Three Months

Wow, three months old, really? That can't be right. How can time go so fast and at the same time so slow when you have a baby? But it's true, Brock is three months old now and the light is getting brighter and brighter as we seem to finally be escaping the newborn tunnel. We didn't have a checkup with the doctor this month so I don't have his official numbers, but just out of curiosity Blaine and I measured and weighed Brock with our very unofficial instruments (a tape measure and bathroom scale) and this is what we came up with. He's somewhere between 23 and 24 inches long, but it was really difficult to tell for sure because his legs were running some kind of marathon and wouldn't stay still. I'm going to go with 24 inches though which would put him around the 55th percentile and would be a 1 3/4 inch gain from last month. We used a very scientific method of weighing Brock since he can't sit up by himself yet and we don't have a baby scale. Blaine weighed himself then held the baby and we subtracted the first number from the second and found that Brock is at about 14 pounds now, which is a 2 lb, 6 oz gain from last month and would put him at about the 67th percentile.

Here are some of Brock's accomplishments and patterns this past month:

• His first laugh was at 9 weeks old while his Mamaw Brock (my stepmom) was holding him. Every week since then he giggles and laughs more and more. And he's started "talking" to us some also.
• He has been swatting at objects some when they hang over his head, but he still hasn't quite gained awareness of his hands.
• He can roll on his side now, mostly when he's swaddled but sometimes when he's not. This week he rolled over once from his stomach to his back. I think it might have just been a fluke though.
• My personal favorite: Brock has been sleeping through the night for about three weeks now! He started sleeping from about 11:00 til 6:00 or 7:00 during the ninth week. And this past week it has been from about 10:30 to 7:00. Yaaaaay!
• He's really gained a lot of control over his eyes, and tracking and focusing are a cakewalk for him now. He seems to recognize me and Blaine also and smiles when he sees us.
• He has gained a lot of head control and can hold it fairly steady when sitting upright, but he's still a little wobbly.
• He's started grasping objects like my hair and my necklaces (which led to a shorter haircut for me), but I'm not sure that it's intentional grasping yet.
• He's spitting up less often but we can't get rid of the bibs just yet because he's starting to drool a lot now.
• Between the eighth and tenth weeks we experienced something called the 45-minute intruder during all his naps, where he went from sleeping 2 hours at a time to only about 45 minutes. It was almost like clockwork that he would wake right at the 45 minute mark. Once I figured out it was a growth spurt and he needed more food, his naps went back to normal.
• He's still needing the swaddle in order to sleep well because his arms still disturb him. Now that he's a little older, I've come to prefer the Woombie swaddle because it doesn't pin his arms down to his sides and he can move around, but he can't bust out and wake himself up.
• His legs are getting really strong, and during tummy time he likes to push with them. He might be crawling before he can actually hold his head up. (He's still not loving tummy time but he can tolerate it longer now).
• He had some lovely baby acne between weeks 10 and 11 and some pretty dry, flaky skin too. (I had a sample tube of Baby Aquaphor that worked wonders on the dry skin.)
• He outgrew his size 1 diapers around week 12, and he's outgrowing some of his 0-3 month outfits too.
• He's started disliking the pacifier this past week. He always needed it to get to sleep, but now he pushes it away with his tongue and gets mad if I keep trying to give it to him. I'm fine with this change because I don't want to have to wean him from it later on.

I wanted to record just a few things for future reference that I've noticed about myself during month 3 too:

• We've finally really gotten the hang of feeding this month, and most of the pain and discomfort have disappeared.
• One of my favorite things to do is pick Brock's nose. I know that's a little strange, but there is something very satisfying about getting those little boogers out of there (I hate the nasal aspirator though).
• I'm finding that it's not the best thing for me to read the developmental milestones that all the different websites say my baby should be accomplishing each week/month. When Brock isn't looking at his hands and fingers or rolling over and Babycenter.com says he should be by now, I start to get nervous that he's developmentally delayed. However, after three months of these irrational worries I'm beginning to realize that he's developing just fine and seems to be pretty normal.
• Finally, I realized this month that I can no longer read the book I Love You Forever. I used to love this story and thought it was so sweet, but I tried reading it one morning to Brock and choked back tears through the whole thing. I literally had to stop reading at least four times because I thought I would cry. More on this in a later post, but I think I'll retire that book for now.