Tummy Time and the Dow

I was thinking about it, and if you were to have asked me before what my child did all day, I would tell you that primarily, he screams and poops. Especially if you had asked me this between 9:15 and 10:00 this morning. Seriously, have you ever heard someone holler for thirty minutes without stopping? If you haven't, be very, very glad. If you have, I'm sorry.

Solidarity, homie, solidarity.

Anyway, I was thinking some more about it (you have a lot of time to think when you're using both hands to either pump or feed the baby eight times each every day) and I realized that my wee punk is starting to do more than that these days. For starters, if I place him in the crib after a diaper change so I can go wash my hands, he rarely screams until he's purple anymore. Rather, he will lie there, wiggle around, watch the mobile, and coo contentedly. When we carry him around the house, he looks at different objects, like he's actually interested in them. His favorites are the living room lamp, the print of poppies on the wall, the vertical blinds near the changing table, and the ceiling fan in the bedroom.

Today, with this in mind, I gathered up a few small toys before we sat down on the living room floor for tummy time. After he got tired of trying to hold up his melon:

(dang that's a cute baby!)

which, of course he signaled to me by hollering his displeasure, I laid him on his back and held the various toys over him, one at a time. First thing I noticed - he totally was watching them. I could move them back and forth, and not only would he track them with his eyes, he would turn his head to follow them. After playing with a few, I noticed that he seemed to particularly like this Baby Einstein stuffed duck that Gail (who used to work with me at the scrapbook store) gave me. I put the other toys away for now, but left that one out for later playdates.

Another thing I'm noticing is that he's trying out his voice more often. He is starting to make the babbling coos as he lies on the changing table and when we play on the floor. I read that you should talk back to him when he does this, to encourage language development, so we've been chatting a lot about the most inane stuff. I shared this information with my husband also, so that he could also encourage our child's development, you know!

So this morning, I'm changing the baby's diaper, and my husband walks in. I asked him to stand there and keep an eye on the baby while I went to wash my hands. When I came back, Sawyer was happily kicking his legs around and "talking" to my husband, who was standing there watching him adoringly. I was like HEY, talk back to him! So, the next time the baby cooed at him, you know what he says?

"Yeah? Okay."

My husband, the conversationalist. Sheesh. I started to laugh, and asked him how that was going to encourage language development. He says okay, I'll think of something. I left to go get some water, and when I came back, I kid you not, that man was talking to our child about how awful it was that the Dow dropped below 8000 points yesterday.

I think it's safe to say, our son will have a VERY interesting vocabulary.