Baby Milestones

It’s fascinating to discover the stages our baby goes through as he grows.  I thought babies were born grabbing things to put in their mouths, crawling and rolling over.  It turns out every child is different and has to figure these things out during the first several months of life.  And even if they figure it out, they may not have the coordination they need to do it yet.  I thought being a baby was just blissful.  As it turns out, being a baby looks pretty frustrating a lot of the time.

            This is why I am so happy to see Dante figuring out little things like sucking his thumb, grabbing, holding and chewing on things.  You may be thinking  "Big whoop!”  But I know this means a much happier and self entertained baby.

Rolling & Turning      
This is one of my favorite videos of Dante.  It was the first week of April and Ashley was visiting at the time.  He is almost five weeks old and somehow able to roll over from his stomach to his back. (He no longer can do this).  In this video he figures out how to turn his body so that the toy I put on his chest falls off.  (He no longer can do this either-- but lays there fussing and incapacitated).  The best part is the proud little grin on his face right after he rids himself of the big blue octopus:

The other thing I like about this video is that in the short 48 seconds it took, Ashley says her favorite line in the background, "What was I talking about?"  Classic!

Starting to Crawl
Yesterday was a day of firsts!!!  Dante has discovered that his hands are little tools. He is suddenly picking up toys and blankets intentionally and holding them to his mouth.  He also made a definite effort to crawl for the first time.  Later on James put him on a sturdier surface and Dante scooted himself about a foot.  Here he is during one of his first few attempts and nearly exhausted...

And after crawling...

Baby Signs
Dante was fascinated with sign language the moment I started using it.  I am amazed at his focus while I'm showing him letters of the alphabet.  Even more amazing is that he learned the letters and was doing them all the time, putting all his fingers in the right positions.  He would even make the letters in his sleep.  He doesn't sign letters nearly as much now (just a few weeks later) which I don't understand.  But I'm glad I got this video of him waking up and signing away.  In this clip he accurately signs at least 12 different letters along with a couple he invented himself:

I think he is very excited to be able to participate in something I am doing.  I can tell by his focus and enthusiasm that signing is important to him.

Toys! 
Here is a little video from a couple weeks ago when Dante first noticed his toys.  We felt bad to leave him for too long like this because his head kept turning left to right, back and forth, again and again for minutes on end...

It is our absolute honor and delight to be parents to Dante and cross all of these important milestones with him.  The equation goes something like... 

ONE STEP FORWARD  +  TWO STEPS BACK  =  THE MOST AMAZING JOURNEY OF OUR LIVES