Exercise

At K-bao's current rate of development she will eventually have the flexibility and adroitness of an indolent land-bound penguin. To inspire some marginal strength and suppleness into those chubby limbs, we have been plopping K-bao on her tummy at every opportunity. K-Mum has also succeeded in tricking her into turning over (by placing an oversized stuffed frog maddeningly just out of reach). Here is one of her recent tummy times in the crib where she is testing the G.I. Joe crawl...very early stages. Beta version. No, alpha version.

Up

Triumph!

K-bao's desire to see her own face in the little mirror we rigged up on the floor finally overcame her unimpressive neck muscles.

We call this the victory of vanity over sloth.

As you can see here - a bit wobbly - but definitely up.

Her little neck has stiffened appreciably - both literally and metaphorically - over the past week. When held, she now cranes as far back as she can in an effort to make use of her new found freedom of movement. The strength is not yet completely there so she still looks like a bobblehead doll. She also tends to simultaneously wriggle her bottom, kick her legs vigorously, and generally make it as difficult as possible for whomever it is trying to hold her.

Incidentally, K-bao apparently sometimes likes her appearance in the mirror and sometimes not. Sometimes she will coo and giggle. But other times she will shrink back with a look of disappointment, and give us an exasperated look: "What did you do to my hair?!"

Introducing Supergirl

It has been over 3 months since little K-bao arrived. There were plenty of good intentions on getting a parenting blog up and running early, but sleep deprivation, lactation consulting and other sundries along the way bedeviled our efforts. Finally, with a little extra encouragement from family and friends, we mustered the required activation energy and here we are.

Fittingly for a Good Friday, Kayla awoke this morning with a diaper overflowing with poop. She is a living testament to how dirty we get and how frequently we need to be cleaned up. The issue with K-bao is not how many diapers - 15 to 16 a day at first and now probably 12 to 13 - but how forcefully she expels. Force equals mass times acceleration, and while there isn't always a lot of mass, there is plenty of acceleration, generally all the way up to her shoulder blades. Oblivious of her sensationally foul state - thank you for the theologically timely spiritual commentary, daughter - she cooed happily on the changing table while K-Pop pulled the offensive materials off of her wriggling body.

Later, we gave her the obligatory 10 minutes of tummy time. Unfortunately, KJ is more than a little behind on the development of neck muscles. The parents happily attribute her inability to hold her head up at 3 months to a surplus of brain material (leading to an unusually heavy head), coupled with what will undoubtedly turn out to be a slender and elegant neck (but therefore a bit smaller and weaker to start). K-Mum discovered recently that an intermediate step to laying her flat on her tummy - which inevitably would lead to vigorous protests and demonstrations of anger - is to prop her belly-down on the boppy. Here she is quite happily demonstrating her new supergirl pose.