Sunday, October 20, 2013

A Baby J 3 Month Update!

Well, we made it through the dreaded "4th trimester"!  Baby J is 3 months old!  Okay okay, I'm so far behind on posting this that he's actually more like almost 4 months old.... whoops.  So look for a 4 month update next week?  Ha... right.

It's hard to believe how big Baby J has gotten!  It's appears that monster babies are both born and made.  Nature vs. nurture you see.  :-)  Because although Baby J was only 6 lbs 13 ounces when he was born, he's now over 15 pounds!  I'm excited to go to the doctor for his 4 month appointment and get his official stats.  I'm NOT excited for his shots. 

Look how big he's gotten!

Karla - we still LOVE your blanket you made us!

Everything is so so so so so SO MUCH BETTER.  Like a ridiculous amount better than before.  It's crazy to think back on how different it is now.  Sleeping - not so much - but that's for a different paragraph!  Everything else is SO MUCH BETTER! 

Baby J smiles at us ALL THE TIME.  He rarely cries, except when he's hungry (and he can go from 0 to GIVE ME FOOD NOW I'M STARVING in about 15 seconds so it's very important to be very ready to feed him IMMEDIATELY!) and when he's tired and starting to get fussy.

I just feel so lucky that he's just so freaking smiley all the time - I don't feel like all babies must smile this much?  We are blessed.  He's just so adorable and he smiles at you like he loves you SO MUCH and it just makes you so happy.  Making him smile is my #1 priority.  Which is why the dishes are never done and the laundry piles up.  :-)

SMILEY!  And just look at that belly!  
He still LOVES bath time and now thankfully rarely cries when we take him out. 

He still doesn't LOVE tummy time but now he *sometimes* tolerates it for a minute or two.  He does kind of have a flat head on one side from when he was a newborn and majorly favored laying on one side of his head.  I don't think it helps that his head his ginormous and in the 90th percentile, especially compared to his 50th percentile weight.  It really has me worried he'll need to wear a helmet someday.

But his head control is getting a lot better!  He is not even remotely close to rolling over which has me a bit worried as well, he's definitely not a prodigy in that department.  But I guess since he was 3 weeks early he needs an extra 3 weeks to do everything?



Can you tell we had a photo shoot one day?  This was during the monsoon so the lighting was poor and therefore the pictures aren't as crisp as I'd like, but we had some fun with costume changes and background changes!  Baby J was a good sport.  :-)




He still for the most part doesn't really like his pacifier, which is frustrating.  He is like his Mom and Dad I guess, in that when he's hungry he's STARVING and no fake look-a-like will do.  Those Biggest Loser people who tell you to chew Extra gum instead of eating real food are full of crap by the way.  :-)

He IS starting to hold on to stuff and grab at stuff though - which I noticed for the first time with his wubbanub pacifier thing, on a rare day when he liked it!


He also sometimes kind of holds on to the elephant and frog that hang from his playmat now, instead of just swatting at them!  He is also tracking toys with his eyes - he's been tracking us for a long time but never really focused on toys before.

He's also found his hand / finger is fun to suck on all-the-time now, not just when he's hungry. 


We're on a decent schedule - nothing rigid or really timed but we do eat-play-sleep cycles during the day of about 3-4 hours.  I try to force him to eat a lot during the eat segments, but I don't know if he's just not really eating as much as I think he is or it's because of his monster baby tendencies, but we're still not doing that well at night.

So let's talk sleeping.  I feel like I should do an entire post about this but here's the Cliff Notes version: Sleeping has gotten worse, if anything.  The last time I posted I mentioned how Baby J had given us one 6 hour stretch and one 7 hour stretch and I was feeling encouraged by these occurrences.  Now we're back to being lucky to get 4-4.5 hour stretches (more often it's 3-3.5 hour stretches), and we haven't really gotten anything longer than that in a LONG TIME.  He's up at least 2 times a night on work days (when I get up at 5-6am anyway and therefore he gets up too) - but technically 3 times a night if he's sleeping until 8am like on weekends.  It's EXHAUSTING.


He's also starting to really struggle to fall back to sleep after the 2nd time he wakes up.  He'll be asleep in our arms but as soon as we lay him down in his crib he's awake.  Repeat a thousand times or until you're so tired and frustrated that you negotiate with the terrorist and put him in his swing.  This happens nearly every-other-night.  And at the rate we're going he's going to outgrow that swing in the next month and THEN what will we do?!?!?!? 

 Again - can you believe how big he's gotten?

So as always, sleep advice is GREATLY appreciated.  I swear I've read every book out there and I swear I'm doing *most* of what they say - eat-play-sleep schedules, white noise, good naps during the day, trying to feed him plenty during the day, trying to see if he'll go back to sleep without eating (he NEVER does - he's a monster baby after all), a nightly routine, etc.  We have stopped swaddling since it scares me he will suddenly learn to roll over while swaddled even though he doesn't seem to be close to doing that.  Yes, I'm crazy.

I refuse to straight-up cry it out, at least this young, but am open to gentler approaches.  Or perhaps he's just still too young to do much for now?  It wouldn't be such a big deal if I could sleep a bit later but I have to be AT work by 7:30am at the latest.


But besides the sleeping issue - everything is great!