Baby Note: My eyes are only on you and the rest

Liang Dongfang

The baby looks at you fixedly, with good eyes, not embarrassed, without any tactfulness or pretending not to look at it, but in fact it is looking at you fixedly. She should have inadvertently completed a standard human looking movement and state, her black eyes sparkling and crystal clear, without content and as if full of content, full of observations, descriptions, memories and thoughts in her gaze on you. It's a long process, longer than the slow motion in the movie, and it's going on, and there's no point in ending it. Even if the moment is over, it will suddenly reappear at a certain moment, looking at you again, no matter how close you are to her when you hold her, so close that your eyes can no longer focus on her. The zoom ability of her eyes is perfect, no matter how close or far away, she has the most powerful eyes of human beings, the clearest gaze, and the most turbid human face has nothing to hide.

The little warm body, the funny shape of the head under the sparse hair that stands on end, staring at you with such pure eyes, makes you feel like you have never been seen like this, which is much stronger than the spotlight in the center of the stage, which represents the whole world's scrutiny of you.

You will be overwhelmed by the gaze that the baby looks at you so fixedly, you will smile awkwardly, you will find that the baby is still looking at you after your own awkward laughter and you will have an open excitement, and you will love the baby with all your heart.

The baby is completely unimpressed by your series of reactions, whether you disapprove of it, whether you smile awkwardly, the baby continues to stare at you curiously, with pure eyes, without a glimpse of the rashness of taking it for granted that he understands everything, without a glimpse of the self-explanatory slackness of the whole leopard, without any prejudice and preconceived ideas, just looking at you with complete curiosity, completely observing and depicting, and constantly gathering as much information as possible to complete the impression of your mind. You are part of its cognitive world, you are a point in its life course.

You suddenly realize that you are a messenger of the world to which you have come, and that you have a mission to make the baby aware of this world. In a considerable sense, for babies, you are the world, at least a part of it. In her learning and mastery process that keeps pace with the times, you are a node, a ladder, a precious source of warm feelings of care and love.

Those characters who have been given such a mission, such as the parents who are familiar with the baby, are very envious of you who have been stared at by the baby at this time, because they themselves have basically stopped getting such a constant staring treatment from the baby. The infant feels that the existence of his parents is a matter of course, and that the infant is already familiar with his parents, and even a part of his own existence, no, not part but all. The baby and the parents are completely one, and the parents are everything to the baby. She stares at you, but in amazement to discover that there is something else in the world besides her parents.

When the baby is more than seven months old, he gradually enters the stage of not having stool for several days, that is, the stage of saving the belly, which is a manifestation that the neural coordination function of the digestive system is not complete enough, and it also shows that the gastrointestinal function has been strong enough to digest and absorb all the milk drunk, and can eat some complementary food. The habit of grabbing anything and putting it in your mouth has not changed, but if you catch something juicy such as a pear or orange petal, you can get a small piece and chew it in your mouth in the process of sucking and biting, so that adults feel that it is dangerous, and you must pick it out for her.

At this time, the baby is actually not very comfortable, manifested in the night will wake up again and again, will suddenly be irritable during the day, the calm time is getting shorter and shorter, sitting in the stroller, being held in the arms, lying on the bed, every posture that used to be able to play for a long time can not be sustained. Even sleep became short, and when it was time to be sleepy, it seemed that I was not sleepy at all...... It wasn't until seven or eight days later at night that I suddenly babbled happily in the way of a baby's words, and my spirit got better for no reason, that I realized that I had poop. At the end of the week, the elated baby was still singing happy syllables that only she understood while changing diapers.

At this time, babies really entered the transition stage from unconscious pronunciation to seemingly conscious pronunciation. Suddenly, it will be very lyrical and whining with a series of undulating rhythms, not expressing the meaning but clearly trying to express the meaning. The ups and downs of those monosyllabic are sometimes high-spirited, sometimes anxious, sometimes calm, sometimes irritable. This is a manifestation of the infant and other mammals at a level, the difference is that the vocal expression of other mammals stays at this stage and does not progress, and for the infant this is only the beginning of the subsequent much more complex vocal expression. The baby will then enter the language learning stage, using different sounds to convey different meanings, which is the first step, and she has the complex mission of using sounds to express meaning.

Heidegger said that language is the home of being, and that human beings inhabit the world through language. This does not mean that without language there would be no existence, but that without language there would be nothingness, without its foundation and framework, and it would become separated from the world. This is largely confirmed by the baby's performance before the absence of language, and the development of its intelligence and language always go hand in hand. The babbling words themselves are the embryonic appearance of the curve of their intellect. Aware of this, we can understand why we always rejoice first when we hear the voice of a baby's dissonant words.

The baby's observation and play, babbling vocalization state can not be continued, and gradually sleepiness comes, the baby will feel bad no matter what, will suddenly scream, cry or dissatisfied, ask to hug, ask to walk, ask to change the same walking speed. It wasn't until I finally had no time to think about all this that I finally fell asleep. In the infant years when they are unable to act independently, it is okay if a person's intellectual and ability development is still at a lower stage, but once it is well developed, the baby can realize the close relationship between his limited vision and limited mobility, and will make unremitting efforts to break free because of depression and depression. Especially when sleepiness strikes, this kind of unremitting effort becomes unbearable.

The baby's escape from the blurred line between sleep and wake in the first few months of life to the clear line between sleep and wakefulness, realizing that he wants to sleep, realizing that he has just woken up from sleep, is the first step in his life to gradually sort out the chaos of his life. This is really a natural feeling and judgment in the sense of adults, not innate, but still the result of acquired feelings, analysis and judgment. The progress of the mind is gradually achieved in this process of gradually moving away from chaos.

The distinction between sleep and wakefulness, between day and night, is similar to the description of the beginning of creation in the epics and religions of various peoples. The baby resurrects the imagination of the myth and legend with his own little personal life experience, or the ancient fact passed down from generation to generation by myth and legend.

The house suddenly fell silent, and the adults went about their own business, and the children fell asleep. Only when the child is asleep will there be such a rare silence in the home. In such silence, adults will feel a sense of relief, fatigue will suddenly become clear, and a sense of accomplishment will be born.

It didn't seem to be more than a moment after lying down to rest, when suddenly she heard a baby's ahhhhhhhhhhhhh The excitement surrounding her in the house immediately began again. It's not a simple repetition, because every time she wakes up, she takes another step on the way out of chaos, a small but clear step with her little feet.