Little EC has made it to the half-year mark. She’s eating solid foods, kind of sitting up, twirling around on her abdomen and making crawling-like motions with her arms and legs. She just started to babble a little a couple days ago. In most respects, she seems to be about a month ahead of the standard “growing up” progression discussed in the books.

She’s been sick once, just a couple days ago (with some mild stomach bug that didn’t bother her much but gave her the runs). She’ll probably get sick more coming up because she’s grabbing everything and putting it in her mouth…except for food, which she grabs and throws to the floor. No doubt, if given the opportunity, she would grab said food from the floor and then put it in her mouth. It’s called “seasoning to taste”.

She is amazingly drawn to smartphones. We don’t let her play with them but she does see us using them and she probably infers that nothing is more interesting than whatever is going on there. If the “device” is in sight, she has her eyes on it. The other day, she left all her toys and spun around on her tummy to where it was sitting on the floor, and she gave herself a pre-crawling little push in an effort to get it. I’ve given her an old dead phone to play with before, and she’s equally entranced.

Yesterday she sat up indefinitely. It was because she was entranced by the iPhone as we tried to call the grandparents. She could hear it ring, could see herself on it, and wouldn’t move a muscle while it was going on. Only when I moved the phone away (no answer) did she loosen up and fall over.

She also sees us watching TV sometimes. We don’t let her watch it, but if we have five minutes left of a show when she wakes up from her nap we’ll put her in the walker and face her toward us while we finish up. She’s getting better at turning around, though, so that strategy will only last a bit longer. When she was younger we could just lie her down on the couch, but it’s been forever since that worked. Now, if we put her sitting up on the couch facing a blank TV, she’ll just stare at it…apparently wanting to emulate us. I suppose at some point she’ll realize that it’s not actually that fun. Maybe her parents will realize the same thing too 😉

She has been on a fantastic daily schedule. Wake up at 7. Eat. Play for an hour. Nap. Play for awhile. Eat at 11/12. Nap. Play for awhile. Eat around 3. Play, nap. Eat around 6. Bedtime at 7. Get woken up for eating around 10. Sleep until 7. Her naps are anything from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how she feels that day, and whether or not I leave her to “bore herself” back to sleep. She’s been on this schedule for two months, about. It’s gotten very predictable.

She always wakes up with a big smile. She is a very happy baby in general, almost never crying unless something is wrong. She does get frustrated that she can’t crawl and get everything she wants. In the next month, that will change forever.

What great fun this is.

Reading about it in books or articles, you’d come to think that sleep training is a progression. After the first arduous night of listening to the little one scream, the next night is better because they don’t scream as long. And after that, the screaming gets less and less until she blissfully puts herself to sleep. The whole process takes 5-10 days. There may be a regression here and there, but really that’s about it.

Our little EC is anything but like that. Night 1: scream like crazy. Night 2: drop asleep immediately. Night 3: asleep immediately. Night 4: scream for 45 minutes. Nights 5-8: asleep immediately. Night 9: scream for 45 minutes. This looks like less of a progression and more of a binary, on-off behavior. It’s not really what I was primed for.

I just keep reminding myself that this too will pass. I just have to imagine a screaming three-year-old that never learned to sleep in her own bed, now demanding to get her way…nothing stiffens my resolve like the conviction that I’m on the path to making her not-spoiled.

An experiment with mice showed that they were kept most interested in getting new treats when the treats were administered at random intervals. Periodic, predictable intervals led to boredom. Just not knowing when something new would come is what kept things interesting.

Right now, little EC is keeping things interesting.

Little EC has demonstrated a pattern, almost since the beginning, that illustrates how she learns new skills. The first time I noticed it was when she first put her fist to her mouth in a seemingly-intentional way. Fist in mouth, suck for a bit. Then she didn’t do it again for weeks. Sometime later, she began the intentional practice that I’ve described before.

She did this with rolling over. Her first success was followed by weeks of not trying very hard. At some point, she picked up again and started rolling over whenever she felt like it. Most recently, she has started holding her own bottle while eating, in an intentional and insistent way. I was pretty sure this was coming, because…you guessed it…a month or so ago she held her own bottle during one feeding, quite by accident.

It is as if she is doing random things with her body, and every now and then she randomly does something that seems worthwhile to her. Then she has to ruminate over it for some time, after which she figures out just how she did that thing in the first place and can replicate it.

If I use this as a guide, then, I’m going to say she’s at least a month away from crawling, because she just the other day inched a little bit forward while reaching hard for a toy. She may start moving in the walker a little earlier, because it was last week that she got her first accidental steps in. So we’re looking at some perhaps serious progress near the end of Month 6.

