I Know How to Fence!

Here’s a picture of me doing my fencing pose during my first month:

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It’s actually a normal finding in newborns.  According to Wikipeidia (and no, Mommy doesn’t go there for medical information routinely, but it’s good for layman’s definition):

The asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR) is a primitive reflex found in newborn humans, but normally vanishes by the child’s first birthday.  It is also known as the “fencing reflex” because of the characteristic position of the infant’s arms and head, which resembles that of a classically trained fencer. When the face is turned to one side, the arm and leg on the side to which the face is turned extend and the arm and leg on the opposite side bend.

There are plenty of other reflexes such as the sucking, Moro and Babinski which require video capture to better show the reflex, but I have exhibited them all!

My First Art Project

As most of you know, Mommy is an artist at heart and she wasted no time in getting me started on my first art project.  Mommy wanted to preserve my hand and footprints and frame the whole thing with the letterpress announcement. 

After much searching online, Mommy found the “right” frame set from Red Envelope for $49.99 plus 15% off.  It had all the bells and whistles of what she wanted in the frame at a lower cost than what it would have cost to do this a la carte from buying supplies from Michael’s.

frame

The first thing Mommy did was etch my name and birth date into the glass with Armour Etch.  Mommy bought the Armour Etch over 10 years ago and have never used it.  It’s good to know that it still works!  Mommy cut homemade stencil using “Viner Hand” 100 point font on an old vinyl bumper sticker.  This way, Mommy didn’t have go out to buy vinyl masking just for this purpose. 

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 Applying the Armour Etch to the stencil.  It etches after only one minute!

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 See the final etched glass.

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 The middle opening of the mat was a big small, so Mommy bought a mat cutter to make the opening bigger to fit the announcement.  Mommy also thought the plain off-white mat was a bit boring, so she used a Pearl-Ex and gum arabic mixture to paint the mat in this pearly glaze color.

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 Then comes the part where I come in!  After PoPo gave me a bath, Mommy stamped my foot and hand.  We had to try a couple of times because I wasn’t sure what I stepping into.  Was it my own poop?  Was it Mommy’s mushy tummy?  Whatever it was, Mommy was pleased with the results of the print.  The mold had to dry at room temperature for a couple of days.

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Mommy then assembled the print molds onto the frame and put the whole thing together.  See the final product!

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 Maybe I’ll make Mommy proud and be a talented artist (as a side job) in the future!