Haven's First Game

Haven's first game is pretty simple.  She sticks out her tongue waiting for someone to touch it.  She really likes this game.

Laugh

Haven just gave mom her first laugh.  Parents practically peed themselves with delight.

Smiles at nine weeks

Two Months Old

Sleeping Patterns

Most agree that the biggest challenge for new parents is not the reduced amount of sleep, but the unpredictability of sleeping time versus awake time.  In the womb, fetuses are nocturnal and, upon birth, we *hope* that they will quickly adapt to our preferred sleeping patterns.  

Haven sleeps much less than the average infant, but her circadian rhythms adapted to sleeping at night relatively quickly.  At two months, she is routinely waking up just once in the middle of the night for a feeding.  

The figures below show the dramatic change in Haven's sleeping pattern from the first to second month.  The time of day is on the horizontal axis.  Each point represents a time that Haven fell asleep.  And, on the vertical axis is the number of hours that she slept.  So, the ideal pattern is for Haven to have her longest sleeps when they start in the evening, and to also sleep for a long time after her night feeding (if she has one).  That would mean that the dots on the right side of the Figures should be the highest.  If her time of sleep is completely unrelated to the time of day, then the dots would be high or low at all times of day.

Here is the graph for her first month of life.  It shows a slight tendency to sleep longer in the evenings than during the day, but not reliably:

And here is the graph for her second month of life.  The difference is dramatic.  She definitely figured out to sleep longer at night, especially the first sleep of the night - starting between 9pm and midnight.  This is very good for our health!

A new skill: Holding stuff

Now eight weeks old, Haven has acquired the ability to hold something in her hand.  In order to achieve this skill, her parents must pry open her hand and shove something in it.  It is a skill nonetheless.  Up next, realizing that she is holding something in her hand.

Mastering the Toy Attack

At seven weeks, Haven's skill of attending and trying to strike a hanging toy are notably improved.  Still lacking is the ability to hit the toy consistently.  Her arm movements are unpredictable.  The thinking process appears to be pretty simple: See toy. Want toy. Swing arm. Repeat.