Little EC (not so little anymore…) just graduated from size 2 to size 3 diapers. I have one of each size that she’s worn, and the size N just seems impossibly tiny.

She also wolfed down almost half a pear today. Turns out she’ll eat almost anything if it is mixed with enough of mother’s milk. I had been giving her bananas recently, but she had become “irregular”…maybe as a result, maybe coincidentally…and I stopped for a couple weeks to give her gut a chance to settle down. After eating the pears, she chewed expectantly on the spoon that I gave her to play with, clearly disappointed that nothing more was coming out of it.

In other news, she can spin now. I leave her on her tummy, surrounded by toys, and soon I’ll find her 180 degrees different, grabbing the toy she likes best.

The most interesting thing that she does recently is using mirrors as tools. We have mirrors all over the cabinets in the bedrooms, and the other day I had her on the floor, stomach down, and I was talking to her and walking about. She would push up and follow me with her gaze as I moved to her right. She’s fine turning to the right. But when I’d get too far to the left, she’d turn all the way back to the right, where the mirrors are, and find me in the mirror…and then follow me around there, until I got back to a place where she felt comfortable following me in person. It’s always entertaining to see her play with herself in a mirror, but it’s downright fascinating to see her consciously make use of the mirror as a way of being lazy. There aren’t too many tools that she can make use of with only gross motor skills to work with…most require some amount of manual dexterity. But she’s got this one down.

Little EC thinks that rolling back-to-front is fun.

She also thinks that, when she gets onto her tummy, she should play airplane, her hands and feet off the ground. This is fun for awhile, until she gets tired of it. Then she gets cranky.

She also can’t roll back over onto her back.

Most of the time, this isn’t a big deal. We move on and play something else. Except…at bedtime.

Since (it’s fair to say) I’ve been a rational actor for a couple decades, it’s hard for me to remember that she is not. She thinks rolling is fun. So she does it. Without thinking of what comes next…which is discomfort, then fussiness, and if left untreated, screaming, wailing misery.

So this has been our new pattern at bedtime the last few nights. I put her down on her back. Somewhere between 10 seconds and 10 minutes later, she rolls over onto her stomach, and has fun for awhile, being an airplane and beating the birds down to Acapulco Bay. Then comes What Comes Next…and I come to intervene and roll her back over, with a well-intentioned and completely not-understood admonishment to not roll over anymore if she doesn’t like it on her tummy. We could play this game for hours. And we did.

I tried putting impediments in her way to keep her from rolling. I tried sitting in sight of her and letting her know it was all going to be ok. I tried replacing the pacifier each time it was dropped. In short, everything I could think of, I tried. Except, of course, the thing that I probably needed to do all along, and that I didn’t really want to do.

So tonight, I just left her. Closed the door, went downstairs, and glued myself to the night-vision baby monitor that broadcast to me every desperate flail and the pantomime version of every howl. I ate some dessert, helped clean the kitchen, read a couple articles about baby sleep-training, and otherwise distracted myself for an excruciating 15 minutes. And when that was done, I rushed back up to the room, rolled her over onto her back, picked her up to my shoulder and gave her a good 5-minute comforting. After that, she had left off her pained crying and was just sniffling a bit, still wide awake. I put her back down, gave her pacifier back, covered her in her favorite fuzzy blanket, and softly admonished her to stay as she was.

Three minutes later, she was back on her tummy. Empirical Mom and I prayed through the screaming, and suddenly—quiet. I broke off the prayer to check on her. Too quiet too quick. But a visit to the room just let me hear the waning sniffles of a baby drifting to sleep…on her tummy.

I always thought I’d be thick-skinned about things like this. It turns out I’m a softie, and I will do every soft and gentle thing I can think of. But when all other options seem to have failed…then I get hard. And that is tough.

See, for me the process of waiting out the screaming wasn’t actually that bad. I mean, it was bad. I thought it was terrible. But then, I visited her after she had fallen asleep, and those little sniffles that she has, in her sleep, reminding me of how I had abandoned her in her moment of need when she thought she could count on me…those little sniffles are a thousand times worse than the screaming. I’ll put up with screaming day in and out if I have to…but sniffles!

There are a million child psychologists out there on the internet that say I just broke my daughter’s trust and gave her feelings of abandonment that will follow her through life. Perhaps. But I don’t remember being four months old. She probably won’t either. And come morning, I’ll bet she’ll be ready to smile and play her way through the day, just like she did before all this trauma.

