Growing Up

There were only three babies for most of today. Baby J left this morning because his mother didn’t feel well and decided to go home. Then Baby O left at 12 O’clock. That left Baby L and Crawling Baby until Baby C came this afternoon. One of my assignments was to do an observation of infants so I picked Baby L for the first part of my assignment. I wanted to get the first part finished up before Crawling Baby got there because he’s rough with everything and I didn’t want him to get near the laptop, but it didn’t work out that way. I started my observations and things were going well until Baby L needed a diaper change which took a while. Then a few minutes later, they decided he needed a nap. That left me with only about five minutes of real observation so I had to try again later. After he woke up, I started observing again, but this time, Crawling Baby was there. He only grabbed the laptop once, but he was pretty rough. He grabbed the screen and started pushing the keys. I was able to distract him with a ball I found on the shelf. I rolled it fast across the room and Crawling Baby went after it. Baby L was interested in the laptop too, but he wasn’t so rough. He touched the screen and felt the texture on the back. He was interested in my typing for a while. He kept watching me. Luckily, I know him so he wasn’t bothered by me sitting near him just watching. He probably wondered why I wasn’t playing with him instead, but I was able to after the observation was over. One thing I noticed about him today was how vocal he was. Not too long ago, he only babbled once in a while, but he’s learning new sounds and tries to communicate using sounds a lot more.

I sat with him in the rocking chair for a while because he seemed tired again, but he wouldn’t go to sleep. He was fascinated by the picture on the wall and he kept babbling to himself. He kept grabbing my hand and trying to get me to play games with him instead of sleep. Eventually, we gave up and put him in the swing. He actually slept for an hour and a half which was surprising. He also took both of his bottles today which surprised us too. Crawling Baby didn’t want to sleep either. He finished his bottle and wanted to look around and squirm instead of rest. Eventually, I got him to sleep, but he woke up earlier than he should’ve and was cranky for the rest of the day. We couldn’t get him back to sleep even though we tried. When Baby C came in, her mother said she was tired too. We tried putting her down for a nap and she kept babbling to herself and laughing in her crib. Eventually, every one of us had gone in the crib room to try to get her to sleep. For the most part, she’d just cry and want to get out of her crib. We took her out for a while longer and then eventually put her back in the crib, but she still didn’t want to sleep. I don’t know if she fell asleep or not because I had to leave.

This afternoon, I did the second part of my observation with the three of them. That worked a lot better, but it almost didn’t happen because they were trying to get Baby C and Crawling Baby back to sleep and if they had napped at that time, I wouldn’t have gotten it done. Luckily, I got some good observations to use.

I played with Crawling Baby for a while. I made up a game that he thought was fun. They have these tube shaped squishy things that I think are used for them to crawl over. Anyway, I kept rolling one across the room and Crawling Baby would chase it. Then I’d chase him and he’d laugh. When he’d reach the tube, he’d point at me and want me to role it again. When I’d role it and it would hit something, he’d laugh and go over to wait for me to role it. I also used the big ball with the three of them again. They enjoyed bouncing on it. I tried looking at books with Crawling Baby, but he wanted to close the book instead of looking at the pictures.

Baby C was sitting up by herself. Two weeks ago, she needed help. She doesn’t like being on her belly, but today she ended up that way a few times. She’d start fussing, but we’d let her because she needs to find ways to get into another position by herself. We know that she knows how to role over so after some fussing, she actually rolled over and seemed happy again. . She doesn’t mind rolling over when there’s something around her that she’s interested in. Everyone’s favorite toys this afternoon were three rubber duckies. Crawling Baby even brought one with him when it was time for his bottle. He kept hitting the bottle with it. In two weeks, Baby O will be moving up to the toddler room which means that Crawling Baby will be the oldest. It’s strange to think that when I started, these babies were only five and nine months old. Even though only a few months have gone by, they’ve grown so fast.