Perhaps it's because I leave her in there longer than I ever did her two siblings. I was paranoid about ever passing 15 minutes, having read about the possibility of hip dysplasia and other scary-sounding unlikely problems from overuse. However, my life is not so simple now that I can ignore a working situation, so Mia has probably clocked more time in the thing in two months than Abby and Michael did over the course of their usage, combined.
However, it's not just that she seems more accustomed to it. While she doesn't jump continually (in fact, she's only active in short bursts every few minutes or so), when she does, she's so jubilant, her pleasure is quite infectious.
I realized the other day that it's more than just the squeals she produces and the energy she puts into bouncing that makes her look so happy. It's also the faces she makes, which are bursting with excitement and personality.
Funny thing is, when I tried to catch those faces in still-shots, they looked anything but happy. In mid-expression, her emotions come across as varying degrees of anger, annoyance, fear, disgust, and shock.
Of course, the most amusing examples were among the first pictures I took, before I got the focus
I decline to say "figured out," because though I finally got the manual focus set properly for my distance from the subject, the camera seemed to be set on getting great shots of the cute little red bird instead of the super-cute bouncing baby, and I always have a hard time overriding where the focal point is locked (especially when I'm trying to take multiple shots in a short amount of time).
Still, her face finally started coming out sharp enough that I felt I could display these full-sized:
You'd never know it from the pictures, but she was having a blast.
And hey- two teeth down and a day before five months young- why shouldn't she be?
