Handy

Gabe is becoming much more agile with his hands. It used to be that when he wanted to suck on his fingers, he could bring his hands near his mouth. But generally his hands would go cruising past their goal in an arc, while his grasping fingers did their own thing. Gabe would turn his head and lick at the flailing fingers while they went past, which was comical and, with all the thrashing about, a bit noisy. Generally, if I heard him chasing his fingers in the middle of the night, he was in the process of waking himself up with all of that hard work.

Now he can bring a fist to his mouth and keep it there. He doesn’t yet favor any particular finger. Instead, he nibbles on the side of his fist, though sometimes his fingers will end up in his mouth when he grabs his lower lip. Overall it’s a much more restful gesture, and when I hear him doing it during the night it typically means he’s on his way back into deeper sleep.




Gabe’s hands have also discovered each other. He gets a contemplative look when playing the hands-together game. And sometimes he gets his mouth in the game, too. It must be a strange sensation, being aware for the first time that one of your sensory inputs is touching another. I imagine how engrossed I would be if suddenly I realized that my eyeballs could peer at each other.




Gabe has a plush infant jungle-gym toy that features an arch, from which toys can be hung within arm’s reach. He used to hate this thing – I think perhaps it frightened him. Now it ranks up there with the fan. In fact that’s usually where it goes: right beneath the fan, so that he can enjoy both at the same time.

As with every other new thing Gabe does, it seemed like an accident the first time his flailing arm bumped into a hanging toy, causing it to jingle. But it’s been three days now since that first accident, and he has rung the bell with his baby karate chop over and over and over. He also slows his hand down and attempts to grab the toy – and when he isn’t under a toy, he reaches out and swats at the fan. (I guess he hasn’t figured out that depth thing yet.)

This had pointed out a new game to play with Mommy and Daddy: high five! Mommy and daddy provide squeals of delight when little Gabe successfully touches a hand or a face.

And which hand does Gabe prefer to reach out and touch with? So far, the left is in the lead. We may have to stock up on south-paw scissors and baseball gloves! But then, it’s still only the third day since he started using his hands to reach out to things, so maybe it’s all just an accident and really he’s going to end up using his prehensile toes.