Three months old!

Judah William, you are 3 months old today! A quarter of a year – I can’t believe it. You are so delightful, little boy. Your father and I never stop exclaiming to each other how incredibly adorable you are, and how much we love you. You never cease to bring us the greatest joy we have ever felt. Today also happens to be my first Mother’s Day, and let me tell you, there has never in my life been anything as wonderful as being your mother. I love every single moment. In the words of my favorite childhood book about a mother and her baby boy:

I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always,

as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.

Trying to sit up all on your own!

So grown up!

Being a ham :)

Talkin' away

My blue-eyed boy.

"Moooooom, stop it!"

How big you are:

I took you in for your three month shots on 5/11/12 and you weighed 15lbs 1oz! At two months you weighed 13lbs 15oz, so you’ve gained just over a pound this month. Your weight gain seems to be slowing, because for the first two months you gained a pound every two weeks. But you are still a big boy! You are in the 70^th-90^th percentile group for weight JApparently it is common for breastfed babies to gain weight rapidly in the beginning and slow down a little after the first couple of months.

You can still wear most of your 0-3 and 3 month size clothing when you’re in disposable diapers. When we do cloth diapers, however, your fluffy butt usually kicks you up to 3-6 and 6 month size clothing! I think I even had you in some 9 month size pants this past week, to fit over a cloth diaper, haha. So you wear a mix J

Things you love:

You still LOVE your bath time. Your new favorite thing is when I put just a couple inches of water in the bottom of the big tub and lay you on your back in there. You splash and kick and wriggle and squeal and just have the grandest time!

You LOVE to be up and looking around – you prefer to be upright rather than reclined/laying down when you’re awake.

You LOVE to talk! You will jabber away to yourself and to your toys, but you especially love talking back and forth with us. I’ll say something and you’ll say something right back!

You LOVE listening to music and being sung to. You also like to sing along with “ahhhh’s” and “ooooh’s” when I sing to you – it’s quite the adorable thing.

You LOVE your Daddy! If you are grumpy, all Daddy has to do is walk in the door and you are all smiles and squeals again! One of your happiest and most talkative times of day is when Daddy gets home from work. Daddy was the first one to get you to laugh, too!

You LOVE to be held while Momma is going about her day – you are going through a little stage right now where you will only sleep during the day if I’m holding you. You sleep great by yourself at night, but during the day I guess you don’t want to miss out on anything! We are trying to get you back to napping by yourself – we’ll see how it goes. For now, though, our Boba 3G carrier and Maya ring sling are getting a lot of use.

You LOVE people and attention – you are such a ham! Whenever there are people around you put on the biggest smiles and giggles and squeals.

You LOVE to be rocked and snuggled... and Momma just loves that you love it, because she is more than happy to rock and snuggle you! My philosophy is that "babies don't keep"... so I'll get all the baby snuggles I can possibly get.

Things you don’t like:

Sometimes you get startled by things – loud noises, sudden movements etc. – and you start crying. I pick you up and snuggle you and you calm down, but you make the saddest little face, and it just breaks my heart and makes me want to protect you from everything!

You don’t like to be put down if you are grumpy or overtired (which usually are one and the same!). It’s funny because you can sense when I’m about to lay you down and you start whimpering and grabbing on to my shirt or whatever is in your reach! I love it, of course, and you can always get more snuggles out of me! (And you know it – hah!)

You still do not like your carseat if it’s not moving – you are getting more opinionated about it! I have to wait until the very last minute to put you in it if we’re going somewhere.

What you’ve been up to this month:

Your little personalityhas been growing like crazy this month! You are still generally a laid-back baby, but you have definitely become more active and you’ve been letting us know more what you like, and what you DON’T like – hah!

You’ve always been a talker, but you would mostly talk in response to someone talking to you. Between 8 and 10 weeks old, though, you started jabbering and squealing to your toys and on 4/27/12 you had your first long conversation with yourself in the mirror on your playmat. You jabbered away to yourself for about 20 minutes! You had us all in fits of laughter – you were just so enamored with yourself!

