Love This!

Just thought I'd share a cool little article I read today, which I'll post below with my comments in italics.
http://www.babycenter.com/0_your-amazing-child-wow-worthy-development-facts_3654901.bc?page=1

It was probably clear to you that your child was a miracle right from the first ultrasound. And since then your little one has been growing, learning, and changing at an astonishing rate. But we'll bet there are still a few things even you don't know about your child's dazzling developmental feats. Read on for a collection of fascinating child development facts sure to make you say "Wow!"

 

In the womb: Sensing the world outside
You scared me, Ma! Your baby will startle in utero when she hears a loud or sudden noise. This ability appears around 23 weeks, as any pregnant woman in her second or third trimester can attest; if she sneezes, the baby jumps.

     This actually happened for june bug about 3 weeks ago now... at about 19-20 weeks.  Maia was opening the cabinet doors in the upstairs bathroom and letting them slam closed, which was pretty loud.  June bug gave a pretty good jump the first time!

But if the same noise is repeated frequently, your baby will get used to it and stop responding. No need to worry — that's a sign that the brain is developing normally, says Lise Eliot, an associate professor of neuroscience at Chicago Medical School and author of What's Going On In There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life.

Breathing underwater. Your baby begins to "breathe" while he's still in the womb, even though his lungs aren't taking in any oxygen, says Eliot. At around 27 weeks, his fluid-filled lungs will start to expand and compress due to the rhythmic contractions of your diaphragm and chest muscles, which help him develop the muscles and motor circuits necessary for actual breathing. So by the time your newborn takes his first gulp of real air, he'll have had plenty of practice.

    That's why our little June Bug needs to stay in there!

Scent from beyond. Starting around 28 weeks, your baby can smell in the womb the same things that you're smelling outside. Some of the evidence about fetuses' sense of smell comes from preemies: In one study, peppermint extract was held under the noses of pre-term babies. Those younger than 28 weeks didn't respond, while the older ones reacted by sucking, grimacing, or moving away.

Your baby's sense of smell is actually enhanced by the amniotic fluid she's floating in, says Eliot, because we're better able to smell things after the odor molecules join with a liquid (like nasal mucus). During the third trimester, the placenta also lets odor molecules pass through it more easily. So when you order that chicken vindaloo in your ninth month, your baby is taking in the aroma right along with you.

Babies: Transforming before your eyes
Leaps and bounds. Your baby is growing, but by how much? After some initial weight loss, newborns typically add one ounce a day for the first three months, then two-thirds of an ounce daily until age 1, says Robert Needlman, former associate professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and vice president of developmental and behavioral pediatrics for the Dr. Spock Company. An average baby doubles his birth weight by 4 months and triples it by his first birthday. He also adds 1 to 1.5 inches every month in height.

      I don't think Maia did this exactly, although she gained VERY quickly after birth as she was nursing so well.  You'll have to check out her growth charts on the side there...

If you were 8 pounds and 20 inches at birth and continued growing at the same rate, by age 20 you'd be about 25 feet tall and weigh nearly 315 pounds.

Young salts. Though your baby can detect sweet, bitter, and sour tastes right from birth, she can't taste salt until she's 4 months old. This is when sodium-sensitive receptor proteins begin to emerge in the taste buds. The ability to taste salt may be related to the development of the kidneys, says neuroscientist Eliot, which start to use sodium when your baby is about 4 months old. This appears to be hardwired in the child development process and totally unrelated to the volume of Cheetos you consumed while pregnant.

Eyes just for you. At birth, your baby's eyes are already 75 percent of adult size but his vision is a blurry 20/2400, which means he can only clearly discern objects about a foot away — precisely the distance to your face during cuddling or feeding.

By 6 months, your baby's vision should improve to 20/20. That's why providing your baby with lots of visual stimuli is important and helps the eye-brain connections develop correctly, says Scott Jens, an optometrist in Wisconsin and chair of the American Optometric Association's InfantSEE program.

Toddlers: Soaking it all up

The vocabulary explosion. Children understand language much earlier than they can speak it. By age 1, your child typically understands about 70 words but speaks only a handful of them, says neuroscientist Eliot. At about 18 months, your toddler's spoken vocabulary starts to explode and she adds new words at the astonishing rate of one every two waking hours. By the time she's 6, she'll probably understand about 13,000 words (compared to your 60,000 or so), though she's not likely to speak that many.
    One word every two waking hours?  I'm absolutely sure that's true for Maia.  She learns them, repeats them and incorporates them into her daily usage!  We have seen a vocab explosion over the last 2 months.

Look, Ma, two hands. Most 1-year-olds are ambidextrous, or use both hands equally. Your toddler will likely start showing a preference for his right or left hand by age 2 or 3 — and in about 90 percent of kids, it'll be the right. Why so many righties? No one really knows for sure, says neuroscientist Eliot. Genetics plays a role (southpaw parents are more likely to have kids who are also lefties), as do social norms — there are more lefties in the United States than in cultures where left-handedness is deemed unacceptable.
     Also currently true for Maia.  She has a chance at being lefty... my sister is lefty and my father's mother was ambidexterous.  I believe she wrote with her right hand, but preferred to do everything else lefty.  There is probably a good chance that she was really lefty by nature, but was forced to learn to write right-handed.

