Sam’s Story: Week 12

I’ve taught Sammy a new game. Actually, it’s more like her first game ever. For the last couple of weeks she’s been really alert, more so I think than most other babies her age (she is, after all, a friggin’ genius). She looks at things around her, follows them with her eyes and head, and reacts to people when they talk to her. And there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to her during her week-long visit to Oklahoma. The game I taught her is “make the face that Daddy’s making”, and the title pretty much tells it all. If I stick out my tongue a few times, she mimics me after a few tries and we both break out into smiles. Same thing if I purse my lips. And if I blink my eyes. Heck, I even got her to wink at me once, which was a riot. Sam loves this game, as evidenced by her face-splitting grins between rounds. I’m not sure, but I think she even laughed at me once. Join the crowd, Sammy.

Here’s the pictures from this week:

Also, if you missed the pictures from last week, I’ve added them. See them here.

As you can see in the first picture above, Sammy was pretty darn popular during our visit to Oklahoma. Wild horses couldn’t have kept my mom away from her, and she practically shoved me aside to get at Sam when we first arrived. Every neigbor who came by to visit and ask after my dad had to see Sam and spend time cooing and telling her what a cutie she is. My mother even insisted that I dress her up and bring her by the University of Tulsa library so she could show her off to all her coworkers. Sam is already more popular than I’ll ever be.

I should also draw your attention to the pictures of Sam where she’s wearing her spiffy Easter dress, which Aunt Shawn gave her. This was the first time I saw Sam looking so girly. She wasn’t exactly feminine (though I’m sure that will come with midrifts and short skirts soon enough), but she was completely adorable in a new way that really called attention to her gender. It was kind of a contrast next to the mostly unisex jumpers and pajamas she had been wearing.

Finally, I love this picture, which shows Sam in the yellow and white jacket set that Todd and Marla Northcutt sent us.

The only other thing that I have to report is that Sammy has started to learn how to control her arms, hands, and legs. She will now grab stuff and pull it towards her, and she’s getting the hang of bringing her fingers up to her mouth so she can suck on them if we haven’t already crammed a pacifier in there.

Finally, this week’s recommended Baby Product is the book Einstein Never Used Flash Cards. My friend Spencer recommended this book to me, and I’m glad I took his advice. It’s great. It’s far from the usual parenting books, which tend to be either light on facts (“Babies learn to talk by listening. Have them listen!”) or too prescriptive (“Your baby should poop 8-12 times a day”). Einstein Never Used Flash Cards is written by child psychologists who describe in detail the scientific evidence on how babies learn. The chapter on how babies learn about mathematics, for example, doesn’t speak in platitudes and generalities. Instead, it describes, in very readable fashion, the research that has been done on the topic, and the five principles children must grasp in order to understand mathematics:

• The one-to-one principle (each item gets only one number tag)
• The stable-order principle (numbers occur in a fixed order)
• The cardinal principle (the number of items in a set is the same as the last number tag)
• The abstraction principle (you can count anything!)
• The order-irrelevance principle (it doesn’t matter where you start counting)

They even give little exercises that you can do with your child to teach and reinforce each of these principles. The chapters on speaking, reading, social interactions, and self-awareness are similar, but the book’s central theme is that children learn all these things naturally through play. The authors do some weird conceptualization with the concept of intelligence and make a few statements that are patently false (e.g., “Intelligence has no bearing on one’s success in life.”) but overall it’s an excellent book. I highly recommend it for any expecting or new parents.