Three Months Old (Fer Dale)

The three-month mark seems to be the time when we stop referring to your age in weeks and start talking about your age in terms of months. According to my books, you are no longer considered a newborn. Now you’re a full-fledged baby. It’s a bittersweet transition for your mom and dad.

You’re doing a fine job of putting on some baby fat. You’ve been so skinny up to this point that we wondered if you would ever sport a “Michelin Man” look. Now your belly is ballooning and your cheeks are filling out. Luckily you still have those adorable chicken legs.

You are a very laid back, sweet little guy. You had your first laugh last week when papa was showing you how to throw a fastball (don’t forget to follow through). Your laugh is a little awkward at this point. It seems a little challenging for you to make a laughing noise, so we get a lot of “silent laughs” from you. I love having little conversations with you. Although we can’t understand each other, it’s a sweet dialogue that usually involves a lot of vowel sounds and smiles from you, and generally ends in happy tears from me.

You absolutely worship your big sister! You want to do everything she does. Sometimes I’ll watch you watching her and I can see the envy in your eyes. She seems equally smitten with you, which is what your daddy and I had hoped when we decided to have you two so close in age. I think you two are going to be great friends.

You’ve begun settling into a more predictable schedule. It’s still not foolproof, but I’m starting to figure out your preferred routine. One of the habits you seem to have dropped recently is the use of a binky to fall asleep. You used to suck on a binky quite a bit, but now you mostly spit it out (or choke on it) when we offer it to you. Instead you’ve begun sucking on your hand so vigorously that I sometimes wonder if you won’t just gum it off completely.

Burping is a big issue for you. You swallow a ton of air when you eat, and it doesn’t matter if you’re nursing or bottle-feeding. So every half ounce or so we have to stop to burp because you’re wiggling around so much. Actually getting a burp out of you is a bit challenging, as well. We’ve had to resort to some pretty unique tactics to get your burps out. It wouldn’t be such a big deal except that it wakes you up when I’m trying to put you down, and you won’t fall asleep unless you’ve burped.

Earlier today I spied you swatting at some of the toys on your toy bar above your bouncy seat with your feet. I guess you grew frustrated at trying to make contact with your hands so you resorted to your feet. You are definitely a determined little man. You have a little toy in the car that you can kick to make it play music and light up. You’ll stare at that thing focusing on your task at hand: picking up your foot and whacking it on the picture of the foot on the toy. Several times I’ve heard you grunt in your effort to activate the music. Then when you do, you sit back and watch the lights until the songs end.

I’m trying to look at this age not as the end of your newborn-ness, but the beginning of your babyhood. So far we’ve only gotten glimpses of your little personality. We are looking forward to watching that little personality grow, learning your likes and dislikes, and just hanging out with you and your sister. Our perfect family.