There's also a theory that says your toddler is more likely to start preferring his right hand because three-quarters of fetuses spend the last weeks of gestation with their right arm facing out, allowing it to move more freely. Another holds that it's because newborns are more likely to turn their heads to the right than to the left (though the reasons for this are unclear). Still others say it's simply a learned behavior — you hand things to your child with your right hand, and he follows suit.

Brain gain. Though your toddler's basic brain function was developed at birth, her cerebral cortex — the part of the brain that experiences thought, stores memories, and controls voluntary muscle movement — only kicks into gear after experiencing the world outside the womb.

Between ages 1 and 2 the cerebral cortex adds more than 2 million new synapses — the connections between brain cells — every second, according to Zero to Three, a nonprofit educational group. By age 2, your toddler will have more than 100 trillion synapses — the most she'll ever have in her life, and part of the reason why she has such an incredible capacity to learn.

This period of "synaptic exuberance" can last until age 8, but it's also accompanied by the constant pruning of unused synapses. By the time your child reaches adulthood, more than 50 percent of those neural pathways will be gone.

Preschoolers: Becoming aware

Eureka, I'm me! Kids this age can be a handful — not because they're deliberate trouble-makers, but because they're going through an amazing period of development known as "primary individuation," says Jackie Gotlieb, a pediatrician and spokesperson for Kids Health First, an alliance of primary care pediatricians in Atlanta. "It's when kids begin to understand that they're separate from adults and are trying to define themselves."

When your preschooler announces, "Mine!" while clinging to his truck in a playgroup, this isn't so much a selfish refusal to share as it is a cognitive achievement. He's now able to see himself as an individual and, as such, capable of ownership. His declaration of "mine" is his way of saying he understands that you — and the other children — are separate from him.

    We're seeing a bit more "mine" behavior now, although she also likes to share certain things (food) with certain people (mom and dad)... but I think that has to do with the egocentrism of her developmental stage.

Kids really do forget. Your child probably won't remember her best friends from preschool — or much else before the age of 3 — due to what psychologists call infantile amnesia. Many people assume the reason we can't remember things from our youngest years is that even though the memories are in there, we just can't access them. But what's more likely, says neuroscientist Eliot, is that "early experiences never make it into the long-term memory banks because the brain's recording machinery isn't yet functional."
     While these things may not be in the "long-term" memory banks, her capacity to remember things that happened days or weeks ago does continue to surprise me.  We'll be settling down to bed and doing our "bedtime sweet talk" and she'll start rambling on about "Neeooo... issssseeping... SHHHHH" - which is something we observed two weeks ago: One of the babies in the infant room at daycare (Neil) was sleeping in the crib when she went in to visit the babies, and she was asked to be quiet.

But that doesn't mean the things your child experiences before age 3 don't have a profound effect on her development — they do. It's just that she probably won't be able to recall them later.

On a different wavelength. Preschoolers simply don't think the way adults do — they aren't yet capable of logical thinking. Instead they think very literally, which means they can't grasp abstract concepts, and egocentrically, meaning they can't imagine anyone's perspective but their own, says Wendy Ludlow, a licensed clinical social worker and child and family therapist who runs Therapy With a Twist.

"Four- to 6-year-olds really believe that you can keep monsters out of their room if you put up a sign on their door stating: 'No Monsters Allowed!'" says Ludlow. And if you're sad, your preschooler might give you his teddy bear because that's what would comfort him and therefore — he reasons egocentrically — that must also be the thing you need. He simply can't understand you might prefer a spa day.

     Maia is starting to get a little of this understanding of comforting others, and will offer hugs to crying friends or us.

Big kids: Turning a corner

Moral fiber. Psychological changes in a grade-schooler's brain let your child begin to draw moral distinctions based on internal judgment, say Charles E. Schaefer, professor of psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and education and parenting writer Theresa Foy DiGeronimo, authors of Ages and Stages: A Parent's Guide to Normal Childhood Development.

Before this age, your child obeyed the rules (well, most of the time, anyway) because she feared getting in trouble; now her own conscience is growing and she can see the difference between right and wrong, consider another's viewpoint, and feel sympathy and concern for others. She's able to feel guilty about breaking the rules — even when she doesn't get caught.

Enter the inner monologue. At around age 8, your child starts to internalize his imaginary play, say Schaefer and DiGeronimo. So instead of making his rabbits (or pirates, stuffed animals, or cars) talk to each other, it's his internal voice that replays events, comments on new experiences, or practices dialog with friends and family. You may find this frustrating because it's hard to keep the little daydreamer focused, but this behavior is just as normal (and beneficial) as the public play that preceded it.

Mastering memory. Your child is getting a feel for how to handle her own memory, says Jane M. Healy, educational psychologist and author of Your Child's Growing Mind. Until now your child has been able to remember things, but not to use strategies to make her memory work for her. By about age 6, however, she'll start rehearsing material so she can remember it, and by age 7 she's able to group things into patterns and organize information so she can better recall it later.

Dan Tynan writes about parenting and technology for a wide range of publications; you can find his blog at Dantynan.com. Christina Wood is a magazine writer and author of Every Woman's Guide to Technology . She blogs at Geekgirlfriends.com.