Timothy's Third Month

Last month was ending just as Timothy was wrapping up his 8th week Wonder Week leap! We enjoyed all the exciting new things he was learning, but the sleep disruption was frustrating, and inspired me to read "Precious Little Sleep" at the recommendation of a friend who has two kids. It was amazing how well it worked!

I wasn't wanting to do a "cry-it-out" method, but I liked her suggestion of "fuss-it-out," where we'd just let him fuss a bit for 5 minutes, and then go comfort him. Well, after snuggling and bouncing a bit to help him get sleepy, I put him down "drowsy but awake" and he only fussed for 3 minutes. We have still never had him fuss longer than 5 minutes going down for a nap, and at bedtime he usually doesn't fuss at all. This helped so much with the 20-30 min nap problem! He now takes at least 45 minute naps, and sometimes a whole hour and a half or two hours! 

He even gave us 4 nights in a row of only waking up once! (March 9-12) But now at 3 months, he's definitely going through a growth spurt, and has been getting up much more frequently. I'm really hoping he goes back to sleeping soon! Probably just in time for the famous 4-month sleep regression to hit and mess it all up all over again! Haha! Nothing ever stays the same for long with a baby.

"The Monkey Butt" outfit is one of our favorite footies!

We've had fun introducing sign language to him this month. Baby sign language is a really exciting tool for babies, because before they can verbally communicate what they want or need, they can sign it! My mom did baby sign language with my younger brothers when I was a kid, and we also taught a baby that we provided in-home daycare for when I was a teenager. It's so much fun to see a baby happily communicating what they want! He's not ready to sign back yet, but he looks very intently at my hands when I sign to him, and he's definitely starting to understand what they mean. I can't wait until he signs back! Probably will take him another couple of months, but once he starts signing back I'm going to start adding to his repertoire! Currently, I only sign to him "milk," "more," "all done," and "change diaper." (Check out the TalkBoxMom YouTube channel if you want to see the signs!)

His hand control is continuing to improve, he has a monkey that hangs from his car seat handle that he loves to play with in the car, and he's grasping his fruity teething toys and successfully stuffing them in his own mouth! The strawberry seems to be his favorite. He also blows a lot of bubbles now. And he's finally started giggling! He's had three different episodes where he just thought something was hilarious and laughed for a good 2-3 minutes straight! It's so cute and funny, but we haven't figured out how to trigger it yet, he seems to just randomly become amused enough! 

Sitting up is still his favorite, and just recently he started wanting to stand more, and even turned the sit-up game we'd been doing into the next level, pulling himself up to standing while holding my hands! I can't believe how fast he's growing. 

He still loves being worn, I like wearing him around the house while I'm doing chores if he's fussy in the late afternoon/evening, and Matt usually wears him when we walk (which has been mostly cold lately, so he's bundled up in a hat, and gets zipped into Daddy's jacket too!

We finally made it back to church this past Sunday, and he did really well. We also finally got his birth certificate stuff done! As a home birth, that can be a little difficult, but they actually didn't look at any of the proof they required us to bring! Typical bureaucracy. At his 3-month check up he was 23 inches long and weighed 13 pounds, 14 ounces! 

I'm going to switch to just doing monthly photos now, because 13 weeks was the day after 3 months, and the photo shoot attempt is getting to be too much work every week. We get plenty of cute shots at other times!

Timothy is such a treasure! It's been a whirlwind 3 months, I can't believe we're already out of the "fourth trimester" and our little newborn has turned into an active, happy, adorable and incredibly sweet and precious baby! He seems so alert and loves interaction. He's changing so quickly! It's exciting to watch.

Timothy's Second Month

At the beginning of this month, Timothy started smiling at us! He gives us such huge, cheesy grins and his eyes smile too, it's so adorable! He really is a sweet, happy baby most of the time! He's getting more demanding lately though. It used to be when he'd first wake up hungry from a nap, he'd give short little cries at first, and didn't start screaming unless I took too long getting to him, which I tried not to do. Matt commented once, "He's so polite at first." Now he tends to just wake up in full meltdown mode.

