First Wave: Slack Tide, Oriental Rug Break

Legion of Honor Museum

Not impressed, let's get back to the dead sea scrolls exhibit before I start yelling...

(Great) Uncles Randall & Jim Brown Visit With Hannah

Dad's Favorite Pic

Milestones: She Found Her Thumb Today!

Happy Easter!

Hannah's favorite "Happy Easter" card was an awesome work of art by her cousins Jack and Kate Wollan. Hannah can't wait to say thanks in person when she visits Jack & Kate at their home in Chicago in a few weeks...! Here's their card, and hand-decorated envelope.

3 Months...

What’s Going On With Hannah?

In the words of Armin A. Brott, who wrote The New Father, A Dad’s Guide to the First Year, here are the physical and intellectual stages of growth Hannah has reached now that she is three months young. I have quoted directly from pg. 101-2 of this book, adding Hannah’s name. I could not have written a more accurate account myself, so I quote, adding a few comments in parenthesis:

“As more and more of her reflexes disappear, your baby’s body is changing. She can now keep her hands open (instead of in tiny fists), and when you put her down on her tummy, she extends her legs instead of automatically rolling up into a little ball like a pill bug. But she can’t yet tell one side of her body from the other, and she moves both legs and arms together. By the end of this month, though, she’ll realize that the two sides can be controlled independently.
She can roll from her back to her side (Hannah did this on her changing table just a couple days ago), and when she is on her tummy, she can lift her head and lean on her elbows (Tummy time is not Hannah’s favorite thing and she has not yet discovered that she has elbows). Sometimes she may arch her back and raise her head and legs off the floor and rock like a little seesaw (yes!).

When we pull her from a reclining position, she’ll try and stand up, pressing her feet against whatever she was lying on (Hannah was doing this as early as a month ago). If we hold her upright, she may be able to 'stand.' Her head is bobbing around a lot less, although it still needs support, and if we can get her into a sitting position, she can sit fairly well for a few seconds before keeling over.

Hannah reaches with both hands and is getting much better at grasping things (although she still misses a lot). This is a development that some experts believe is a new reflex, designed to develop her hand-eye coordination. ‘Everything that a child grasps is brought to the eyes and everything she sees evokes an effort to grasp,’ says child psychologist Peter Wolf.

Moving objects are a source of nearly endless fascination. Hannah will follow with her eyes and head an object moving slowly from one side of her head to the other (true!). If we drop something, she’ll stare at our empty hands, wondering where the object went – but not knowing anything at all about gravity, she won’t follow the object as it falls (also true!).

One day Hannah will catch sight of her own hand on its way into her mouth (we think she has recently done this). Until this very moment, she had no idea that the thing she’s been sucking on for the past few months actually belongs to her (we think she is coming around to that conclusion right now). Best of all, she now realizes that objects (or at least her hand) can exist for two reasons at the same time: to look at and to suck on.
As a result of this startling, and incredibly important, revelation, Hannah will spend as much as 15 minutes at a stretch intently staring at her squiggling fingers and then shoving them into her mouth (yeah, that pretty much sums things up!). She’ll repeat the process over and over.
She is also able to make associations between certain objects; she prefers circular shapes to stripes and complex patterns to simple ones.
She is able to make associations between certain objects and qualities linked to them. For example, she may associate Kristina with food and Jonathan with play, and will react differently to each of us (hard to tell but she definitely knows where to go for food).
Although most of Hannah’s vocalizing is crying, she’s making some delightful, soothing, ooohs, aaahs, and other single-syllable sounds.
She’s now beginning to use her vocalizing for a purpose – if we listen carefully we tell the difference between her ‘Feed me now,’ ‘Put me down, I want to take a nap,’ and ‘Change me diaper’ cries.

She’s now also attentively listening to all the sounds around her and distinguishes speech from any other sound.

At this point, Hannah’s schedule of eating, sleeping, diaper filling, and being alert is getting fairly regular (Oh, really? I had not noticed!). When it comes to people, she has strong dislikes, crying or calming down depending on who holds her (so far she seems pretty agreeable unless she needs something). She’ll also smile or laugh at familiar people, and stare at strangers.

She’s very perceptive about our moods and will react to them. If we are tired and anxious, she’ll be harder to calm and soothe, but if we’re calm and happy, it’ll be easier (true).

She’ll stare, absorbed in her surroundings, for several minutes at a time. She wants to interact with people and may stop what she’s doing (which is usually sucking something) and listen if we talk to her."

Confessions of a San Francisco Car Seat Rider

Forgotten Language by Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,

Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions

of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?