Two months into the whole child raising gig
It’s hard to belive it’s been two months already. Another week passed, and this one was pretty good. It’s kind of odd how we track time. I mark the passage of time in my memory by big events passing, and as I get older the things I use to mark the passage of time get bigger but further apart. Things like being old enough to drink, graduating college, getting a promotion, getting married all count now. These are how my memory records the passing of time, and it’s a far cry from being “six and a half.” Maybe that’s just my mind’s way of pretending not to grow old.
I mention this because as I watch my daughter, I’m brought back to recording the small things. Now I’m back to remembering little things like when she could first tripod for 30 seconds a few weeks ago. Now a week seems like a long time again when looked at and remembered in terms of progress made. Heck this week’s fun was me being able to take care of her for an entire day while my wife got to escape to Six Flags for day with a friend. I know that’s small potatoes, but being able to do little things like pack her in the car and head to the mall by myself was a fun little adventure. I laugh a little because she seems to love the mall…a sign of things to come? Like I said, I only laugh a little. In any event, I take it as a good sign for when J heads to Seattle for a week that we had a good time.
Last night ws awesome. We got her to eat food for the first time (with the doc’s permission to try). She ate some rice cereal with her formula in it. Now it was no where near enough to count as sustinance for a meal, but it was a great start. Given that when we first went to meet her in the hospital it was thought that she was a few years away from being able to take any food by mouth, this is great. It puts her years ahead of where she was predicted to be only 3 months ago. Now I just have to see if I can post any of the pictures of her eating (think I put one up of J feeding her). She spits out about a third of every spoonful, but if one spoons it right back to her, she eats it. Since it wasn’t all over her, and it wasn’t in the bowl…woohoo. We’re pretty confident in how she will do on her swallow test.
Things we work on now:
Laying on her tummy without crying
Looking up when laying on her tummy
Rolling over on her own
Building leg strength (I’m the dork lifting her like a jump when she finally puts pressure on her legs while I hold from the armpits…she loves it and it works well to put her in a good mood after tummy time).
I’m just happy with how much more energy she has. After the list above, I should probably note the hardest part for me will probably be me not responding to every cry. My wife was correct last night when she chided me for going to pick her up when she cries while playing the playstation. She said I should just give her a toy at least until she stops crying. Of course it worked…but it’s hard to not go for the immediate fix that I know is what she wants. But J is correct when she point out that spoiling her isn’t going to make anyone happy. Ah well, I just have to break the habit of trying to do what she wants just because she wants it all the time…now I just need a replacement strategy to get her to say “daddy” first 🙂
After almost two years, we’ll finally head onto the base. Time to see if there is anything good at the flea market.
Catch you later.
