm, not when she first feels the bottle.  The thing that's scary is that she can put herself into feeding position when I'm not expecting it.  At least once a day I'll be burping Grace over my shoulder and, like something out of Cirque du Soleil, she'll push herself up, toss herself to the right and dive into the crook of my arm, ready for a post-burp snack.

Burping equals boredom for Baby Grace, so when she's not diving for food, she's trying to play, and there's nothing funner than my face.  She lifts her head and climbs, pushing off my arms with her legs and finding handholds in my chest hair (ouch) and mouth (OUCH!) on her way to the summit of Mount Nose.

"You've got a Gracie on you."

After conquering the trip up my face, it's naptime, which means negotiating her way back down to her favorite sleeping spot before I get the chance to put her in the stinky bassinet.  This move is more of a slide rather than a dive, as she purposefully curls into a ball with her ear pressed against my chest, resting up for a few hours before the cycle begins again.

 What Grace Doesn't Know - Eating and Tummy Aches are Related

It's no surprise that cause and effect are lost on a 5 week old baby, not to mention the basics of human physiology.  Since those concepts haven't dawned on her, Grace's first response to clearing gas with a good burp or clearing something worse with a poop is to immediately demand more food, blissfully unaware of the vicious circle she's descending into.  Hopefully, she'll figure this connection out sooner rather than later, but considering the fact that her 32-year old father still eats cookies for breakfast most mornings and then complains about feeling tired and queasy by lunch, there's a good chance that she's genetically predisposed to never putting these pieces together.