Almost 3 months old...

My baby girl is growing up so fast already!  When I was at a friends the other day, who has a baby 2 months older than Emma, I was told she totally still feels like a newborn, who is so small and cuddly.  I don't feel this way at all.  I have already almost forgotten what it was like when she was that tiny!  I feel like everyday she gets a little bigger.  Here is where we are at thus far!

Holding the Head up:
She can hold her head up like a champ!  When she does tummy time, she can completely raise it up while on her elbows and look around.  She also no longer despises tummy time like she used to, due to the fact that she can look around and still see her fun toys hanging above her head.  I also finally removed her infant head support out of her carseat.  She had been too tall to use it for awhile, so we just pulled it up as far as it would go once we strapped her in.  But, due to her having much more control over her head, I took it out.  She's much more comfortable now, I think!  I was told by a couple who have a baby 2 weeks older than Em that she was holding her head up really well for that age.  Their son was still quite wobbly, so go bean!

Play time:
She is definitely becoming quite the chatty little girl.  She was bound to be that way, considering her parents! :-)  She loves to squeal, coo, and laugh as she plays with toys dangling above her.  She is also very reactionary to us.  She smiles when I do specific things and giggles at papa all the time!  We have a morning routine now, where we sing some songs and do her "exercises" that I learned from working with Isobel and Rudie!  She enjoys that time, and usually smiles and laughs all the way through!

She is also learning to reach and grab for things.  She loves the hanging dragonfly on her froggy chair, and she has learned to reach and grab onto the little discs hanging from him.  It is so cute to watch her try so hard to get her hands to do what she wants them to do.  She still gets overexcited sometimes and totally misses them due to erratic hand movements, but many times she is able to calmly reach up and grab them.  Then she smiles really big and holds on for dear life!

Sleeping:
So, she definitely doesn't take after me in the sleep category.  I was told I was a child who came home from the hospital sleeping all night.  Emma still likes to get up every 2 hours at least, sometimes ever hour, all night long!  It can make for some rough nights, and a mama who seems to be always going on very little sleep.  I'm learning to cope better than I thought I would.

For this reason, we're starting sleep training.  Right now, we're doing very mild sleep training.  We are establishing a bedtime routine right now.  She gets bathed some nights, but every night she gets an infant massage and then fed.  After that, she is nursed while papa reads the Bible to her.  Then, we swaddle her up tight, and I rock her and read her "It's Time to Sleep, My Love" while holding her.  Eventually she falls asleep in my arms, and then I lay her down.  She's down around 8 most nights, and usually doesn't wake up the first time until 11 (the only longer stretch she has).  That's about when I go to bed, so I will nurse her again, and then we start the consistent wake ups.

We have established a shorten routine for naptime as well.  Basically, I just watch for tired cues all day, and as soon as I see them, she is swaddled, rocked, read to, and put down.  Most of the time she sleeps no more than 30 minutes, sometimes as little as 10 minutes.  Usually, I will go back in and rock her again and if she falls asleep quickly I'll put her back down.  If not, I get her up.  This usually happens anywhere from 3-6 times throughout the day, depending on how much we get out of the house.  Every now and then, she'll have one really long nap (1 hour or even late in the evening she'll sleep 2 hours) allowing me to run around like crazy getting housework done (she's sleep right now, so I should be doing that).

As much as I hate the idea, and I know I will cry doing so, I think our next step is to let her learn to fall asleep on her own, by allowing her to cry it out.  I know many people are against this, and just say to hold her if she sleeps like that, but it's just not practical for me anymore.  At some point soon, I will be taking care of other children besides her.  If I have to spend 30 minutes each nap, rocking her to sleep just to go back in there and rock her again 15 minutes later, I won't be able to keep tabs on other kids.  She is going to have to learn to sleep on her own, and right now no matter how tired she is, she almost never falls asleep without help.  She is also getting to the point where she won't sleep through anything anymore, so I can't just stick her in the Bjorn and let her sleep while I am playing with other kids.  She's too curious about what's going on, and she wouldn't get in a good nap.  Therefore, soon we will have to let the crying begin.......

Other developments:

• She can put weight on her legs now, and enjoys when I hold her up in a standing position so she can look around
• As I've said, she's very curious and loves to watch everything that's going on around her.
• She's getting closer to being able to sit.  I can let go of her when she's sitting and she doesn't always immediately fall over.  She can also sit in the bumbo now!
• She's preparing for those first teeth to come in, though I'm sure they are still months away (I hope).  She's learning to chew on my finger if she can get it into her mouth.  She will gum on it all day if I let her.
• She loves her fingers.  She has learned to get her fist to her mouth, and will suck and chew on her own fingers all the time.
• We are finally back to cloth diapers!!

Overall she seems to be a very happy girl.  Other than a horrible fussy couple of weeks right around the 6-7 week mark (and right when the doctor said it would happen), she has been a pretty easy baby.  She usually only gets fussy if she's hungry, tired, or needing a little attention.  Those things are usually easy to fix.  She enjoys playing in her play gym on the floor as well as her bouncy chair.  She loves to be sung to, talked to, and kissed all over her cheeks! :-)  We get a lot of happy coos, smiles, and laughs throughout the day, which is great!  I'm excited to see how her personality progresses as she gets older, but for now, I wish she'd slow down in the growing and be my cute, cuddly baby a little longer!  Here are a few pics of her recently!

All dressed up for a wedding!

Family day to the zoo!

Sitting pretty in the bumbo!

Happy doing tummy time!

Snuggling with papa

sleeping all swaddled in the crib... with my eyes partly opened

I did what you should never do... woke a sleeping baby.  She was not happy, but we had a wedding to get to.

