Morgan Week 5

It has been ordained that this must be a weekly diary as a daily one is getting rather repetitive. The principal events of the week and Morgan’s development shall be recorded. This is sensible but one must remember that the effort must be made. Time goes by too fast, the moment must be caught, much is ephemeral:

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone.

It must be recorded now or never!

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

Sunday was family day and the two newest additions to the clan were paraded. Morgan was nearly a month old and was at his liveliest. Neither partook of the pleasant vegetarian take away lunch from downstairs chosen by Sumei, and Huw, and nor did Siva who was motor-biking in Malaysia.

Morgan is increasingly responsive to the stimulators that Margaret and Joelle have devised. The four-plate mobile that Margaret made certainly holds his attention and he seems to look at each shape in sequence. The Mama and Papa faces drawn by Joelle also catch his eyes as does the lollipop one. Joelle has designed an attractive mural made up of different shapes and pictures in black and red to put up on the wall next to his cot. He has been seen to lie there looking at these and this reinforces that he is taking more visual notice of his surroundings. The puppet hippo and the small elephant rattle seem to attract his attention more. In short, he is becoming increasingly aware of his environment.

His motor development continues apace. He is wiry, sturdy, and vigorously active. He spends much time ‘bowling’ over-arm alternately with both arms, kicking in sequence and screwing up his face into all sort of expressions. It almost seems a form of frustration, because it is not always followed by crying. It just seems an explosion of energy. He is now beginning, and for the first time, to actually grasp a finger and does so with both his left and right hands. He continues to push against weight placed against his foot and does this a number of times when stimulated to do so. His demands for food still consist of spirited and loud bawling; he continues to let you know that he wants to be picked up! Sometimes it is hard to resist responding to his demands! His range of expressions is notably increasing. He is most lively in the morning and I found that he seemed to respond to my smiling with a big smile one morning. Talking and singing certainly has a pacifying effect, and he appears to enjoy both, and even tickling but there is no direct response to a tickle as yet. An odd gurgle has been detected, sounding like a strangled word! In short, he has established himself as the household character.