Gimme Gimme Gimme

This has been a productive week for Leah.

To start with, she discovered that she can grasp rhings.  You'll notice I said "grasp" and not "grab".  She cannot reach out and possess things (even if they are attached to her body.)  She can, however, express a strong desire to have something as her very own forever if it is placed in her hand or mouth.  If she really wants it, getting it back becomes not unlike trying to take a tennis ball from a very rambunctious puppy.  She also cannot reason that some things are not an extension of herself.  Therefore if she has something in her hand, she can fling it about until her motor skills give out and she opens her palm and drops it.  Then she cries.  Or if she has something in her mouth that is attached to other things (like, say, my nipple, which is attached to my body) and she wants to turn her head and the thing will not go and also, Mommy gets mad and takes the thing away, she also cries.  So there's some work to be done on that front yet, clearly.

Lucky for us, she has also started to make sounds that are not crying.  This is a refreshing change of pace as it is now possible to (sort of) tell when she is enjoying something.  Furthermore, she has made herself a source of entertainment in that she will sometimes pipe up in conversation with a little squeal or grunt at extremely convenient times, so that it almost sounds like she's voicing an opinion.  Sometimes, when she is in an extremely good mood, this means we can have a conversation:

Me: Hi Leah!  How are you today?  Are you a happy girl today?  Are you Mommy's happy girl today?
Leah: Aaaaahphhht!
Me: How do you feel about a new shirt?
Leah: Guh.
Me: Oh, my goodness.  Look at that dirty diaper.  That is such a big poopy for such a little girl.  Yes it is.  Yes it is.
Leah: ...*blank stare*

Of course, most of the time I just get the *blank stare* part of that, but I like to think that maybe, just maybe, that stare is not as blank as it looks.  That maybe her little brain is cyphering on what I have just said.

Also, she smiles now!  There really isn't any rhyme or reason to those smiles, though.  Like the happy-grunty-not crying sounds, they are just there.  Sometimes they are timed very conveniently so as to make Mommy or Daddy (or Grandma, who I think delights in the whole "smile" thing even more than we do) think we've done something to make her happy.

Then five seconds later she fixates her eyes on the china hutch for no reason, or fills her diaper, or starts to cry.  After some observation, I've decided that her smiles are not at all an indication of emotion.  They are an indication that she is about to change something about what she's doing, and I may or may not enjoy it.  Each Leah Smile is like reaching into the Mystery Bag of Life.

And then there's the biggie.  A couple of days ago, I was on the floor with Leah, doing the all-important "tummy time."  Tummy time is one of those obligatory parent-things that we have to do even if the baby screams her little head off, because otherwise she will never develop stomach muscles and will be a helpless, back-laying nobody for the rest of her life.  If you want to get anywhere in life, you need abs as a child.  And so we do tummy time, which amounts to me putting her face-down on a blanket and letting her push and squirm and move around until she gets totally frustrated, at which point I will pick her up and assure her that the world did not disappear into red-and-white checker design.  But I digress.  We were doing the tummy time thing, and she got her little arms under her squirmy body, hoisted herself half an inch off the ground in a pseudo push-up position and then, right before my eyes, pushed herself over onto her side and then onto her back.

It was the most amazing thing I have seen in a very long time.

It also made me realize that, whether we are ready for it or not, Leah is now slightly mobile.  Very soon, she will be able to roll the other way, too, and then she will be even more mobile.  And then she will learn to crawl, and we are completely fucked and should probably re-take that Infant CPR class, because she is most definitely going to eventually put something in her mouth that she finds on the floor, because it's not like we're the best housekeepers in the world.

But I think we're safe for a little longer, as right now she is very much like a turtle.  (I can no longer justifiably call her a potato.  Potatoes, awesome as they are, are not capable of self-propulsion.  If you want them to roll, they must be pushed.)  Turtles, however, occasionally flip themselves over onto their backs for no discernible reason and get stuck there and can only flail their little legs in the air until someone comes along to help.  That's exactly what Leah looks like right now.