The Leap of Categories

My feelings toward leaps are twofold. First, I love that my daughter is learning new skills and that her brain is growing. On the flip side, being the "Type A" that I am ::read: control freak:: I hate what these leaps do to our daily routine. I also don't like the fact that these leaps are seemingly scary and confusing to my baby, who definitely shows it with much fussing instead of being her happy self.

I am obsessed with getting enough love sleep. If I don't get enough sleep, I like to whine to everyone who is around me will take a nap. I am SO happy we have a baby who sleeps 12 hours at night. SO happy! We worked very hard with Baby Wise from Day 1, just like the book talks about, to get her to sleep through the night. That was, in fact, our main goal for picking Baby Wise as a parenting book at first. We now feel that the –Wise books have a lot of "wise" information in them for rearing a tot and plan to read some more of them. Anyway, my point is that I'm glad we worked hard, and I'm glad it worked.

When Zooey goes through a leap, sleep is the last thing she wants to do. Seriously. That and eat. This time, the leap seems to be coinciding with a growth spurt, so the eating thing isn't an issue, but she's been waking up between 5:00-6:00 in the morning and not sleeping well for her naps. At first I thought it was because she had a cold, but it was a short cold that's almost gone, and the early waking is still happening. Throw the fact that she's learned to sit up independently ::Hooray!!:: and we have a completely messed up routine.

So, once again, we're employing CIO. Once again, I must change my perspective to being happy that Zooey's learning a new skill and waiting for about 2 weeks for her to get back to normal. Vent over. This leap is actually kind of exciting! It's called the Leap of Categories. Around week 37, babies begin to comprehend that everything has a category and practicing new skills. This applies to everything they learn about, for example, a spotted horse and a brown horse are both horses or Moto and Snowball are both cats or (most excitingly) Zooey, Mommy and Daddy are all people. The book states that some scientists believe this is the age where real intelligence begins. The world of categories helps baby interact on a new level with the people around her. I'm extra excited that she's sitting now, because good toys for this wonder week are blocks of different shapes and sizes, picture books, stacking toys and toys/household items that are in the same category. We have some of these, and I've been waiting to use them until she could hold herself up and play with it in front of her. It's a lot of fun to see her growing into the little person she will become.

I think it will be interesting when I have another child to look back on these wonder weeks and see if I feel the same way with the next one or if some of the stress will be gone, because I will have two kids to focus on. Time will tell…

Here's a chart of the leaps. I found it on the Wonder Weeks website. I'm not too sure about that super freaky picture in the bottom righthand corner, but nothing I can do about that. http://www.thewonderweeks.com/images/stories/Book/WW_info_chart.pdf