3 weeks old - audio, visual and physical stimulation

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!!!

Well, my boy is now 3 weeks old and he's been working more on rolling over and crawling, as well as some new things.

Seems like ages since his first photo (shown below)

In today's video essay, I'll show some work we've been doing with light and sound stimulation. Lastly, I'll show you some rolling over that we practiced today.

It's really neat to see him learn with each day that we play, and it's fun to practice some of the things I learned at the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential.


LIGHT / VISUAL STIMULATION

In the following videos I'll show you some light stimulation we've been doing. Keep in mind that we've been playing with light since the day he was born.

The first day of life I took him into a dark room and turned on the lights... let his eyes adjust and then turned them off. I repeated it three times while telling him what I was doing. While I do not have video of this practice, I can say it was worth while and got him to recognize light, shapes and shadows right off the bat. The nurses even made mention of how alert he was and he seemed to see much more than babies are "supposed" to.

Anyway, back to what I DO have videos of.

In the following video I show you how I used a flashlight to stimulate his visual senses.

You should be able to notice him follow the light with his eyes and even move his head to find the light.

In this next video, he is clearly following the light move around him.

And in the next video we do a little more playing with the flashlight, blinking the light and counting to ten.

So not only is he getting his visual stimulation, but now he's learning his numbers too!!! Not bad for 3 weeks old. He makes it look as easy as 1-2-3.

SOUND / AUDIO STIMULATION

Next up we have audio stimulation using crackling sounds.

And in this video you can see him clearly react to the sound.

And here you can see him starting to find the noise maker all by himself.

This is part of the learning process and it's pretty cool to see him interacting.

It's pretty cool to see him figuring things out as we play.

SOUND AND VISUAL - PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Ok... so in this next video he follows the lights and the sounds. He even starts to reach for the noise maker himself.

With his improving vision and dexterity, he'll be reaching and grabbing for things in no time.

ROLLING OVER - 360 DEGREES

In the next video you'll see me assist him in rolling completely over and then all the way back to the other side.

Now in my last blog post you saw him roll all by himself. In this next video you'll see me assist him all the way over (360 degrees) and then him rolling half way over (180 degrees) all by himself.

Ok... that's it for today's blog.

I hope you enjoy the videos and our developmental progress.

We heard the Heart Beat

So we just started our 11th week of pregnancy and it was time of our third doctor's appointment.

Since this is our first child, it was our first third doctor appointment, so we had no idea what to expect.

It was pretty short. She weighed in 3lbs over the previous month which was good and we talked to the doc briefly about the overall progress so far. Everything is progressing well.

It seemed that was going to be the whole visit and all of a sudden, she pulls out a device that let us hear the heart beat.

That was pretty cool, because the ultra sound weeks ago did not allow us to hear anything... just see it. It's kind of funny that it's called an ultra sound if you can't hear anything.

Anyway, it was pretty damn cool to hear the heartbeat. It's beating fast as per normal at about 160 beats per minute.

That's the update for now.