protocols for talking about a tiny human online

[rushthatspeaks]

So I'll be referring to the baby on the internet as Fox, which comes from one of his names. We also sometimes call him the cub, which we have done since long before his birth. I know foxes have kits, not cubs, but my friend

Comments

[irnakrotsova]

GOOD

[rosefox]

For a spam comment this is pretty great.

[rosefox]

You're very thoughtful to try to avoid name confusion. :)

I'm never going to be a baby person either, but I promise you will start to see the cute, especially as the baby becomes less of a potato and more of a tiny human. Once they develop body language, it helps tremendously. And the more you consciously operate on their scale-appreciating what an enormous challenge it is to develop the motor skills sufficient to open mouth and insert fingers, for example, and admiring the consistent effort they put in over several weeks to reach that goal-the easier it gets, in my experience. (This is why baby people very earnestly say inane-sounding things like "You've grabbed your foot!"; they view foot-grabbing from the perspective of a baby, who has taken multiple months to determine that they have feet and hands and then figure out how to put them together in a consistent fashion

[eub]

It was a lovely window where you could just put them in front carriers, lay a napkin over the head to catch any dropped noodles, and have a nice dinner. But it was so much more congenial for me as they developed communication and language that I was very happy to take the tradeoff.

[rosefox]

Yes! One time I was out in the park with my then-six-month-old, and I hugged them and said "I'm so glad we're friends!". Being able to interact with them as one person to another has been way better than anything that came before the six-month mark.

[shewhomust]

This is all good news, and I'm grateful for the update. I'd have been sorry to miss the line "who would therefore qualify as weight training if weights had the habit of squirming and leaping in the arms of the exercisers in a difficult-to-hold-onto fashion" - someone should totally invent that!

[rosefox]

My occupational therapist says that she gets a lot of patients with babies in the four-to-six-months range, which apparently is when the rate of the baby's growth tends to outpace the rate of the parents' muscle development. (Which is why I was seeing an occupational therapist.)

[rushthatspeaks]

If it were actual reps, as one does in weight-lifting, I wouldn't have any problem wrangling the baby, but it's more like, you have to keep the weight somewhere on your person at all times, with one very specific bit of it pointing up, and only two or three real ways to grab onto it; now do everything else in your life, remembering that most of it was not ergonomically designed to allow you to be carrying the weight. The two or three baby-related objects we have, such as the feeding pillow, which were ergonomically designed for somebody holding a baby are such a relief.

I would love to watch somebody pressing a toddler. I think that could be a lot of fun for everyone involved.

[jedibl]

I am glad that it sounds like things are going way better for you than they were for me at that stage! Enjoy it!

My husband's nephew has the same first name as your baby, and his middle name is actually Fox, which is what he goes by. I noted the similarity in names when you posted your baby's name initially, and am even more amused now that you're referring to him as Fox online! It's a good name, but I would not have expected it to be so popular!

[mrissa]

I apparently slept for long-for-a-newborn stretches as a newborn, too, and it did me no harm: I was an immense healthy strong chunk of baby. So hurrah for the Fox letting you have at least some rest in his vital pursuit of additional skills like eye focusing and having more person to build on.