In this study, our goal is to provide a detailed description of the relational-historical process of development within the thirteen mother-infant dyads who participated in our multiple case study design. This is documentary science, similar to descriptive embryology, genome mapping, or astronomy.

This chapter is a transition, from the abstract to the concrete. This is especially daunting because the topics of research – frames and their changes – cannot be measured easily. How can change be captured? Its nature is to escape into another form, to be different on each reviewing of the data. As qualitative researchers who have spent a great deal of time with our data, we are convinced that patterns – perhaps even laws – can be perceived in frames and their change even though they cannot be defined precisely. In the remainder of this work, our task is to convey in words and pictures the patterns we have detected in our data. As scientists an additional task is to provide sufficient detail so that others with similar training and experience could attempt to replicate these observations, but let's be clear: the patterns implicate us as well as the videotapes, in our conspiracy of long-term involvement with them.

What follows is a report on the history of our relationship with a unique set of documentary videorecordings and the people in them. They show a tiny segment – a few short months – in the life history of a small group of babies playing with their mothers.