Which just leaves us waiting for…tomorrow night. This had better be over quickly.

What makes something scary? And why do we all find different things scary? I’d be fascinated to know what exactly is going on in a little mind when it decides that something is worth being scared of, instead of just brushing it off.

I make loud noises around EC from time to time, accidentally dropping the washing machine lid or a toilet seat, and she’s always startled but otherwise takes it in stride. She took international airplane trips without breaking a sweat. But last week, after I strapped her carseat onto the grocery cart and pushed her across the parking lot, we encountered the scariest thing in the world, so far:

The Air Door.

Yes, I had to look up what this thing is called. You know when you walk through the automatic sliding doors of a grocery store, warehouse, or something like that, there is a fan mounted above the door that blows down on you? It keeps the air conditioning in and bugs out while the physical doors are open. It also shakes the covering of any unsuspecting carseat that happens to walk through it. And that, my friends, is some scary business.

It only took her a moment to burst out screaming. I stood inside with her, trying to console her while leaving her in the carseat, but she cried uncontrollably, in a world-is-ending wail that pierced all ears walking by. Before long I took her out of the carseat and held her, and then she slowly calmed down. Her little sniffles persisted for the hour or so I was in the store, and I carried her in my arms at least three-quarters of that time. (One-armed grocery shopping: achievement unlocked.) I put her back in the carseat, she fell asleep, exhausted from the fear, and slept until a careless checker woke her up while I paid. And then…the moment we all feared…we left the store. Through the Air Door.

In the bright sunlight outside, I couldn’t just stand and hold her for as long as I had inside the store. So I got her calm enough, put her into the car, and off we went. In the five minute drive home, her PTSD kicked in and she relived every harrowing detail of the experience.

We haven’t been through the Air Door since; in fact, not even gone in the car anywhere since. But I do put her into the carseat and take walks in the stroller regularly. And she is skittish in the carseat now. Our housing complex has speed bumps all over (and terrible sidewalks) so the stroller goes up and down as I go over them. The first day we walked after the Air Door, she freaked out at the feeling of the speed bump. Though she doesn’t do that anymore, she still has this I’m-going-to-cry-if-you-push-me-too-far look whenever she’s in the stroller. She doesn’t fall asleep like she used to.

I can only guess at what she found so scary about the Air Door. But it was such a strong association that it has left lasting effects. If I could predict ahead of time what she would find scary, I could avoid or ameliorate; but I can’t. And I’m kind of dreading the next time I have to take her to the store with me. Because then She Will Have To Face Her Greatest Fear.

It’s been a busy two weeks for little EC. Today, she rolled over for the first time unaided. She’s been rolling over for a couple weeks now with some assist, either from me or from gravity; but today, she did it all on her own. And then again. And again. It would seem that once she does something once, she wants to keep it up until she has it down. Laying down for naps has been difficult, because she wants to roll over…and then she can’t get back to her back for the sleeping part.

She also really began reaching for things. Just before we traveled, EGm (that’s Empirical Grandma) tied a bunch of ribbons to the handle of the carseat, so that EC would have something to look at. She now not only looks at them, but reliably reaches out to grab them (and they’re becoming so worn it’s about time to replace them with something else…) She will spot one that she likes; reach and grab; hold for a second; release; and then do it again. And again. And again.

Most fun, she is doing the same with her bottles. She no longer is content to have the bottle given to her; she must reach for it and bring it in (even if she doesn’t realize that she’s not doing much except signaling to me…). Then she can sometimes support it with her own hands by herself for a little bit. But now she wants to practice…so she brings it in; sucks a few times; pushes it away; and then repeats. Again. And again. Feeding her takes twice as long as it used to. But it’s now twice as fun for everyone!

Oh, and she does the same thing with my face. Grab nose. Swipe down to chin, pausing at mouth. Repeat.

Repetition is the hallmark of learning. It’s said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill to world-class level. Given how much little EC sleeps, she is probably practicing all these gross motor skills something like 10 hours a day. If she kept that pace up, it would be 2 years, 8 months to the time that she has truly mastered them. Which sounds about right. Most three-year-olds that I know have got the basic motor skills of life down pretty well. As she gets older and sleeps less, she’ll practice for more time each day, but she’ll have more things to practice—fine motor skills, intellectual skills—so it’s pretty clear she’ll be kept busy.

