This week's minor updates

Just a few notes, since we haven't posted anything recently and haven't put up new pictures. We've been radio-silent on the Chiara front for a whole week now, and that's unheard-of!

Chiara is doing great. She continues to grow - she was very nearly 2 lbs over her birth weight as of yesterday - and is on the verge of outgrowing the first of her baby clothes. That's sort of exciting; it really feels like some kind of milestone.

We have a whole slew of 3-month sized outfits ready for her, and she has in fact started wearing some of the less-loose ones already. She's a tall girl, our little 8-week-0ld (as of this coming Friday).

She's paying a lot of attention to us both - she will look into our eyes for as long as we want, and often will look where we look, if we look away. Smile at her and she smiles back. Seeing her face brighten as she catches you smiling at her, well, it's the best thing ever. She's experimenting with the sounds she can make, too. Besides the usual cooing and mewing she has a sort of "wa-hooo!" sound that is unbelievably cute and endearing. We're trying to capture a recording of it but haven't managed yet.

Among the classes we've taken at Day One recently are sign language for babies, and infant massage. It turns out that young children - much older than ours, usually 8 months or more - can be taught both to understand sign language and to sign back. It's a way for them to communicate their needs even before they've learned to speak. We're taking the classes now so we'll be that much more ready and fluent as she gets old enough to begin to understand. Baby Sign Language is just American Sign Language, but as taught to parents, i.e., focusing on the vocabulary relevant to dealing with a baby. Kristiana already has a grounding in ASL, but it's all new to me; my vocabulary doesn't yet go too much beyond "hungry," "milk," "more," "finished" and "sleep."

Infant massage, according to some studies in one of the books I've been reading (I've forgotten which), actually has some correlation with certain developmental milestones and physical skills. And that sounds great to us, but in all honesty there's an immediate benefit which is much more compelling to us right now. Chiara seems to have passed the age where she regularly spits up milk. Hurrah, you might say. But instead of spitting up when she has swallowed air or has a gas bubble, she now gets uncomfortable and cries. It's misery for her, and for us. We've found that some of the infant massage moves are effective for giving her relief when the usual burping back-pat and back-squeeze don't do the trick. New parents, learn infant massage: the day will come when you'll do anything for one more trick in your bag of things to try when your baby's crying.

Our photo-posting computer is still in the shop, but I'm pretty hopeful that it will be back by the end of the week. They're waiting for a part which was shown as in-transit on Monday, and after that the repair should be a matter of minutes. Once the computer's back, we'll have a fair chunk of new pictures posted on the photo-sharing site.