Our baby girl turned 3 months old on Christmas Day. I cannot believe it. I should have remembered from William's first year that it absolutely flies by. She's suddenly seeming like an older baby with almost no trace of the tiny newborn we met in September.
She's SO alert and happy - I swear it's not just me, her mother, who thinks this. She's had quite the social calendar the past month or so with the holidays, and has been a complete dream at every party and gathering - so smiley, giving us nice little giggles and generally being a pleasure. She happily lets anyone hold her and truly never cries unless she is tired or hungry.
She's SO big. So much bigger than William at this age. I've been trying to have her wear her cute little 0-3 month clothing one last time each, because they're sentimental to me, but she's outgrowing them left and right. She is well into 3-6 month sizes, and even 6 months in some brands.
In terms of physical milestones, she's discovered her hands. They're always in her mouth (which is ironic because while she loves to chew and suck on them, we STILL cannot get her to take a pacifier or bottle). She can hold a rattle - of course isn't really aware of how to manipulate anything yet and sometimes bops herself in the face, but you can see the wheels slowly turning as she touches and explores things. She loves her play gym - she kicks and coos happily for a few 10-minute stretches a day in it. When on her tummy, she can hold her head up well and is starting to do a half push-up, bringing her shoulders and chest up a bit. I can't believe how big she is, and how quickly it's all going by. The eternal words of parents!
She is a wonderful baby but a terribly bad napper. She has never ONCE taken a nap longer than 40 minutes in her crib. I swaddle her and she falls asleep easily, but ALWAYS, never fail, wakes up shortly. She goes down for these short naps every 2 to 2 1/2 hours, which is right on par with the awake time guidelines for her age, but I wish she'd take at least one longer nap a day, so that I could play with William and give him some one-on-one time.
At night she sleeps fairly well - usually a 4 or 5 hour first stretch, waking at 2 or so to eat, and then again at 5 and 7. However, last night (a great New Year's gift to us!) she slept straight through until 5:30 a.m. My "rule" is that when she wakes and it's after 5, I bring her into bed with me and feed her and let her catnap there until we get up for the day. I love waking up to her big, gummy smiles. One of my favorite parts of the day is unzipping her "sleep sack" and seeing her stretch her little arms and legs. It's so cute, and always accompanied by a big grin.
During the day, she's going longer stretches between feedings. Everything has really fallen into place and I'd say that starting at 12 weeks, things have been very, very easy. Feeding her on demand was very time-consuming for the first few months, but now she is putting herself on more of a predictable schedule. We moved her into her nursery at 12 weeks and have not looked back - she sleeps in her crib all night.
Gwen loves her big brother. She's able to see so much further now and I catch her watching him and smiling all the time.
This picture cracks me up. This is the sleep sack mentioned above. It's a great baby "invention" - it's not really safe at this age to put a blanket in the crib since she might end up with it over her face and not know how to get out from under it, but still needs to be warm at night. This is basically a wearable blanket - a nice warm fleece zip-up sack. This was right before we put her down one night... lounging on our bed with her furry sister, Georgia.
What an addition to our family. We all love her to pieces. She's napping right now (one of her typical short ones, I'm sure) and I miss her. We are off to a our friends' house for a New Year's Day dinner later this afternoon. I'm a bit behind and need to post our Christmas pictures, but for now, Happy 2013!
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