Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Infant Alertness

OMG adorable, it's amazing how he is looking right at you! I cannot tell you how much I just love seeing these pictures

Lucono - your son is so precious in those photos.

I'm really enjoying seeing all of these too. Perhaps there should be a picture thread.

We wish we had more pics of Mr W when he was an "infant" - it lasted maybe 8 weeks.

He was born 5 weeks early and smiled at us on day 5. We thought that was normal. Until we ran into kids his age and saw otherwise.

Here he is at 3.5 mos. He would cry until we propped him up. He is watching TV and watching me taking his pic. Note the toy in the background.

http://mrwmrw.smugmug.com/Children/3mos/am3/1048440854_SkiUn-L.jpg

At 4.5 mos. He liked to stand in the car so he could look around. He would cry until we stood him up then he took it from there, either holding on or leaning on stuff.

http://mrwmrw.smugmug.com/Children/3mos/4mos/1048448943_66PtS-O.jpg

At 11 mos.

http://mrwmrw.smugmug.com/Children/3mos/11mos/1048449062_YviDM-M.jpg

These pictures are great! Thanks for posting them, everyone. Mine are on an old disk somewhere....

My daughter got angry (really angry) in the delivery room when they tried to stretch her out to measure her. It was obvious even to me in the fog of just having given birth. They also failed; she wouldn't allow it, and we found out when she was sleeping that they were 2" off.

She never had that lack of visual focus that young babies have. She could focus from day 1.

People kept telling me that my eldest was "such an awake baby!!" after he was born. I was a new parent and had no idea what they were talking about. My mother said it when he was 5 weeks old, and that's when I finally found out that "awake baby" meant "alert" rather than "not sleeping."

I also didn't get all that "quiet alert" stuff that the baby books went on about. I mean, if he was awake, he was alert, and well, DS just didn't do quiet <sigh>.

Yeah, those were the times when I thought about how swell it would be to have a quiet, relaxed baby...just for an hour or so, you know?

Val

Austin - Mr. W is adorable. I love that 11-month picture. My Boo is almost 11 months now, I should post a new picture of him now. We usually use video instead since he moves so much, so we don't have a lot of still pictures of him.

Val - I know what you mean about dreaming of that quiet, relaxed baby for just an hour or so. My daughter actually was that way, but my son is making up for her being easy-going. I just wish he'd give me one night straight through - a solid 8 hours of sleep.

Now I want to post even more pics. I have some great 3 month shots I was looking through last night. Looking back it amazes me just how interactive she was at that age but when in the middle of it I never thought her abnormal.

Austin: it really is shocking that he was a preemie. You can tell he has such life in those eyes. Isn't your wife due for number 2 here soon?

As for the quiet alert. I guess DD fits into that category. She didn't sleep ... EVER but she could entertain herself. She had such an attention span from an early age. She did need lots of attention but she never was the type to scream about it and get really fussy. She always coaxed people to play with her through her smiles and gestures and even talking. I would call that a more quiet approach, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the definition.

When they talk about the quiet alert stage in the books, it's that their eyes are open, but they are relatively calm. They say this is the most receptive time to interact with a newborn.

My son has never been relatively calm. He didn't really scream or cry to get attention - more that he yelled at you - specifcally targeted one individual and grunted loudly at them until they paid attention to him. Now he screeches while smiling at you. He has a lot of words but he doesn't like to use them. He would just rather screech. He only speaks in actual words when he gets upset and he can't get what he wants quickly enough. If we're in the car and we can't stop, it's usually "I wan mama boooooo!!!" (I want mama's boob).

Too Funny! The local la leched leauge ladies warned me about this - I'm glad they did!

Oh yeah - We've had a lot of fun telling people that his second word was "boob." Luckily, our families have a good sense of humor.

I've been looking at the adorable baby photos but i've been too busy to post mine. I showed the hubby all the cute babies and told him how old they were now (the ones that i knew about) and he was oohing and ahhing over them.
Here is ds pushing up at a few days old. He would rock up like he was a couple months old. Dh was out of town for a week when ds was born and I took the pictures because he didn't believe what his mother was telling him our son was doing. He would also push up and roll over from his belly to his back by two days old. (who fussed at me for saying that? someone told me babies turn over, dogs roll over.)
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/119f9512.jpg
ds a couple days old, just finished the boobie (also a favorite word)
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/1cc4ac0d.jpg
dd on day 1. Her eyes had a hard time adjusting. She blinked a lot for the first few days. She would also look around the room with her eyes closed, you could see her eyes moving like they were scanning the room from behind the lid. She took a little longer adjusting to the outside. She had a rougher landing (delivery).
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/092010036.jpg
She's adjusted. She's fine now.
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/092010049.jpg