little discoveries

Our little girl is already growing up.

On Friday, Bridget discovered that she has a hand. Only one hand, mind you. She is fascinated with her right hand, and will hold it out in front of her inspecting it and then slowly and deliberately pull it in toward her face and insert it into her mouth. Oh, she was chewing on it before, but it was always hit or miss whether her hand actually made it to her mouth. But now she seems to have discovered that her hand is something attached to her body that she can control, and she's doing it. I don't think she's quite figured out that she has fingers yet, though.

I'm pretty sure that wanting to reach out and touch things goes with the hand-finding territory, because Bridget is suddenly much more interested in reaching out and touching her toys, particularly those attached to the playmat. She'll reach out to toys I hold out to her, too, but hasn't really figured out that you need to open your fist in order to wrap your hand around a toy. Yesterday I thought she was close to accidentally rolling over from her back to her stomach on her own since she kept reaching for "Toucan Sam," a purple toucan that (so far) is her favorite toy on the playmat. Her legs were up in the air with her knees bent, and they kept moving from side to side as she reached for Sam. Alas, no rollover. But to mommy's big surprise, she became a lot more active during tummy time, too; she kept struggling to lift her head and seemed determined to go somewhere rather than just lay around.

I've been expecting the head lift for a while now, since Bridget's neck is pretty strong. But she surprised me a lot by making her legs kick and go when she's up on her hands. It makes it look like she wants to crawl! I know ten weeks is way early, although a few babies do crawl as early as in their third month. I really don't think Bridget's quite strong enough yet, and I know it may be months and months before she actually does crawl, but she sure does seem determined! I think it's just fun to see her try. The video below is of her doing the head-lift leg-kick today. Gotta love our little girl!