Reflections on being a mother...

I know I have only been a mother for ten weeks (almost a year if you count from conception) but there already a few things I feel as though I have come to realize.  Most of these things I had been told, but until being a mother and holding my baby, I couldn't fully understand them.

First of all, it really is different when it is your own child.  What is "it" you ask?  It is EVERYTHING.  I have been a nanny now for five years.  I have taken care of small babies before.  I really thought I'd be ready for most simple things that came along.  Boy, was I wrong...  This little girl has me wrapped around her finger in a way that no other child has ever been able to do.  For example, as we have been discussing how to get her to sleep and nap better, I almost melt down at the thought of letter her cry it out, yet I have had to go through the crying it out phase with two other kids.  It was hard, and I always felt like the worst nanny ever when those babies would cry, but now that it's my baby, I can't even stand the idea of letting her cry like that.  At this age, we have decided it's too early, but I know that eventually we'll get to the point where we will have to allow her to cry, and something tells me there will be as many tears on my side as on hers.

There is a good side to what's different with her as well!  I have far more patience with her at this point (and I'm hoping that continues) than I normally would with a baby of this age!  I'm not going to sit here and try to tell you I've never become frustrated with her crying and refusal to sleep at times.  I have!  But, I feel like it takes far longer than before to get me to that point.  She's my baby girl!  I am more concerned about comforting her and loving her than making her do what I want at that time.  I pray to God that he will continue to provide that same patience when it isn't simply a little crying or fighting naps, but actual disobedience that I am dealing with!

This brings me to the second thing I have learned in the past few weeks.  A couple of years ago I was reading a friend's blog she was writing after her son's birth.  She said that MOST (not all) of her selfishness went away when he was born.  I always prayed that when I would have a child, the same thing would happen to me!  We are all selfish people, and I don't know that having a child is going to take all of that away, but I know God can really use our children to cleans us and mold us into being more of what he calls us to be than we were before they were in our lives.  I prayed that he would do that for me, as I continue to do so now that she is here.

Before Em was here, I felt that when it came to my time, I was a very selfish person.  When Danny and I would sit down at the end of a long day, I didn't want to listen to him go on about the latest video game he was playing or some movie he really liked.  I wanted some "me" time.  We quickly became those people who would sit next to each other on the couch and he would do one thing while I did another.  Danny never wanted that to be the case.  He always managed to keep up on the shows I was watching, the books I was reading, and the things I was interested in.  I, on the other hand, had a very hard time remembering simple things he'd tell me about, such as the fact that Ron Perlman was Hellboy.  I would ask him who the same actors were many times, because I didn't make it a point to pay attention to all of those little details.  I didn't watch him play many video games, no matter how many times he asked me to, because I felt that we had so little down time, I deserved to use that time to catch up on my interests.

Once I found out Emma was on her way here, something in me changed.  I realized that I didn't want to raise a child in a house where her parents were spending every evening doing things in separate rooms (or might as well have been, for as much interaction we were having).  It became more important to me to keep up with what Danny was doing than to always use that time for me.  And, that has run over into how I deal with Emma.  When I look over the side of my bed early in the morning at a smiley little girl who is awake for the day, I want to get her up and play with her rather than ignore her for more sleep.  Throughout the day, I would much rather be playing with and spending time with her than reading books, watching movies, etc.  I look forward to taking extra spending money and getting her new clothes and books, rather than always wanting to get things for myself.  So, I feel that I can say that some of my selfish nature has been helped by having a child.  There are still many times that I struggle with this concept and I know that I will always do so.  We are all born with very selfish natures.  The only way we can ever get rid of them is to daily, no make that minute by minute hand over our selfish desires to the Lord and pray that he will replace them with his own desires.  So, please know that I am not trying to say that I am now a selfless woman who always puts everyone else before herself.  I am just saying that Emma has made it easier to think of someone else besides me.  At times she helps me put my families needs where they should go... above my own!  I just love her so much more than myself, and desire to love, protect, and serve her in any way possible.  My prayer now is that God will continue to remove my selfish desires when they creep back up, and replace them with his desires, which will always be to serve him by serving my family well!

This brings me to my third revelation.  A wise woman told me a couple of weeks before Emma was born that she couldn't wait to see how God revealed himself to Danny and I through our beautiful daughter.  At the time, I of course believed that I understood what she meant by that.  Then, I looked in the eyes of my beautiful daughter, and was so overcome with love for her, even more than when she was in my womb, and I came to grasp a little bit of what she was talking about.  The Bible tells us that we love, only because God first loved us.  The only reason we have the ability to love is because we are made in his likeness.  So, when I look at my daughter, and realize just how much I love her, I think about how much more Christ loves us.  I want so many good things for her in this life.  I want to protect her from all harm, love her, spend time with her.  These are all things God desires for us.  I know that being a parent will reveal God to me in many more ways, as I have to deal with things such as forgiveness, discipline, watching her make her own choices, etc.  But for now, I have a little more of an idea about God's love for me as I my love for Emma grows everyday!

So, these may seem like simple and small revelations, but for me, these are the things occupying my mind lately, so I thought I'd share.  I love my baby Emma more than I would have ever thought possible.  I so look forward to watching her grow up, become her own little person, and I pray that I get to watch her come to know and love God as well.  For those of you who are tired of listening to me babble on about my thoughts, I will give you a couple of cute videos of the bean for making it this far!  Enjoy!

She is becoming quite chatty isn't she! :-)

One more for all the grandparents/great grand parents who love to see the little one excited and chatty!