progress

The last couple of days have been monumental for Luca. First of all, he is suddenly very interested in certain sights and sounds. This is an exciting development for us, as he can now spend 15 minutes at a time being babysat by assorted battery-powered devices. He is particularly fascinated by his mobile (pictured above) – yesterday I heard him crying from the other room and assumed he had had enough, but he was just upset that the music had stopped.

The second major baby development was the watching of The Happiest Baby on the Block DVD, which was given to us by friends in the same this-shit-will-blow-your-mind manner my classmates and I pushed albums on each other in music school ("Dude, just play it."). For those not in the know, the Happiest Baby on the Block is the baby-calming bible, written by Dr. Harvey Karp, baby charmer/certified genius. I was already using a bastardized version of Dr. Karp’s method’s (based on reading the first twenty pages of his book and listening to Julia’s summary) to soothe Luca, but after watching the DVD and honing my technique, the results have been outstanding. I’m even talking trash and trying to make bets with Julia on how quickly I can turn Luca’s hysterical crying into zoned-out baby bliss.

But the most important news is that Luca is now smiling sporadically. Yesterday morning, while changing him, I got him to smile four times in a row by shaking a little toy. Julia caught the last smile, but she wasn’t convinced. But just this morning, she was cooing to him after he was done feeding and sure enough, it happened a few times again. Babies usually don’t smile with any regularity until they reach six weeks (he’s at four), so this has been a pleasant and fascinating surprise. Now if only this crazy baby acne would go away…