3 Months = 1/4 Year!

Here’s our little guy at the beginning of the month.  I’m beginning to be able to catch smiles on camera.  He’s got the cooing thing down now and is quite noisy.  We love it!  There has even been some giggling.

Elijah is 3 months old!  He is now 13 lb 10 oz.  He got a vaccine today and smiled the whole time!  Such a sweetie!  In a way the last three months have flown by, but at the same time it seems a long time in coming.  I have to admit, while it is such a precious time and a newborn’s size alone is sweet, it is not my favorite time period.  I look forward to the coming months and years of interaction,  laughter and getting to know this little guy’s personality a little better – even if it does bring tears too!

Attacking (loving on) his dog snuggly.

The big accomplishments for this month are that Elijah is rolling over from his belly to his back, though he only does it when he’s happy, so he doesn’t help himself or me out when he’s tired of being on his belly.  The other mom’s at the luncheons we go to at the hospital think his strength during tummy time is amazing.  I’m a proud mommy!  The other big accomplishment is that he is fairly consistently sleeping through the night!  He goes down around 7:30, gets a “dream feed” around 10, then usually sleeps until 5:30 or 6 at which point he often is happy just with a pacifier and an hour or so more of sleep.  As far as other physical skills go, he is reaching out to grab toys and if he is holding one he will put it to his mouth.  In lieu of his toys, he loves to chew and suck his fingers.  After only a few minutes of this his shirt will be soaking wet with drool!  I think he has given up on the thumb.  We have also totally gotten off the Mylicon and are doing well with that previous issue.  Generally speaking, he is doing fabulously! 

Chewing his ring, or “wing wing” as Josiah calls it.

He’s even been spending a little time in his seat!  Such a big boy already.

Elijah survived my first few days of work.  He spent them with Jacob, my mom, and the sitter and did quite well, even with another eye infection and a growth spurt with the resulting disrupted naps.   I’m happy to say that I survived, too.

Elijah has been doing wonderfully with napping and going to sleep on his own (no time to rock when you have a 2 year old running loose!), but we had been struggling with bedtime.  He’d go down nicely only to wake up multiple times until his “dream feed”, then sleep the rest of the night.  I decided to ditch his normal go-to-bed routine for a few nights and just held him or stuck him in his swing to sleep to hopefully break the cycle before returning to the routine that works for us and it seems to have worked, though not perfectly.  I’ve successfully put him down normally for a few nights now.  The goal is to be able to  put him down and then be able to say a nice goodnight to Josiah as well.  So far Jacob has been responsible for Josiah and I was responsible for Elijah and attempting to rush over to Josiah for a quick goodnight. (I wrote this before his growth spurt when feedings went wild!  Now we are just getting back to this point.  Go figure!  You finally get to understand them, then they go and change!)

It’s funny, but the arrival of a second baby has made me feel more mature – yeah, that’s the word we’ll use.  Jacob says he doesn’t really feel this way, so I’ll speak for myself here.  Somehow with Josiah’s arrival I don’t really remember feeling much different in this area.  I guess because it is much easier to resume a normal pre-baby life with one than two and parents still outnumber kids.  Also, something about having two kids makes me feel more like we have a “family”, which is ridiculous.  Maybe it is the activity level of our home now that makes me feel that way.  It’s also as if “well, there’s no turning back now”, as though we could before!  Oh well, I don’t really know how to explain it since I can’t pinpoint it myself, but it is there regardless.  It is not a bad feeling, by any means, just different.  Maybe it’s just that I turned 30 along with this baby!  Either way, while I realize my carefree youth is gone, I wouldn’t give up this parenting life for anything.  My boys are so great!  (I also wrote this part a little while ago and as I settle in to our new family life this strange feeling is fading and a sense of content normalcy is replacing it.)

This handsome little man is getting so big so quickly!  I can’t believe it!