My baby has slowly but surely been improving on her motor skills. She has been trying to grab and hold things for quite a while, but she has still not quite mastered it yet. She is certainly making progress each day, though. This week, I was using her grape teether which has a stem on it to put into her mouth to soothe her gums, which I knew were bothering her from pre-teething. She actually held the stem with a strong grip and started moving the grape teether around. She held the grape teether out quite far from her and just stared at it for a while, as though marveling at the fact that she had finally learned to hold and grasp something strongly. And then, as though to see if she was capable of doing this, she slowly moved the teether from one hand to the next hand. And then with the second hand, she held the grape up and just stared at it for a while with wide eyes. It was the cutest and sweetest thing to witness. 

For the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to teach her how to hold things. I open her palm and rub the base of it with my finger to get her to keep it open. Then, I wrap her fingers around an object, and then move her hand around so that she can get used to what it feels like to open her hand, close her hand, and then wrap her fingers around something with a firm grip. I was reading about baby development, and these types of activities help to strengthen their muscle memory. Even if they are not doing it themselves, just the mere feeling of their hands opening and closing, even if you are doing it for them, teaches them what it feels like if they were to do it themselves. I have also been doing the same with trying to teach her to roll over fully. She is almost there, but not quite. I think she needs to do more tummy time to get a stronger core in order to fully complete the roll. 

I never thought that I would be so fascinated with baby development. But here I am, completely absorbed in each of the skills that my baby is learning to do. If you think about it, it’s really just about learning to appreciate the little things in life. Every day, we hold things, we touch things, and we’re all completely jaded and don’t think anything about it. It’s like breathing. What is there to think about for us as adults? But for a baby, to hold something for the very first time, just to feel a new texture on her fingertips or hands, is like a revelation. It’s literally learning what the rest of the world is like… At her fingertips.