Month 3

Gosh this was a fun month! I love that each month will just get more and more exciting as she develops more. She is so aware of the world around her now and so interactive and we love it!

She got her first shots at the very beginning of the month and it was so sad! She was sitting on the table, smiling and talking to the nurse, and then BAM. She looked so betrayed. She screamed for a couple minutes and then I fed her and she calmed down. She slept almost all day for the next two days, but really wasn't fussy.

She now smiles all the time. It's so fun! She especially loves when you stick your tongue out, high-pitched noises, when you gasp, and singing. I love going to her crib in the morning and being greeted with a huge smile. Her smiles usually start small, and then take over her whole face. She smiles with her mouth wide open and often throws her head back and arches. It's like she's smiling with her whole body. We started getting some little laughs too. It's kind of the best. She loves to talk to us too. She will sit and coo and smile for hours, especially at night before bedtime.

She is officially over swaddling. She would get herself unswaddled no matter how tightly we did it and it would wake her up every time. We tried the hardcore velcro swaddles and she HATED them. She did not want to be so tightly wrapped. She would only sleep for about 30 minutes at a time in the velcro ones. She adjusted a little bit and slept longer, but then she started breaking through those ones too. I finally decided it was time to leave the swaddle behind. We went cold turkey and have had zero problems. I wrap a blanket under her armpits and she sleeps just fine.

She found her hands and began sucking them like crazy. It's pretty cute. Except when she des it in her sleep and it's so loud is wakes me up. She like to sleep with her hands on her face now that she isn't swaddled. She is also the drool queen. SO. MUCH. DROOL.

She loves to be naked! Taking her jammies off in the morning or changing into jammies at night is the most exciting time. She also loves baths or taking showers with mommy. She HATES getting out of the bath though. 

She graduated from both her newborn clothes and newborn diapers this month. Bittersweet, but it was fun to get out all her 3-month clothing. 

She loves staring at her toys. Or staring at anything really. The other night at Panda Express, she stared at my cup for 30 minutes and then started talking to it. She is really good at eye contact and following people or objects. She reacts strongly to sound and always tries to look around to see where the sound came from. She LOVES music! She loves to sit on daddy's lap while he does home work and just listen to songs. She loves it even more when we sing to her. She's already got music in her blood. 

I don't want this to sound braggy, but she is seriously the easiest baby. (Most of the time). And it's not because of anything I do! I just lucked out, haha. She is always content. If she starts to fuss, she is fine the minute you pick her up. But she rarely fusses. She only cries if she's tried or hungry and even then it's easy to calm her down. She loves being held by anyone, and so she really loves when I take her to family get-togethers or out with friends. She will happily just sit on someone's lap for hours. She already hates to be held like a baby. She wants to be up and looking around. Laying flat is no fun. 

She still loves to be in her bouncer. She hangs out there and on her play mat during most of her alert periods. She loves the toys that dangle down from both her play mat and her bouncer. She talks to them and swats at them. It's awesome. She has started reaching for things. It's sad to see how frustrated she gets that she can't figure out how to get them into her mouth.

She is a great sleeper. She has slept all the way through the night many times, but for the most part, she wakes up once. Usually around 5 or 6am. She eats, gets a new diaper, and goes right back down with no problems. She is usually up for the day around 9am. She still sleeps in the room with us and I really don't mind it at all. Nathan sleeps through all her crying, and it makes it really easy for me to feed her, put her down, and go right back to sleep. She doesn't have a real schedule during the day, but she is sleeping less and being alert more. I figure after Christmas we will start with real napping routines. 

She is still exclusively breastfed and eating like a champ. She was 11 pounds at the beginning of December, and she is definitely still packing the pounds on. It's funny to look back at the 5 pound 12 oz baby we brought home from the hospital.  She's almost double that now! She's such a little chunk with thigh rolls and a double chin and I love it! She can go much longer between feedings which has been a great break for me. Feedings are shorter now too, usually not more than 20 minutes. (I cringe now thinking about how it used to take me an hour to feed her. Those first night feedings were rough). And luckily for me, breastfeeding is a lot less painful! I finally started to really feel better a little after Thanksgiving. There is still some slight discomfort afterwards, but really it's so much better! I was just really sensitive. I had a million people trying to tell me why nursing still hurt, (she has a tongue tie, a lip tie, she's latching wrong, etc.) and I kept telling people I knew it was none of those. I knew it was just gonna take some time. Turns out it takes about 3 months for me, haha. But I am really glad I stuck through it.

Everyone laughs at her expressions. She is seriously the most expressive baby! (I have been accused by people who haven't met her in real life that I "force her" to make the faces she's making in the pictures I post so that people will think I have a funny baby. Um... what?) She has big eyes and is constantly looking around all concerned or worried. They also make her smiles look more intense. She just sits and makes faces all day, it's hilarious. It also really distracts my young women when I am trying to teach so Nathan takes her now, haha.

She has the best mullet. It's funny because most people think she is bald, because from the front it looks like she has no hair. But from behind you can see that she has a long, luscious, old man mullet. When we were pregnant, our doctor told us she could feel that the baby had a lot of hair when she was checking for dilation. So when I first held Sadie, I thought it was weird that she was bald. Then I unwrapped her and saw the mullet. It's definitely thinning, but still not falling out like we thought it would. It's brown hair too, but her eyebrows and eyelashes are completely blond so we know she'll be a blondie like both her parents were as babies. Her mullet is pretty funny though.

She went to her first movie. I hoped it would go a little easier, but it really wasn't that bad. She was mesmerized by the screen, but she wanted to be held the whole time, and the person needed to be standing up. As soon we we sat, she fussed. Luckily we were sitting in the back, so we just took turns standing up and holding her. She also went on her first flight. She was so good! We even had a 2 and a half hour delay. Then when we finally got on the plane, we all had to get off so they could do a security check of the plane. She slept the whole flight in my arms so I napped too. I woke her up at the end to nurse her real fast before landing. She was awesome.

I feel like I really turned a corner in this whole "motherhood" thing this month. Breastfeeding stopped hurting. I am getting plenty of sleep. I have gone out without her several times. We have a good routine.  I am not as worried and anxious. And she is just so much fun!!!