We all took a long trip this week…about 17 hours worth of flying, a several-day layover in a hotel, a foreign country. I have read a few articles in the past year about techniques and products to help make traveling with babies and children convenient and bearable. Special sleeping spots, straps to attach carseats (with babies inside) to rolling carry-on luggage, baby neck pillows, herbal this and that. Little EC did a great job the entire way through, so I thought I’d share which of the advice I had read we tried.

• Nothing

We didn’t buy any special products. We didn’t feed her anything in particular. We didn’t do really anything special.

In the hotel, we played her the same sleep-time music that we normally do, and she fell asleep in the hotel crib just the same as she would have anywhere.

In the airplane, we made sure she was sucking on a pacifier during takeoff and landing, and she didn’t have any trouble with ears popping. She slept through most of the 17 hours’ worth of flight time. I changed two diapers on the bathroom changing tables, and two on the airplane seats. She ate just before getting on the plane, twice on the plane, and again right after getting off.

The only thing of note, at all, is that in each of our stops—the layover hotel, and our final destination—she slept really poorly the first night. Every half-hour to hour she was awake, fussing. There must be something about the new environment (or the time zone difference) that really threw her off. Also, she hit a growth spurt the day before we took off, and is now eating every 3 hours again, instead of 4…so that might have something to do with it. But by night 2, she was back to normal.

And one last thing of note…while you can take unlimited amounts of frozen mother’s milk onto an airplane, and it can be accompanied by up to five pounds of dry ice—which did great at keeping it all frozen, by the way—both TSA and the airline employees are vague on the rules. We were told multiple times that we couldn’t bring those things with us. After appealing to their own rules again and again, we always got through. But we also got to the airport hours early in anticipation of problems…so in the end, that is probably my one important piece of advice for anyone who might ask me. Leave lots of extra time. Air travel is bad enough as it is…do whatever it takes to eliminate stress.

EC decided last night that it was time to get rolling. She was lying on her back on the bed, and just all of a sudden threw her legs off to the side and got her knees on the bed. Her bottom arm was in a good position, and she waved her upper arm as if she was trying to get enough momentum to make it the rest of the way over. And there she stayed, stuck, unable to get the rest of the way over and unwilling to go back to her back to relax. 

I walked around behind her, encouraging her and putting myself into positions that would help her to get over if she looked at me. She was very proud of herself, but after about ten minutes was frustrated and ready to end the trial. So I reached over, took her upper hand and gently pulled her the rest of the way over. With any luck, that will promote the muscle memory needed for her to do it herself next time. 

Naturally, she was on the bed because I was changing her diaper. And naturally, the compulsion to flip came mid-change, before I’d put on a new one. And so my encouragement and help was amply rewarded by an enormous wet spot that leaked through all layers of the bed. 

And so I ended up washing the sheets late into the night, while EC went to bed ready to fight another day. 

I watched little EC do something interesting the other day. She was sitting in her swinging chair, kicking furiously as she likes to do. Then she would stop, open her mouth wide, and slowly move her fist to her mouth. Suck for a while. Put the fist down, and start kicking again. Then she’d repeat the process, very deliberately going through each step. She was practicing. She had learned that she could suck on her fist if she could get it to her mouth, and she had learned that a concentrated effort could get the fist to her mouth in a non-random way. And once she had figured it out, she kept doing it again, and again, and again.

Just about a week later, the fist goes into her mouth without even a thought…she had practiced enough for the process to be completely effortless. Her performance here conforms to my intuition about how this learning process works. First, having no idea what she’s doing, she flails about randomly, like when she was a newborn, biting her fist when she happened to get it to her mouth, and her mouth happened to be open. After the random flailings work a few times, she begins to catch on, and progresses to the deliberate practice stage. A few days of that, for these simple tasks, and she’s off to the races.

Now, she’s working on the rolling over part. She’s managed to roll over front-to-back a few times, in more or less random fashion…she can’t duplicate it on command. But I can watch her getting most of the way when she tries, and she’s clearly figured out the first half of the maneuver. She doesn’t get there deliberately yet because her arm is always in the way—the hand is in the mouth, of course—but once that moment comes when she randomly puts her arm in the right place, and she makes it, the whole thing should make sense, and there will probably be no stopping her. I think we’re on the threshold there.

She’s doing the same thing with language. She’s making all sorts of interesting sounds. But whereas flipping or sucking a fist is a macroscopic maneuver—arms and legs in generally the right place will achieve generally the right results—language is such a vast combination of small muscle movements and tongue-ear coordination that it’s no wonder that it takes a long time for them to figure it out.

It seemed to me the other day, while I was out walking with her, that it is a good thing it takes so long for them to learn things. There could be real problems if they learn too fast. But more on that another time.