You’ve been close to rolling over (both tummy to back and back to tummy) for more than a month but you would always startle right before you went over and pull yourself back down. You finally rolled over completely from tummy to back for the first time on 5/6/12, and you’ve done it many times since. It’s like something suddenly clicked and you figured it out! I’m sure you will be rolling from back to tummy anytime now. The rolling over coincided with you all of a sudden becoming much more active – the weekend of the 5^th-6^thof May you decided that you always wanted to be up – you like to stand on our laps and bounce up and down on your little legs. You love to stand on the ground (counter, changing table… etc.) just holding onto our hands with your little hands. The moments where we can set you on our lap and you sit calmly are now few and far between! That weekend you also decided that laying down was overrated, and you’ve started pulling up with your stomach muscles, trying to sit up. You’re still kind of wobbly when you sit, but with just a little help from us you would MUCH rather be sitting up and looking around than lying on your back, side or stomach.

You laughedfor the first time on 5/12/12 when Daddy was blowing raspberries on your belly – you think that is hilarious. It was just the cutest thing when you laughed (you did it twice in a row), and of course we have been trying to get another laugh out of you ever since!

Sleep - you go through so many little phases it’s hard to keep up with you! Sometimes you prefer to find your thumb and suck on it, and then all of a sudden you want a paci again – it’s all trial and error. Sometimes you go to sleep on your own, other times you want to be rocked, sung to, or walked around. But you always want a blankey to hold onto and rub your little face into when you are going to sleep. It’s completely adorable. You started sleeping through the night (7-8 hour stretches) at 10 weeks old, but then you came down with a cold and you were waking up at night again. Once you were over your cold, though, you went right back to sleeping through the night! You usually go at least 8 hours, from around 10 or 11pm to 6 or 7am, and then you go right back to sleep after that feeding for another few hours to around 9 or 10am. A few nights ago, though, you started going down earlier – around 8 or 9pm. You’re also having some issues with daytime naps right now, as I mentioned above, so I think your sleep schedule is changing a bit as you get used to being awake more in the day and sleeping for longer at night.

As I just wrote, you got your first cold this month (at the end of April) – poor baby! I just felt so terribly helpless, and wished I could take it away from you (you did end up passing it on to me after you were better, hah!). It was hard for you to eat because your nose was all stuffy and you couldn’t breathe while you were eating. You got a nasty little cough for a few days too. I would take you into the bathroom and turn a hot shower on – the steam seemed to help you breathe better and loosen up your cough. Your sleep was restless, and of course I couldn’t sleep well for worrying about you! I’m sure every mama hates it when their sweet babies get sick, though! It’s sad to realize that we can’t protect them from every little bad germ. But you bounced right back after about a week, and your immune system is the better for it.

You are still eatinglike a champ. When you had your cold, it was hard for you to nurse because you couldn’t breathe through your nose, so I ended up pumping and giving you bottles for some of the time. You seemed to be able to eat better out of a bottle with a stuffed up nose. You also didn’t eat as much as you normally do when you had your cold, so I ended up with a big freezer stash of milk for you. When you were better again you went right back to eating well.

You had your 3-month shots (which are technically part of your 2-month shots, but I just wanted to spread them out a bit) on 5/11/12. I had to wake you up in the middle of your afternoon nap to go to the doctor’s office, so you were alread not a happy chappy. They gave you two shots, one in each leg, and you screamed bloody murder! Normally you are a very easy baby to calm, but you were NOT having it this time. I had to nurse you to get you to calm down! You were bright red and you gave yourself hives from crying so hard! (I’m not sure what they are, but every time you’ve cried REALLY hard, which is about 4 times in your life, you get these funny spots on your head! Sometimes they last for a few days!)

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Parenthood is hard work - I know it will only get harder as you get older. That saying about motherhood - the one where it says that becoming a mother is like choosing to have your heart walk around outside you body - is so true. I hurt when you hurt. The hours I lay awake worrying about you when you had your little cold this past month will soon be hours that I worry about your first day of school, the first bully you encounter, those dreaded junior high years, the first time you drive a car, and the first time you stay out late. But parenthood is also the greatest joy I have ever experienced, and I sure your father would agree. The amount of excitement that we had just when you first rolled over is just going to be multiplied with each new milestone and accomplishment. You are our pride and joy. What a privilege it is to have you entrusted into our care. 

We love you, Judah William... more and more every single moment.