res. Babies do not tend to be very muscular or coordinated.
             The child grows and size increases, and different parts of the body grow at different speeds. There are two growth patterns that represent this. The first is called the cephalocaudal trend. During this phase the head takes up a fourth of the body and the legs take up a third. The second pattern is called the proximodistal trend. This is when the growth proceeds from the center of the body outward. During infancy, the arms and legs continue to grow ahead of the hands and feet. The brain is closer to adult size at birth than any other body part on a baby. When a child reaches the age of two, the brain is already at seventy percent of its adult weight. Some of the factors that influence this early growth are heredity, nutrition, and emotional well-being.
             Over the first year of life, babies begin to organize sounds into complex patterns. During the second half of the first year, babies begin focusing on larger speech units. These larger units are critical to figuring out the meaning of what babies hear. By nine months babies begin to listen to speech for much longer periods of time, and they begin to perceive it on wordlike segments.
             A child's vision goes through some extensive changes during the first seven to eight months of the child's life. The child's vision improves a great deal throughout the first year. When a child begins some form of independent movement, they begin to better understand depth perception. When an adult moves around on his/her own, they too have a better feel for landmarks and what is around them.
             The rapid growth in body size that takes place in infancy begins to slow down in early childhood. During this time boys still tend to be a little larger than girls are. When I was this age, all of my friends were boys, and they were a little larger than I was. Increasing control of the child's hands and ...