Growing Up

Constance is growing up fast. She's no longer a little infant. I realized that the other day as I was looking at her sitting in her monkey chair. The first two weeks of her life, she grew two inches. From then until now she's grown only one inch but is putting on more weight. She's still a pretty skinny baby but likes to eat until she has a little potbelly. Most nights she sleeps a stretch of 6 to 8 hours and then takes a follow-up 2 to 3 hour nap in the morning. I'm enjoying this sleeping schedule much more than her previous routine of waking up every 1-2 hours night or day.

Constance is much more social now. She has started playing with her toys recently. She can bat the little red snail or blue ladybug on her bouncy chair. By far the blue ladybug is her favorite for some reason and she is always staring at it intently. The other day, I set her in her boppy pillow in her Lion King play gym and she started reaching for the little toys hanging down.

Constance loves lying down in her play gym and looking up at the various things above her but I've learned not to put her on her tummy and expect her to be happy. She will hold up her head and look around if you are leaning back and have her on your chest or if you prop her up on your legs. But the minute you set her directly on her tummy on her own, she will burst into angry wails. Despite her resentment toward tummy time, I still make sure she gets some everyday (mean, mean Mommy). As a result, she has discovered a way to kick and paw herself backwards without ever having to lift her head off the ground.

She starts off in the play gym like so. . .

5-10 minutes later she has pushed herself out of the gym. Each time she gets a bit farther. I fear she might start off crawling backwards instead of forwards.

Perhaps this resentment toward Mommy giving her tummy time is partially responsible for her recent increased fondness of Daddy. Tom is the one who flips her over on her back (sometimes when Mommy isn't looking), who sings to her, and who makes up new games to play with her every time I leave Constance with him. Tom taught Constance how to kick her legs back and forth really fast by doing it for her while making some funny sounds. She really liked it, as you can see from her face here . . .

After Tom let go of her feet, Constance would try to replicate the motions the best that she could. It was pretty cute. Now she is quite the pro at kicking.

However, with her kicking so much, it has become impossible for me to keep anything on her feet for more than a few minutes. I even tried to combination of socks and booties. The booties came off first and then the socks a few minutes later.

Another game that Tom plays with Constance is he will hold her hands and lean really close to her and make up a song on the spot to sing to her while he swings her arms back and forth. This makes her so happy, she opens her mouth and gives him the biggest smile, occasionally doing a soft guttural coo.

As much as Constance loves Daddy, she also has something else of late that she is quite fond of. No, it's not the ba ba. It's her fist. Up until now, Constance would suck on her fist if it happened to end up close to her mouth. But recently she's discovered how to form a nice fist and bring it up to her mouth and she seems to be favoring it even more than the ba ba. There are all sorts of versions of "the fist." There's wrist fist, spit-up fist (kinda gross), fist with bib on top, fist with blanket wrapped around, and--what I think is the signature creation and like to call "the fist sandwich"--her attempt to cram two fists into the mouth at once.

Here she was testing out the fist plus dress combo. As a result, she gave us a good view of her little tummy.

Along with her fists, she's discovered her feet, at least enough to stare at them. Hmmm, good looking feet wouldn't you say?

Constance has no qualms about being completely undressed. In fact, I believe it is safe to say that she extremely enjoys being clothes free and diaper free. If she is fussing a little and I put her down on the floor and start undressing her, Constance will immediately start smiling and cooing and kicking. Bath time is more fun because she likes to kick and splash in the water. Changing her diaper though is much more challenging because she is so wiggly, particularly when it is a very messy diaper.

Speaking of diapers, I've been really enjoying the whole cloth diapering adventure. I was considering cloth diapers before Constance was born and was very surprised to discover, not only that cloth diapers have evolved from the basic cloth squares and pins to the sophisticated and cute covers, all-in-one's, and pockets sold all over the place now, but also that there are actual forums and mommy coops formed around the practice of cloth diapering (yep, it's even a verb now). With the creation of washing machines, wet bags, and even diaper sprayers, cloth diapering is really quite easy and not messy at all. In fact, I think it is less messy  than disposables because I rarely have to deal with the dreaded "blow-outs." Recently, Constance got some new diapers in the mail. I thought this Lotus Bumz diaper was particularly cute on her. It was also more than half off on Zulily which made me feel better about buying it.