Milestones, part I

At 19 days into life, Justin continues to amaze us with the amount of personality that he has. Granted, he sleeps about 18 hours a day... but for those 6 hours of wake time, he's usually willing to entertain. As for baby milestones, here's the checklist from babycenter.com...

1 month
• Lifts head when lying on tummy
• Responds to sound
• Stares at faces

All three of those are checked off (well, sort of). We noticed the first one and his neck strength just a day or two after birth. Last week he was lifting and turning his head. But during his "tummy time" this morning, I noticed that he can lift and hold his head up for as long as he likes. It looks and sounds tiresome, but he's getting it. The "responds to sounds" milestone took about 10 days from birth. We were kind of unprepared for that one, so we started to think he was deaf until we read somewhere that his initial lack of auditory reflexes was normal. At the time, you could've dropped a pan 2 inches from his face (no, we didn't try it) and he wouldn't flinch. Me, I thought he was just tough like that. Turns out he just didn't have those reflexes yet. Lastly, the "stares at faces" milestone. Hmm. Well, we're trying not to take it personal, but he doesn't seem much interested in our faces... but he does stare at just about everything else and has about the busiest eyes I've ever seen. So much so that we already have to watch where we face him while eating because he's pretty easily distracted by new (and especially bright) things in the room. Every now and then I have to cover his eyes just to make him swallow.

At birth, apparently he also didn't know how to use his eyes in tandem yet, so they were wandering randomly all over the place; rarely in the same direction. And so yes, I thought the poor child was cross-eyed, too (new parents... gotta love 'em). But of course he just needed a little time to figure out the wiring system behind his eyes, and he's straight now.

2 months
• Vocalizes: gurgles and coos
• Follows objects across field of vision
• Notices his hands
• Holds head up for short periods

3 out of 4 ain't bad. His hands are his favorite snack, so he has more than noticed them. Now if only we can get him from eating them. At first, I thought that his hands were just happening by his face by coincidence; but after watching him, I'm now pretty sure that he is deliberate with them. He doesn't just stare at them or anything (maybe that's what they mean by notice... ?) but he does reach for his mouth and push the bottle away when he's had enough, for example. As for the vocalizing, I'll have to take some video and let it speak for itself. The poor fellow thinks he can talk already and will grunt, coo, and gurgle the entire time he is awake as if he just has so much to say. Even his pediatrician said that he is unusually vocal for his age. We'll have to wait and see if that translates to early speech or not. In the meantime, I guess we better decide very quickly what language we're going to be speaking around here so he'll have some auditory consistency and won't still be grunting, cooing, and gurgling once he's in high school. Or if he is, at least he'll be doing it with a spanish accent.

For more of Justin's latest photos, you can always go here.