Peter was wondering why I was holding his with my feet. He's sitting up very well now with support. Usually that's a sofa, or mummy's or daddy's hands.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Gardening with babies, 3
He didn't really crawl here, though as you can see he was trying quite hard. Too much friction, I think.
Gardening with babies, 2
I've already mentioned, I think, that Peter's been spending his spare time in the shade under a bush while I do some gardening. This evening he wiggled around on the back lawn for a while until the mosquitos got too thick.
Peter sleeping in his blue lion Robeez, 3 months
I love the soft leather baby shoes made (in Canada, yeay!) by Robeez. Peter's already grown out of his yellow chick ones which inspired my hit song, "Here comes Peter with a chicken on his foot".
Peter and the reading blanket, 3 months
Aunt Cynthia made this quilt for Peter. We've named it the reading quilt: every night, between bath and bed, Ron or I wrap up with Peter in the blanket on this chair in his bedroom, and read a story or three. "Goodnight Moon" is my favorite. Ron likes multimedia books with textured fabric patches. Peter likes funny voices.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Crawling
Peter crawled (or creeped? tummy and arms on floor, pushing with feet) across his blanket yesterday. He has been pushing 4 or 5 inches at a time, but the crucial step of moving his hands forward before they get pinned underneath was missing until yesterday.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Creative expression
Getting a three-month-old to put a handprint on a Father's Day card is more difficult than it may initially seem to the first-time mother.
Grasping
Playing is more obvious than it used to be. Last month, Peter began to wake early (between 4 and five am) and move around and make lots of noise for an hour or so before falling back asleep. I was calling it fussing at first, then "flailing." On Mother's Day, when Peter began to "flail" as usual, I got up with him so that Ron could sleep. Lo and behold, he wasn't fussing, but "practicing" using his arms. When I put him under the gym toy (he was interested in this for the first time a few days earlier), he began to flail in a more concerted way, smashing in the general direction of a hanging toy with a closed hand. He's gotten more dextrous. Yesterday (six weeks later) we noticed Peter grasping a hanging toy with his thumb and forefinger; he's also started using an open hand to spin another toy mounted on a rocker. In the past few days, he's also started holding ("hugging") a stuffed toy ("Powder Puff" the stuffed bear) in the crook of his arm while sitting.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Sleep position
One of the things I've noticed is that baby sleep positions change as they get older. (I must clarify here that I'm basing this comment on my sample of one!) A few days after we got home from the hospital, I remember noticing that Peter had started to uncurl when he slept: until he started sleeping with his arms stretched out to the sides, I hadn't realized that he was consistently sleeping with his elbows bent and his hands near his shoulders. After a few more weeks, he started sleeping with his arms stretched straight out over his head. This became a pretty good indicator of how deeply he was sleeping: once the arms moved over his head, he would be "down for the night," as we say. After that was the zombie-like position where his elbows were bent and his arms were held forward, balanced in the air. Mum says that she remembers us (Charles, Jen, and me) sleeping that way. While he still sleeps on his back in the crib, these days, when he falls asleep on his tummy while nursing or on Ron's chest, he bends his legs at the hip and knee, and folds his arms under his head, in a nice little rectangular package. He's waking right now ...
Monday, June 13, 2005
Headshot
Ron says that all my pictures of Peter are when he's sleeping. This one shows his nice smile. "This is his headshot," Ron says. "Baby actor for hire." Peter's really interested in the camera, but doesn't yet pose when he sees one (unlike his cousin Curtis as a baby).
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Peter at 3 months
We're beginning to develop family traditions; since Ron has been rehearsing in evenings lately, Peter and I have been cooking together. I think that Sunday nights would be a good weekly cookie-making date. Tonight "we" made oatmeal raisin cookies. Peter posed with the teddy bear he received from my friend April Nice (an oatmeal raisin cookie-eater herself) while we waited for the butter to warm up.
Naming
We didn't have much difficulty in choosing a name. Some of the suggestions we got from my sister Jennifer's children (Ben and Sam, age 6 and Thomas, 2) were: H20-the-scientific-name-for-water Joey and mmmmmmmmm. The advantage of "H20-the-scientific-name-for-water" was that it was both first and middle names.
We called him Peter Douglas.
Nicknames
The nicknames that we've given Peter have changed. While I was pregnant, we usually referred to the "little baby" (with masculine pronouns), and sometimes to the "little kicker" or "little punter." I followed Mount Allison football in the fall, and in the womb Peter seemed to be a tremendous kicker. He was 9 lbs 10.9 oz at birth.
Since then, he's gone through a series of new nicknames. In the hospital, I called him "green bean" for a while; one morning (or night, they all run together) I remember saying that I was calling him green bean to make him angry, so that maybe he'd stay awake and nurse longer. We called him "the little guy" for the first month or so. These days, I call him "little mouse," or just "mouse." Ron calls him "little Petah," or sometimes "little pita bread;" this might be a reference to the British diction of our friend James and his 3-year old son.
"Just like Peter Pan, but it stops after the Peter."
When my friend Margaret told her 5-year old son Malik that we had called the baby Peter, he said, "That's the best name. It's just like Peter Pan, but it stops after the Peter."
Routines
Peter's just waking up from an afternoon nap, and I wonder if I can get a few words in. He's sleeping until about 5 am now. After an early breakfast, he's been going back to sleep for another few hours. Bedtime is at 8; we've experimented with earlier, but that tends to lead to an earlier morning. Peter goes to bed happily. A few weeks ago, he just smiled and laughed when I put him in his crib. Every day I expect this to change, but in the meantime I enjoy it.
We've had some good weather lately, and so Peter has been coming with me outside and lying in the shade under a bush while I get some gardening done. Sometimes he smiles at the branches, and sometimes he just looks at them intently. Not interested in bugs yet.
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