3-Month Review

First, I think Georgie might have strawberry blond or red hair. Her birth hair was a reddish brown, and we thought her hair hair was coming in as blond. Now it's looking reddish. This might be a trick of blond underneath what's remaining of her birth hair, though. I'm pretty obsessed with what color her hair will be. It's fun.

Second, I can't believe our little Georgine is already 3 months old! It's gone by so quickly, too quickly. I feel like she'll be a baby forever, but I know she'll soon be looking more and more like a little girl.

So, I thought I'd write a little about how she's changed over these 3 months and about parenting these past 3 months.

The first month was actually a lot easier than I was preparing for. Just like my mom promised me, what she did was eat and sleep this month. When she cried, it was easy to figure out what she needed: to eat. She didn't (and still doesn't) cry when she has dirty diapers. The most difficult part of these first couple weeks was feeling better after my c-section.

The second month was more challenging, because she started crying at night. Late into the night. We finally figured out that it was because she was tired, or overtired, and was having trouble settling down. Her nervous system was overloaded. So she would cry late into the night, didn't want to play or just stay up, actually wanted to sleep, but just couldn't. Or didn't know that's what she needed. We got the book and video Happiest Baby on the Block, and it worked wonders! We started swaddling consistently, shushing, gently jiggling, and recognizing that her fussing was because of being tired, as near as we could figure out. There's also a kind of creepy soundtrack in the video, supposed to emulate womb sounds but sounds weirdly industrial ... but the first night we played it loudly while she was swaddled she fell asleep within about 45 seconds and was out for the night. It hasn't worked that well since, but it does still work. She also was having what we think were gas pains this month -- a lot of grunting and fussing, seemingly because of the grunting. Mylocon seemed to work a little, maybe; gripe water also maybe did ... but mostly she just needed to grow out of it. She held her head up, high, and propped herself up with her arms more this month. She also started smiling socially this month -- what a joy! It melts my heart.

By the beginning of the third month, she was over the late night fussing and grunting, smiling a lot, and was just generally more aware of her surroundings. As I wrote about below, she also started to really like independent time. She's even grabbed some toys hanging from her little gym. She puts her hands in her mouth a lot -- at first we thought she was trying to find her thumb, and it might be that a little, but I think she was trying to use her fingers as little teethers. She does seem to be aware of her hands and her feet. And she loves looking in the mirror; sometimes she turns her head to the side to see what's behind the cute little baby staring back at her. She also kicks her legs when she gets excited ... at least I think that's what's going on. She loves the toy monkeys hanging from the lamps on our walls (the tacky fake gold and fake crystal lamps wired to our walls actually look better decorated with toy monkeys), and she kicks when I bring her over to look at them.

She's so much fun. I love being a mom more than I ever imagined. And I love watching Aaron the Papa.

Finally -- the Giraffe teether came in the mail today, and she loves it! So above are her 3-month birthday pictures, cold and all. She's even smiling in the last 2.