Today little EC is one month old. I suppose she was four weeks old on Tuesday, and when you’re only talking about one month, the difference between one month and four weeks is almost ten percent. As a smattering of things that she can do at one month:

• Control her neck reasonably well in all scenarios. She can raise her head during tummy time. If I raise her up using her arms from a lying position, she can make it all the way to sitting with decent neck stability. She can head butt me while I’m trying to burp her if she’s not 100% satisfied.
• Eat like a maniac. She’s gone from a little less than an ounce after birth to something like seven ounces per feeding on a regular basis. In the last week, she put on about a pound.
• Kind of hit and kick at a toy hanging in front of her, if she pleases.
• Sniper crawl, if I provide her something to push off of.
• Nurse. Two weeks now since we got the tongue-tie taken care of, and she now almost knows what she’s doing.

And things she can’t do anymore:

• Fit into a bassinet. We’ve gone through two, and have graduated to sleeping in either a buggy or a playpen.
• Wear newborn clothes. Even size 0-3 is getting a bit tight.

At the pediatrician’s office today, she discovered TV for the first time. We don’t generally have TV going around the house, but Disney was playing in the examination room…and once she saw it, she was riveted.

For the next month, we’ll just be working on physical exercises. She’s got a lot of growing to do, and developing some coordination will be key. Otherwise, those head butts are only going to get more painful.

She’s the cutest little thing…but all dads no doubt say that. At least I’m right.

Yesterday was a big day for little EC…she found her thumb while doing some tummy time, and latched onto it like a pro. I immediately predicted the demise of the pacifier, but just like she’s not that interested in the pacifier, turns out she’s also not that into the thumb. She hasn’t gone back for it since.

In other news, this heat wave has to stop…this many mosquitoes in mid-October is unheard of and unjust. Just a couple cold days to kill them off is all I ask…

It’s been a big two weeks for EC. She’s past the eat-sleep-cry-eat-sleep stage, and now spends a decent amount of her waking time quietly observing…something. She loves looking over her right shoulder (just her right…whatever’s over her left isn’t interesting at all) and has been having some fun with tummy time too. She seems to be super strong for her age, and will lift her head during tummy time, and even scoot around by pushing with her feet if I give her something to push off of. The other day she almost rolled back to front entirely on her own. If she could just figure out what to do with her right arm in the process, she’d have it mastered. I’m working on teaching her to grab things…today she grabbed a doll we’ve been playing with and shook it about. She doesn’t have the “intent-reach-grip” cycle figured out yet…but hey, she’s only two weeks old. She’s been tracking with her eyes and head now for about a week—again, mostly on the right side.

We took her in for her first surgery yesterday. She was tongue-tied, and that had to be fixed for the sake of proper eating. The pediatric surgeon took her away drowsy but awake, and brought her back three minutes later in exactly the same state. She’s a trooper. She’s now working on learning what to do with that tongue…she started sticking it out a little today, something that had been impossible before.

She doesn’t have much patience with me reading to her just yet. I was explaining the finer points of mutual fund fees to her yesterday, and she just drooled and slept. But she did give me a smile when I declared that her college fund was up and running.

There was a 50% chance that EC (the Empirical Child) would come before the 29th. She seized the opportunity. On 9/27, EM (Empirical Mom, of course) spent 9.75 hours in labor, pushing for the last 45 minutes or so of it, and at 13:31 produced what by all accounts is a big baby, at 8.75 pounds and 21 inches.

EC has been adept at keeping me up all night, as expected. Volunteering for the night shift, I got zero sleep the first night, maybe two hours the second. But the third was a breakthrough. Five hours, in two sessions, and EC slept flat in the bassinet which she had so far refused to do.

She’s a strong baby. She already has pretty good rudimentary control of her neck, and as of day three she’ll naturally turn over onto her right shoulder when laid down. Given sufficient motivation, it may not be long before she can roll over. But I understand the average age for that is 5-6 months, so I may have wildly inflated expectations.