His naps have become much shorter in general, and harder to get him to take, although he did a couple of super-long 3 hour naps! Bedtime is still quite a bit of a chore sometimes, but he tends to sleep well once he goes to bed.. He's started to get so upset that he'll refuse to eat, even with the source of food in his mouth, he will scream instead of eating, and can be very difficult to calm down. But once he is fed and asleep for the night, he's done a few great stretches of sleep! He did 7 hours, just a couple nights before he turned 7 weeks old! And has occasionally only woken me up once during the night! Nighttime feeds are still really easy too, he goes right back to sleep, unless I accidentally leave him with a burp that needs to get out. 

We've started doing cloth diapers more, and just added to our stash a bit. I'm still experimenting with exactly what kind I like the best, but I'm definitely liking cloth. I might do a whole post reviewing the ones I've tried so far, and what I'm liking and disliking about each... if I can find the time between all the laundry! So much laundry. The laundry is never ending. Good thing I've always rather liked laundry. I often think how nice it is just to throw everything in a machine, not having to use the old-fashioned scrub board! I usually do multiple loads per day now, and it's very satisfying for me to walk away while the machine does all the work. After the ease of washing and drying, I don't mind having to stuff the cloth diapers and fold clothes.

Which is good, since Timothy has started spitting up more. Lots of soaked burp cloths and outfits. Matt and I have gotten some lovely spit-up showers on ourselves as well. There's really nothing like being the parent of a newborn to help you get over aversions to gross bodily fluids. "Oh, look, he peed on me again." "Spit up in my hair? Good thing it's been 5 days since I was able to snag a shower anyway." Don't even get me started on the liquid baby poop, and how it gets all over the changing pad. The nice thing about cloth diapers is that the poop seems to stick to the diaper more than to his bum, so it's easier to clean up. 

We took Timothy to his first chiropractic appointment to help with his latch, which is still a little shallow. She said she will also be able to help fix his spitting up, nasal congestion and goopy eyes! It was a really good appointment, and I did notice immediate improvement in his latch. He also likes to only turn his head to the right, so the chiropractic will help with that also. She specializes in infants, and was very gentle. I'm excited to see how this can help him!

At his 2-month appointment with our pediatrician, his official weight was 12 pounds 11 ounces. He's gained about 2 and a half pounds since his 1-month appointment, which is on track with his growth curve. He's definitely getting heavy to wear in the carrier, and to rock/bounce to sleep.

Besides smiling, Timothy has been growing even more conversational, with a wide array of sounds he likes to "talk" to us with, and he will sit and make great eye contact, taking turns "talking" for quite a few minutes with me! It's so cute. He can roll from front to back pretty consistently during tummy time. And his latest new favorite game is to sit reclined against our propped up legs, and pull from his reclined position to a full sitting up position. He holds onto our hands, and actively participates in trying to pull himself up. He has discovered his hands, and really likes looking at patterned things. 

I found The Wonder Weeks book just as he was completing this leap, which they call Leap 2. It explained why his sleeping habits changed with this leap, as well as why he's more fussy, and also listed in great detail all the things he might be learning at this point, along with ways to encourage him. The sit-up game was included in their list! They also suggested some toys, which reminded me to pull out the ones that he'd already been given.

We tried giving him a bottle, and he took it really well. With my recurrent mastitis, I've been doing a lot of preventative pumping and have a large freezer stash of frozen milk now, and we need to use it up. Some longer date nights may be in our future! We've still been managing to get out one night a week, except this current week. This past week though, we tried going out after we'd put him to bed for the night, instead of between his late afternoon feeding and bedtime, because he's been so fussy, and unpredictable about when he'll be hungry in the evening. If he'll start taking a bottle, we could let the babysitters put him to bed for the night... I'm not sure I want to do that, though! As hard as the bedtime process can be sometimes, I feel like I would miss it terribly if I passed it off to someone else!

I can't believe our little guy has already been here 2 months! He's such a sweet, happy baby most of the time, he smiles a lot, and even when he's a little fussy or grumpy, he often still has a smile right under the surface that can pop out if we talk to him. It's so fun seeing how much personality he has, and watching him grow so quickly.

So, funny enough, he turned 2 months on February 26th, and the very next day he turned 9 weeks. I kinda wish the months actually worked out mathematically with 4 weeks in a month. Oh well!

I can't wait to see how much he'll have changed in another month! Hopefully this next month holds some improved sleep. And maybe he'll start laughing!