More development stages

Late November, Magnus is 4.5 months old

One day I started thinking about and observing Magnus' development again. And felt like summarizing. It is amazing to follow him from day to day and get to see him learn new things, and it is not rare that we suddenly break out into something like "Magnus, look at you, you look so grown up when you do that".

Magnus early developed a particular liking for gulping on daddy. Combined with the fact that Daddy was late in developing a liking (or rather, memory) for being equipped with a cotton cloth to catch such mishaps, it led to a constant situation where Magnus would have his daily daddy-gulp; the first time I would pick him up he would gulp all over my sweater or T-shirt. Now, if I had just remembered the cotton-cloth I wouldn't have had to change my clothes so often. Somehow, Magnus didn't seem to care so much about that.

Over the time some sort of early morning ritual that daddy did not get to take part in developed. In the early hours when daddy was getting up and going to the bathroom, getting ready to go to work, mommy Muna and Magnus would party in the big bed - you could hear the laughter down the hall. And somehow during these early morning hours Magnus started doing new stuff; rolling over! Now for weeks I had been told "oh yes, and he rolled over again this morning - twice!" and its like, and never got to see a hint of it. I thought it started going a bit too far when she started complaining that it was impossible to have him lie still in the bed in the morning because he just wanted to roll; eating was already a problem. I had to sit down and have a mano-a-mano with my son.
And reluctantly he agreed that rolling could be done at other times also than only early morning. Shortly thereafter I witnessed my first rolling.

But what thrilled me was not the first rolling I saw, but one a bit later; I could see his problem solving skills at work. Problem at hand: Want to roll over on stomach. He rolled up on his side... and stopped, couldn't quite make it. Back again. Now, use the hand to get more motion, but no. Again, this time use the hand and the head to give the body more speed and mass to get over the top! It's incredible. Almost, almost, he even tried to grab the octopus hanging nearby to help pull him around, but it was behind him and thus had a negative effect. Great idea, but... Alas, not enough. But it was SO CLOSE. I was tempted to help him, but held back. One more attempt, and he ended up right up on the balance point. Then I became aware of the arm underneath him, he was pulling and pulling on his elbow to move it so he could use that to shift his balance, and... HE SUCCEEDED and completed the roll. Okay, it was impressive to see him roll, but to see his young analytical mind at work at age 4 months just blew my fuses. I AM IMPRESSED.

Now here is an interesting point: Magnus has been a bit early out with both rolling and "talking" (making sounds in a communicative manner). Early on we could have long conversations together, and I was particularly proud at the 3 month checkup when the nurse praised this. And then... full stop, doesn't want to talk anymore. Same with the rolling; after it has been mastered and we couldn't stop him from rolling at all times, suddenly it was not interesting anymore. Only much later (month plus) did he find interest in resuming these activities again. How strange?

After Magnus started grabbing for items the next logical step would be to put them in his mouth. I mean come on, it is the obvious choice: Grab - eat. Same philosophy the father has lived by all his life. Soon his favorite octopus would be more or less constantly wet from drool and gulp, but then this extended to blankets and towels. However the mouth was kinda hard to hit! Magnus started instead to pull these over his head. Most babies I have heard about would do the opposite, if you cover their head they will pull it away, but Magnus did the exact opposite.

Now, this made for some fun games, for he would always be grinning wildly when you would pull the blanket clear, then grab it and pull it back over his head. But it was of course less nice when you go to the toilet and come back to find a wildly screaming baby with all the blanket on his head and no air to breathe. Not really a big problem, because how long would the baby normally be left alone? But then he started doing it with his bed blanket also, which caused more concern. A couple of times I have had to rescue him when he had completely covered his head under the heavy bedsheets.

Now, after grabbing, playing in the babygym became more fun. I don't know how other babies play in there, but Magnus does not play like how I imagined it is supposed to be used. He doesn't seem interested in creating motion and enjoying what he has created, for example. But now after grabbing, he has really put the GYM into baby-gym: To Magnus it is all an exercise apparatus which he is supposed to develop his strength through using: He grabs the legs of his favorite octopus (poor, poor octopus... I estimate legs twice the original length before Magnus is done) and then he pulls with all his might. The crossing beams that hold all the toys are screaming in protest and you can see the whole thing changing shape completely, and all the toys come several inches lower towards the floor. Yep, we got a strong baby !

Now, bathroom is a chapter all by itself. No matter what may have gone wrong during the day, no matter how grumpy and upset we are at a given time, if we go to the bathroom Magnus is all happy again. I don't know what it is about this bathroom, but he loves it in there. It is extremely rare that he cries while we are on the changing table, and usually only when he is very tired and we spent too long cleaning or dressing him or something.

While we were pregnant we were reading about how it could be smart to play music for the stomach that the baby would later recognize and be comforted by, but unfortunately we were not very good at actually doing it. So Magnus doesn't really have music that per default calms him down. Or so we thought...
We are not very active music listeners anymore. Which is strange, both Muna and I own a large number of cd's. For my part I believe the music industry's negative focus and trying to make everybody criminals, and all these pesky copy protections that makes your purchase useless under unknown conditions made me lose interest in music, I haven't purchased a single cd in years. So believe it or not, I believe the last year or so we have had the same single CD in the stereo in the car the whole time. I guess we must have played it on various occations, probably when radio reception was bad or some commercial drove me crazy, who knows. But I realized by chance one day that the CD in the car had a 100% hitrate on calming Magnus down when he was crying. And it came to me that it had been in there so long. Theory still rules! A-ha's "Scoundrel days" (their #2 album and in my mind the best album they ever made) is now forever known as Magnus' CD.

He also has a couple of other musical tools. On his 30-day-celebration on which we invited all the neighbours he was given a gift CD with a number of old norwegian children songs on it, and it has been known to help him quiet down to sleep in the evening.
Also in his playpen he has a nice toy; sort of a carusel which goes round and plays a jazzy tune, complete with mirrors and colorful gadgets on. It has been a lifesaver for many a hard-needed noon-nap when Magnus has had too much to do to have time to sleep.

Also, in November, Magnus started going to babyswim classes, and that has been a boost for development. From there we picked up several positive initiaives. One has been to aid Magnus' practicing his holding his head up by putting a pillow under his chest when he is lying on his stomach: It increased both his stamina and his desire to be on his stomach noticably, for some reason, but of course requires more attention since it is easy to roll sideways and fall off the pillow.

Another couple of things are new after babyswimming: His old little bath tub is permanently retired since he didn't find the necessary space to splash around in there. He now does his bathing in the big bathtub. After his experiences in the public pool he also got the proper technique for how to kick violently and thereby splashing with maximum range. Everybody within meters are soaking wet when Magnus is bathing, and my oh my is he enjoying himself in there. The first time I had used bathbubbles in there, and with all his kicking there was so much bubbles that it was hard to find the baby in there, not to mention get the soap off the baby when we were getting out. But the nurse recommends droplets of oil instead of bubbles anyway, so... less fun but better for his skin.

Yet another is that he has now discovered that he likes to jump and stand up a lot. Of course he needs assistance to do this, but he is very keen on it. Hopefully he will learn to crawl soon before he starts walking?