Jiu Jitsu? I'm Going to Learn Jiu Jitsu?

For the most part, babies learn incrementally, picking up new skills bit by bit through trial and error.  For example, Grace has seemed to be on the verge of crawling for months, and is now at the point where she's got everything down except for actually moving forward.

Once in a while though, Grace seems to learn new things in giant leaps, as if they were downloaded directly into her brain like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix but if Keanu was a better actor.  Last Monday was one of those days.  From the moment Grace woke up, it was like she was a totally different person.

Our Little Author

My wife is an English teacher, a profession chosen because of a lifelong love for the written word.  So it should come as no surprise that telling Grace stories and teaching her how to read and write were among the thing's Carrie was most looking forward to upon becoming a parent.

It turns out, Grace is a very quick study.  This morning, mom sat baby in front of the computer to teach her a little about letters, numbers, cause and effect.  Enthralled by the keyboard and blank word document, Grace was filled with inspiration.  Within moments, she began putting word to digital page and authored her first story, which is hanging on our refrigerator at home and reproduced after the break for your enjoyment.

Down for the Count

It's been a constant amazement to me just how quickly Gracie has learned new abilities.  New skills have debuted at a furious pace of late, all appearing out of the blue.  When I hold her, she can smoothly and rapidly turn her head all the way to the right, then to the left and back again.  At the doctor's last week, she was on the table and rolled over for the first time.  Just the other day, I was holding her binky until she pushed my hand away, grabbed it, spit it out and put it back in her mouth on her own.  And last night, she showed off her most impressive talent to date.

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.