Hellobee

Baby Scribbles turned 3 months on Thanksgiving.  So far we are really enjoying this month!

Month two was an odd in-between time; Scribs was awake enough to realize he wanted attention, but not really old enough to enjoy play. Now he is really awake! Although we haven’t gotten anything I would classify as a proper “laugh,” he is extremely expressive and gives all varieties of smiles. He loves to vocalize; he especially loves to “sing” along with us. It is becoming a daily tradition for us to sing along with Pandora stations on my phone. Last week at Church he started cooing while one of our congregation members was singing a hymn. Our church is pretty small so everyone could hear him! It was really cute.

Scribble has become very attached to his momma and daddy. Since we live close to family, he has had a lot of exposure to different people. At first he was fine with being held and even being rocked to sleep by anyone, but now he fusses when he is held by someone unfamiliar. This was a pain on Thanksgiving since everyone wanted to hold him!

When Scribble is awake he watches us intently. Sometimes I feel like I have to leave the room entirely to break the intensity of his gaze! For example, if daddy is rocking him to sleep, it is best I get out of his eyesight or he’ll just watch me. He likes to watch me do chores like sweeping and dusting.

In month two Scribble couldn’t bear his bouncy seat unless he was asleep. Now we can rely on him to enjoy the toy bar for 20 to 30 minutes before he decides he is bored. I can usually get him to do this 2 or 3 times a day. This gives me time to do a few chores, get a shower, and for us to eat together at lunch and dinner.

He is also very aware of his environment. He stares at our dog, as well as the television and my phone! I can’t believe they get started on the electronics this early. Yikes!

He is starting to hold things intentionally. He grabs at our fingers and pulls them into his mouth. He grasps light objects like his clothes during changing and toys that are danging in front of him, but he hasn’t started grabbing free-standing toys yet.

He is chewing on his hands a lot and in the past two weeks has really started rejecting the pacifier. I am trying to keep him from establishing a thumb-sucking habit. He only really does this when we are rocking him to sleep so I can usually just take the thumb out and coax him to sleep without it.

Now, the challenges….

I hesitate to call this a 3 month ‘update’ because that would imply that I have some sort of system going! In reality, the only constant thing we have is a lack of a routine!  This is in part because Scribble goes through phases so quickly, and partly because I am not good at maintaining a daily schedule.

Our biggest problem area is naps. I am not sure if this is a problem I am causing, or just a function of his age. Scribble naps intermittently. I can usually count on him to get one good nap a day (1 hr or 1hr 30 minutes); the rest of the day he cat-naps in 20 or 30 minute increments, usually after eating. I find myself holding him through naps quite a bit, although I am breaking that habit.

Environment seems to play a big role in this problem.  Right now he takes most naps in his bouncy seat in our living room.  Our living area has a lot of sunshine and I think he may prefer to sleep in a darker environment. However, I am trying to train him to nap in sunlight so that our schedule can have a little variety. He also has a hard time sleeping in his pack and play unless he is swaddled, but his naptime sleep is so fragile that he usually wakes up if I try to swaddle him, which makes me hesitant to put him in a bedroom for naps.  I have read that babies don’t always start consolidating naps until later, so I am hopeful that he will naturally start napping longer.

Nightime sleeping seems to be going well. We start putting him to sleep around 8:30 and it usually takes us 30 minutes to get him down completely. He wakes once at night, usually around 3:30 or 4:00, and we nurse half-asleep. He wakes for the day around 8:00. We have been able to put him down awake a handful of times, and he has fallen asleep with the help of his mobile.  The night before Thanksgiving we got to my family’s house really late. Although he slept most of the way there, he was still exhausted. He slept his very first eight hour stretch that night!

We were bathing him every 2 or 3 evenings but found it hard to get into a rhythm, so after Thanksgiving holiday we started doing it nightly. Unfortunately the bath seems to energize him since he loves to play! (We had to stop bathing him on the counter and moved his bathtub into our tub because he splashes so much!) It has taken longer to calm him into sleep now that we’re doing the nightly bath, but I am sure he will get into rhythm soon.

Last night he did a really odd thing: he woke up twice (at 2:30 and 6:30). I am wondering if this was a fluke, the beginning of a sleep regression, or a signal that he wants to start waking earlier and going to sleep earlier.

Tummy time is a struggle for us. He hates tummy time unless he is propped on the boppy. He has rolled from belly to side but hasn’t completed a belly-to-back roll yet. I wonder if he is behind on this milestone? Part of our problem is lacking a good place to do tummy-time since we have hardwood floors. We need to buy a living room rug but haven’t had the time or the money to invest in that purchase yet.

Breastfeeding is going well at the moment. Month two was awful because my oversupply was still not regulated and I had a terrible case of Overactive Letdown that made him gassy and fussy.  My milk supply was almost balanced when the week before Thanksgiving he went through a little bit of a nursing strike, which caused another round of engorgement for me. I had to put him to sleep in order to get him to eat for more than a few minutes! This week he is nursing voraciously.  Now my supply actually seems a little low (or, probably more likely it is just normal at this point).

Because of my oversupply I have held off pumping, but I am starting to pump now because we have a few adult-only holiday events coming up and will need bottles. I also am going back to work part-time next year and want to establish a freezer stash. I need figure out the best times for me to pump. Scribble is still fed on-demand so it is hard to establish a set time because I never know what will interfere with his meals.

I struggle with how to work everything into the day! Sometimes it feels like we are a slave to our burgeoning schedule. I am often torn between competing interests– I want to protect baby’s schedule but I also want to maintain some flexibility.

I also need to work harder to get out of the house a few times a week; right now I am putting off most shopping until I can leave him with his daddy; it still feels like unnecessary work to get the baby out of the house when we can always count on dad to grab the essentials on his way home from work. But winter will be here soon so it is important to take advantage of milder temperatures while we can!

So, what was your baby like at 3 months? Did you feel like you had a routine in place? Please tell me your days are as wacky as mine!