Tummy time

So for those of you who aren't in the know, "tummy time" is what the baby is supposed to do sometimes, to promote digestion and muscle enhancement and proper grammer and who knows what else. Basically, it consists of putting the baby, in this case, Sophie, on her tummy and putting her hands up by her ears. The theory is that the baby will kind of thrash about, and end up pushing herself forward (if you brace her feet), thereby kind of learning to crawl, or at least to get some good, solid thrashing exercise in.

At least, that's the theory with a regular baby. With Sophie, the theory has a little asterix by it, like so. The theory*. The * stands for "completely refuses to use her arms at all". So, even though she has the leg pushing down pat, her arms tend to be flat at her sides the whole time. Instead of a little rectangle of support (two legs, two hands), she has a triangle (two legs, face smushed into the ground). So while her legs are back there, pushing away like good little legs, her face is taking the brunt of the frontal support, and is dragging across the carpet/bed/pavement completely face down. And for whatever reason, this seems to hurt her somewhat, so her pushes are accompanied by shrieks and snorts of anguish. No matter how many times we put her hands by her head, she hasn't grasped the concept yet.

It was pretty funny, the last time she made one of these screaming treks across the bed, when we lifted her up, there was a little slug trail of drool, wiggled across the bed, evidence that a Sophie had just passed that way. We'll have to post a picture.