Newborns are – well – kind of boring.
They sleep, eat, sleep, lay there drunk with milk and dozing off or stare cross-eyed at the world hovering over them.
That described my newest grandchild who randomly waved his hands and kicked his feet trying to figure out how to use those appendages.
When I visited around his three-month birthday, he sat in his car seat staring up at me, sucking his pacifier, studying me carefully.
His mother told me he smiled at the ceiling fan.
I stood over him, made my arms and hands like a fan, twisted and turned in circles – and earned a wry smile.
She also assured me he did belly laughs.
I wanted to hear that laughter.
I made funny faces and talked to him until he giggled and smiled. His pacifier started to slide out.
A worried look came over his face: he frantically, haphazardly waved his hand around and hit the pacifier with the back of his tiny, translucent hand. The pacie slid back in place.
It looked like a fortuitous accident.
It wasn’t.
Too little to grab and hold anything, he had found a way to shove his pacifier back in place. My daughter laughed when I noted his accomplishment. “Yes, and the other day, when it slid off to the side – he turned his head quickly and lunged after it with his mouth to get it,” she laughed. The laddie has begun to take charge of his life.
Another day, his mother left him with me for an hour in a waiting room.
I took him out of his car seat, laid him tummy down on a blanket and bounced toys back and forth a few feet in front of him. He lifted his head and tracked the movement with his eyes for several minutes.
He wearied of the game, laid his head down and began fussing.
A man watching all this came over to chat. He said the baby fussed because he wanted to sit up and see the world. I lifted the child to my lap.
The man talked with the sitting baby for a while then, bored with infant conversation, walked away.
The three-month old restlessly moved around.
I positioned him against my shoulder and patted his back.
He did not want sleep. Instead, he looked over my shoulder and discovered the floor’s nine-patch pattern of black and white floor tiles. His little head swiveled back and forth as he studied that pattern.
I carried him across the tiles to a rack of brochures. His eyes zeroed in on the colorful pamphlets. I gathered up six and took them back to our seat.
Slowly, I held up the pamphlets in front of him. He studied each vertically and then – after I turned it – horizontally . I opened the tri-folds so he could see the inside pictures and graphs. For the next 15 minutes until his mother came, the baby sat on my lap studying travel brochures.
“I guess the little guy just needed something to read,” the man grinned.
“Looks like it,” I agreed and opened another one – enjoying every moment of sharing my favorite past time with the newest addition to the family – who really isn’t so boring after all.