I don't wanna grow up

For those who are keeping track, Ruby is now over 7 months old! We are already over the halfway mark of baby-hood. :-( Fortunately, Ruby seems determined to stay a baby for as long as possible.

Since we have the benefit of interacting with many other babies of exactly the same age through my playgroups, we have a pretty good idea of where Ruby is developmentally relative to her peers. We had missed playgroup a few weeks in a row over Thanksgiving and our trip to Hawaii. When we returned, I noticed that all the babies had undergone a significant transformation. Whereas previously the babies were all in the horizontal position, when we returned, everyone was sitting up - everyone except Ruby, who was still happy to play on her back. Since then, playgroups have gotten more and more interesting, with the babies becoming more and more mobile. The moms have to be much more vigilant because there is always a baby who has somehow gotten all the way across the room and halfway out the door. Ruby, on the other hand, is no more, if not LESS mobile than when she first learned to roll. She can now sit very well on her own, but anything less sedentary she shows no interest in.



I am pretty sure that Ruby's lack of mobility is related to her easy-going temperament. It seems like for other babies, increased mobility is often motivated by frustration. For example, in their struggle to get to a toy that is out of reach, they end up rolling/scooting/crawling. However, when Ruby wants a toy outside her reach, she'll swat at it a few time, realize it's out of her grasp, decide it's not worth her trouble, and start playing with something closer.

Being a stationary baby has definitely made it easier on us. We have not had to do any baby-proofing; we can still leave her sitting or on her back and not worry that she will get into anything. Almost all the other parents in my playgroups have had to lower the crib mattress to at least the middle and in some cases the lowest setting because their babies are starting to pull up to a stand in their cribs. Ruby is always in the exact same position in the morning as she was when we put her down the night before, so her crib is still in the newborn position.

Not wanting to move around isn't the only way that Ruby is trying to stay a baby. While her other little baby friends are becoming more advanced in their diets, experimenting with proteins and finger foods, Ruby has still not taken very well to any solids. We are giving her a little bit of oatmeal every morning, and she is very slowly making progress with that, but she is by no means excited to eat it. It is always quite a production of trying to trick her into laughing so that she will open her mouth long enough for us to stick the spoon in. If she had her druthers, she would just nurse 100% of the time with none of this "solids" nonsense.

In addition, Ruby still doesn't have any teeth. I am also fine with this as it eliminates the fear of biting and means that she's not going through any grief over teething. So, in summary, Ruby is still stationary, only eats breastmilk, and has no teeth, all of which is fine by me because it means I get to keep my little baby for longer!

This is not to say that Ruby has not developed in any way. In fact, there is one facet in which she seems to be way ahead of the developmental curve, and that is in her language development. I have been reading the book, Nurture Shock for a mommy's book club that my playgroup is starting, and one of the chapters is about language development in infants. It says that while infant babble may all sound like jibberish to us, there are actually stages of babbling that are progressively more complex. In the most complex form of babble, babies are producing "canonical syllables," where the transition from consonant to vowel is fast and the breath is quick, so that it closely resembles real speech (for example, "dat" or "bem"). According to their research, babies typically begin this type of babble at around 9 months; however, Ruby has already been babbling like this for some time now. Oftentimes, it really sounds like she is speaking actual words. Perhaps in another month or so, while all of her little friends are crawling and tumbling about, Ruby will be calmly sitting and sagely doling out words of wisdom.