"S" @ 1 month: Sailin' away!

As new parents, Chris and I are of course fascinated with and excited by all the new developmental changes and milestones we observe with S. I thought it would be interesting to track these developments month-to-month so we have a record of how our little one is learning and growing!

Since S's almost two months old now (!!! where did the time go ??) I'll need to rewind a bit to cover her first month, but luckily we have a jillion photos, videos and baby book notes to jog my memory! :)

As I noted in S's birth announcement, she arrived into the world on November 24th, 2010 at a healthy 8 lb, 8 oz and 20 1/4 inches. Her hospital discharge weight 2 days later was just under 8 lb, but then she had almost gained back her birth weight by her 1 week doctor's appointment. As her first month progressed, she lost some of her birth "pudge" and her growth tended toward lengthening rather than fleshing out. She's already taking after Mom & Dad that way. :) By the end of her first month, my guess is that she was just over 9 pounds and close to 21 1/2 inches (based on her measurements shortly after that during her early January check up.) Here's a picture of her taken on Christmas Eve, her first month "birthday" - a few more inches and she'll be too big for her bassinet!


















To help stimulate her vision & brain development, we started introducing black & white images when she was around a week old. She was intrigued by these, especially her sailboat picture which we found in a Nestle baby brochure. This was basically baby crack - she's stare at it endlessly, and when she was a few weeks old she started "talking" to it with little cooing sounds. We had it attached to her bassinet initially, and then put it up on her change table to give her some entertainment during diaper changes. You may have seen this pic in my last entry about cloth diapering - it does double duty here!













She liked the "multi-image" pages we printed out as well, but they didn't captivate her as much as her sailboat:













Near the end of her first month, we started showing her some toys with bold colours which definitely captured her interest! She'd stare at them with wide, alert eyes and by the end of the month could track them as we moved them back and forth across her field of vision. Her favourite was her Learning Curve Baby's First Rattle - lots of bright, contrasting colours and a happy, smiley face! Here's a video of her tracking the rattle back and forth:



We also introduced her to her Baby Einstein Neptune Ocean Adventure Gym (nabbed on Kijiji, nearly new, for a mere $25) and she was fascinated by this as well - particularly the octopus hanging toy. Of course she wasn't yet old enough at this point to purposefully bash at the toys to make noise, but this'll come along!














Finally, near the end of the month we started giving her some tummy time on her colourful mat. Just a couple minutes at a time for now! She could hold her head up momentarily but she'd get tired pretty quickly.














In terms of social development, S's been very content with other people from Day 1. Usually she'd just fall asleep when someone would hold her, but during her alert phases (especially near the end of her first month) she would smile and even coo a little bit! She was basically smiling from the start, though of course there's that whole argument that a super early "smile" is actually gas (especially when baby's sleeping at the time). That said, this video shows her clearly entertained by Daddy - again near the end of her first month:



Lots of exciting developments during month 2 which I'll write about soon! :)