Of course, time itself is compressed at the moment anyway. Some time ago Jenny and I read something about how your perception of time is dependent on milestones. When you're young, you have lots of milestones (each birthday is a big one, plus changing grades, graduating grade/middle/high school, college, etc), and time goes by pretty quickly. As you get older, your milestones start to fade and/or stretch out (I mean, let's face it; once you pass 21 and you've graduated college, what other scheduled milestones are there?), and time seems to pass a little more slowly.

Well, having kids starts the milestone race all over again. The first week, every feeding is a milestone. For the first few months, every week is a milestone. For the first two years, every month is a milestone. First smile, first intentional sound, first word, first crawl, first step, so many milestones all packed in together, and so they just fly by.

One interesting side-note, by the way: this works on more than just "life in general". I've found that on long car rides, if you break the trip up into mini-trips, it goes a lot faster. If you hit a goal every hour or two hours, even an 18-hour drive is almost bearable. :)

Anyway, so time is flying by. It's already been seven weeks since Ollie was born, and he's changed a lot (even leaving out the absence of wires, nurses, tests, etc). He's bigger, he moves more intentionally, and he's making all kinds of sounds. A new sound almost every day, in fact. And he smiles. Full on, real smiles. Literally the cutest thing I've ever seen. Hard to catch on camera, though; every time he's smiling, if I pull out the camera or the cellphone to take a picture he starts frowning and watching the interesting new object.

And he can focus ten feet away now, so keeping the camera "out of reach" isn't a solution anymore. :-P

He's working really hard on holding his head up by himself, and getting very good at it. He loves "standing up" (with someone holding him under the armpits, but supporting a fair amount of his own weight with his legs, and holding up his own head) so he can look around--which gets surprisingly tiring with a ten-pound baby. :) I can't wait until I can stick him face-out in the Snugli so that he can look around all the time when we're out. I guess that happens sometime between 2 and 4 months, so who knows.

I bought a very interesting book yesterday, about teaching philosophy to kids. I know I asked all kinds of questions when I was a kid, and I'm betting Jen did too, so I'm trying to be prepared to get Ollie thinking and reasoning and ready for all the amazing questions I'm sure he'll come up with. It took me until college to really discover philosophy myself; I think Ollie will appreciate a head start. :)