Thursday, March 11, 2010

Reaching Out

My friend Lucille* came over for tea on Wednesday. It had been a while since I'd seen her. Before I knew it, three hours had gone by. We talked about babies, mostly. It was really good to be able to compare notes; when she left I felt like I'm doing okay as a mom and Blueberry is a normal baby. It's a nice feeling.


I'm slowly getting the motivation to get out more and find more people with babies. I joined a Meetup group called "St. Paul Area Moms" (S.P.A.M.!) and saw that there is a meetup Monday morning at a coffee shop (Java Train) that is easy walking distance to our house. I had been meaning to go to this coffee shop anyway. When I got pregnant, Stanley mentioned that I should go there after Blueberry is born, and he based this suggestion on the fact that when he went there to pick up some coffee and pastries one morning, he saw a bunch of moms and babies there. In hindsight, it may have been one of these meetup groups. It seems like it would be quite pleasant to be a regular customer at a mom and pop coffee shop, whether I'm meeting people there or not. They have a play area. The coffee is good.

In the following video, Blueberry demonstrates that she has trained me to lift her up in the air when she raises her arm.



I would really like to hear your comments and ideas about this. It's too early for her to learn to use sign language - she could learn what they mean but probably wouldn't use a sign until 6 months or later. But if she can associate her behavior with what happens immediately after, perhaps she could tell me, for example, when to change her diaper by shaking her head? Or is that too big of a leap? I should know more about this, having supposedly been trained in developmental/behavioral neuroscience. But my lit search on this topic has not been very fruitful. The only research I could find looked at infants' sucking response in order to view pictures longer or change pictures. Not useful in this scenario.

Daylight Savings Time starts this Sunday!!!


*Names changed.

5 comments:

Amacrine said...

That's pretty cool. I don't know what else you can train babies so young to do. I have Iris trained to arch her back when I say, "Mommy's gonna pick you up" in a sing-songy voice. I also always say, "Where's Iris's right (or left) hand?" when I am dressing her and her hands are in her sleeves. She now looks at her hands when I say "hands", but not right and left, yet. Keep up the good work! Micaer - also not quite a name

Tanya Cothran said...

Yay! I'm so glad you two got together. I was actually just thinking about tea parties this morning before I got up. How did Adele and Blueb get along? Much love to you all.

Louise said...

Thanks for having us over! It was a lot of fun! Adele couldn't stop talking about how awesome she thought Blueberry was all the way home... :-D

Hazel said...

Tanya: Adele and Blueberry got along pretty well except that I have a picture of Blueberry gnawing on Adele's shoulder, and Adele crying. So they got into a little bit of fisticuffs. But I think there is still hope for them. Adele gets to be Blueberry's "First Friend" in her baby book. :) Much love to you, too!

Anonymous said...

fisticuffs? really? cool.

JC