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The Life and Times of
THOMAS GODFREY MAGILL
Part One: The First Year
Chapter Six: New Discoveries
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Once everything settled down in our new temporary home in Orlando, Tommy started experiencing tons of new things. He quickly got too big to give him spongebaths on the couch, so we started bathing him in the sink, where Tommy discovered the joys of kicking water everywhere. We also started adding things like fruits, juices, and rice cereal into his diet. Tommy got the hang of this eating thing extremely fast, and only complained when the food wasn't shovelled into his mouth as fast as possible. By this point, he was an expert at sleeping through the night, though he had absolutely no interest in napping on a schedule. Amelia and I developed a system whereby she would go to sleep early while I would bathe Tommy and put him to sleep upstairs. There, I would have a few late night hours to write or play video games before switching with Amelia in the guestroom downstairs. She would sleep upstairs and tend to him if he needed it, while I would sleep uninterrupted downstairs. We tried using monitors, including a really cool video monitor my mother got us, but the distance between the two rooms was too great. But it was rarely a problem, because Tommy was able to sleep for ten hours a night, only making a few noises here and there. During the day, he would be excited and happy, but it was still a little too early for him to do anything but make faces and reach for the occasional toy. We tried to coax him into rolling over or sitting up, but he didn't yet have the motor coordination or desire to do it on his own. Probably the biggest development for him at this point was the discovery of his feet. He could spend hours staring at them, playing with them, and rocking back and forth on his back, his toes in his hands and a gigantic smile on his face. We started singing to him at this point, and it became clear that we needed to brush up on our nursery rhymes. Amelia eventually settled on singing "Twinkle, Twinkle" to put him to sleep (along with the abc's song, which has exactly the same melody), while I would sing "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy," and "Log" (from Ren & Stimpy, of course) to get him happy. His grandmother was far more versatile and would sing him all kinds of songs, but her favorite was "Bippity Boppity Boo," a song that has an unfortunate way of getting stuck in your head for hours on end. Naturally, Tommy loved it when people sang to him. We also tried reading to him in the mornings, and this seemed to work a lot better than it did when he was a newborn. He would reach for the book, stare at the pictures, and occasionally coo. He would also watch television with us and sit calmly at the dinner table while we ate (though Amelia or I would sometimes have to eat with only one hand). You can see in the pictures that his other grandparents, Bruce and Patricia, came down to visit us for a few days. They fawned over Tommy the whole time, of course, and promised to come back as soon as humanly possible. |
