Big Developments

We’ve had some big developments in the last couple of weeks but more importantly I’ve learned that it’s a mistake to track the progress of another baby along with your own. We have friends in Kentucky who posted a video of their child, who is three weeks older than Zoe, sitting up and putting blocks into a basket. Our child can suck her toes while pooping. And that was one of her big developments. So, in order to stimulate her budding intellect we bought her an ExerSaucer, a monstrosity of plastic that is sold under the premise that it is really a teaching toy. Actually I bought it because I needed a place to stick Zoe while I ate a bowl of cereal. It has a dozen or so doodads that, for the most part just make noise. I guess if isn’t making noise the child isn’t learning. One of the ‘learning tools’ is a… actually it’s too much effort to describe, but if you push one of the three buttons it will say, “A.” Push it again and you get, “The apple is red.” Push it again and it will make a crunching sound. If you rest your little tiny baby elbow on it, it will cycle through continuously, endlessly. Zoe seems oblivious to the lesson, and when asked what color an apple is still can’t tell you, even though she’s been told, at my estimate, one thousand, five hundred and seventeen times.

Although Zoe is not yet sitting up on her own, she now can easily roll from front to back and back to front. Of course the first time she rolled from front to back we missed it, and although I eventually caught the event on video, she was crying the entire time, so the video is more like evidence of child abuse than a pivotal moment caught on film. She is also beginning to throw her toys, which I’m going to consider a big development since it demonstrates hand coordination, although it is more likely just random spastic movements.

And finally Zoe has learned about comic timing. What she will do is act all innocent and cute while you are running around the house gathering the fifty or so items you might need on a run to the store. She will wait until you are standing by the front door balancing all of these items and have entered the code to open the garage door and set the alarm, then she will either throw up down the front of your shirt or decide she needs to take her sixth poop of the day. I know it’s not random because she always follows up with a good laugh.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass.