Jan.
4, 2000 - Tuesday
Harry is clearly starting to fix his eyes on objects now and that marks a remarkable
beginning. Before this, most of our fascination with Harry has been physical:
staring at his face trying to see which one of us he looks like, marveling at
his facial expressions, and understanding his sleeping, eating, belching, and
other patterns. But, as his eyes start to make sense of the world around him,
his brain will start to suck in information and it's clear that our journey
as a family is just beginning.
While he is definitely his own little person, his mother and I have agreed that
there is much about these early days of his life that is more object oriented.
Taking him to the doctor for the first
time, for example, was not all together different than taking the cat to the
vet - except that Harry had much less of an idea what was happening to him!
The cat, no doubt, retains several intellectual advantages over Harry these
days, but we also know that the cat will quickly lose that ground and that Harry's
more attentive eyes are the harbinger of wonderful things to come.
Actually, I know that he's already started listening. Both his mother and I
have sung to him and observed his movements stop almost certainly trying to
concentrate on or at least make sense out of the sounds. I played guitar and
sang to his mother while he was in the womb, but whether that affected him or
not is hard to say. We, naturally, like to think it did, but we'll do a lot
more than that to help him grow up with a healthy appreciation for music of
many types.
