At around eight weeks past due date Aviana was due her second mental leap. This leap enables her to understand patterns better. Not just visual patterns, but patterns across all the senses. Here is what she should be able to do after this leap:

• hold her head up much better than before
• turns her head towards sounds
• Likes to shift her weight forward while sitting on my lap
• Flaps her hands against a toy (forerunner of grasping)
• Feels toys without trying to grasp them
• Discovers and observes parts of her body
• Looks at patterns (i.e. abstract paintings or a flickering candle)
• Makes short, explosive sounds (effort grunts) with her voice with the help of glottal stops

All of this was evident after her leap. It was less obvious than the first leap to identify when she was going through it. This is what we experienced:

• She wanted to be entertained a lot more often. 
• The wonder weeks book says that she would want to be breastfed all day long but doesn’t really drink. But we didn’t really experience that – although her feeds did take longer on average
• She craved more physical contact and she cried more easily. This was actually only evident and noticeable after her leap because at the time it just seemed normal. It was only after the leap she was a lot happier. It was a realization of Oh my baby doesn’t cry all the time after all! 

The period of time that this leap could last for was a lot longer than the first. Plus it got all mixed in with her 2 month vaccinations so it was hard to tell what was what.

The amazing thing is it is obvious afterwards now that she went through the leap. Of course babies change all the time, so it was only on looking back it was  clear what she was going through. The average time spent on a nursing session really jumped up…you can see below here, the stats say it all!

There is a two week ‘break’ between leap 2 and 3 l, Chris and grandad got to experience most of those good days last week when I was at work! I think she may have just now entered her 3rd leap a couple of days earlier, either that or it’s a growth spurt. She is doing some crazy sleeping. Yikes. More to come on leap 3 soon!