First, hi, Mia!
Good to e-see you, and congratulations on the birth. Yay, you! May you sleep through the night ASAP!
Second, I think personality has a lot to do with how content a baby is to sit and look around. DS9 was a *really* easy baby, and he has developed into a very laidback kid. He was alert from an early age and held his head up early, but he didn't need constant stimulation. He's an introvert and a deep thinker (not a speed demon), so he was quite happy even as a baby to study something complex for long periods of time. His focus and patience, as well as his ability to reason, were the things that persuaded me that he was HG+ before he was 1yo. Even as an infant, he slept well, ate well, and was generally just very, very easy to care for.
Yes, I know I was lucky.
Actually, even at the time I realized that he was probably not an average kid, and DH and I debated a long time about whether to have a second child because I *knew* that I was spoiled and I worried that I wouldn't be able to manage a "real" baby.
DS6 was not quite that easy, and he's definitely more sensitive than DS9. But he was still a pretty laidback baby--with spikes of intensity--and he's still that way now. He's fine and happy...right up until the second that he isn't anymore.
Basically for both of them, I just had to make sure they had good, complex stuff to see and touch and study. If they had really good toys--toys that were fun for me to play with, but were safe for babies--then they were happy without me sometimes.
Both of them are DYS kids now, so laidback HG+ babies do exist, even if they're rare.
