3 Month Update

Our little owlet. 

Greta turned three months old on Tuesday. To be honest, I feel like she's growing and changing, but not in ways that are distinctly notable. When I look at pictures of her at two months, she doesn't look all that different than at 3 months -- I guess I'm just surprised because there was such a big difference from 1 month to 2 months. We're all generally happy and healthy, though.

Selfy-style family portrait. 

A few points of interest:

She has found her hands. She sucks on them frequently and often holds her hands together near her face. Sometimes, she's so excited to suck on her hands, she'll get them in the way of nursing. What a confused baby!

Greta with Ben on the train back from Chicago. Note the  interest in her hands. 

She also displays a greater variety of activity with them. She not only bats at her hanging toys, but she now will sometimes reach out and gently caress them, or after we've put a pacifier in her mouth, she will put her hand on it as though she's holding it in with her hand instead of just her mouth. As I write this, I'm sitting on the floor and she's intermittently reaching out and touching the corner of my laptop and absentmindedly touching the tulle of her pant-skirt combo. She seems to enjoy textures.

She also held her own bottle for the first time last week. It was the early morning and Ben was gently calling me from the other room (where I was putting pump parts in the dishwasher) for quite some time before I realized he was talking to me and not the baby. When I came in, she was swallowing eagerly while holding her bottle with both hands and Ben wasn't touching it at all. I scrambled for my phone and just as I snapped a blurry, low-lit photo, she let it drop off to the side. It was awesome to see, though.

This was the very end, just as she was starting to lose her grip on it. When I first came in, she'd been holding it like a pro for quite some time. 

She's continuing to become more vocal. She still coos and makes adorable noises that sound like "hi" and "yeah" and whatnot, which is super-endearing. She also has started squealing a bit when she gets excited and vocal. She most often coos and squeals when she's interacting with her hanging toys, or with her own reflection in the mirror. She interacts with us too -- especially when Ben makes her laugh (which is another first, I think . . . she'd done happy squeals towards the end of the second month, but no real giggles until more recently). But I really do think there must be some kind of baby drug in those hanging toys. She just loves them so much.

Action shot of Greta interacting with her activity gym animal friends. 

Speaking of playfulness, we're starting to see a little more personality. She is taking a more active interest in things -- rather than just staring at them intently, she's starting to look at things more carefully. She has been taking more interest in her mirror, for example. Yesterday she kept smiling at herself, and then reacting to the "other" baby's smiles. And while she's usually taken an interest in our voices, she now seems to not only react to, but also appreciate it when we talk to her, sing to her, or read to her.

Who's that other baby?

This month we also had a few firsts as a family. We traveled out of town the last two weekends. First to stay at a cabin with the Masons and the Zieglers, where we noticed for the first time just how young and tiny Greta seems in comparison to all the other babies. She seemed like she had lots of fun, though, even though she was clearly not as skilled as the older babies.

Greta and Solveig being friendly at the cabin. 

Greta appreciating the finer things in life at the cabin -- like Asher's bouncer. Note that she's wearing a hat that Casey made for her, and socks that Amanda gave her. And yes, that's a bow-tie and suspenders onesie. What a lucky baby!

It is very crazy to think that from the oldest to the youngest, they are less than 4 months apart. I'm starting to realize that with a lot of the babies that have been born or are going to be born this year. If my sister has her baby "on schedule," Greta will be only 6 months older than her cousin. In a few years, that age difference will be meaningless.

Speaking of my sister, our next trip was to Chicago for my sister's shower. That was an eventful trip. Our train to Chicago was five hours delayed, making for an exhausting and frustrating day. (Boy did I regret having woken up at 4:30am that morning! If only I'd slept in until Greta woke up . . . ) The train ride down was not very pleasant, but the train ride back at the end of the weekend was downright lovely and made me forget the curses I'd made in the direction of Amtrak only two days prior.

Train!

I would love to take Greta on a train trip again, but only if we have lots of wiggle room on either end of our travel days. As I overheard one of the attendants saying to a passenger, "Amtrak is great if you have nowhere to be." (She was saying this in all earnestness, by the way. The passenger had just said that she didn't mind the delay because she was retired and had nowhere she needed to get to. I found it both ironic and amusing, though.)

We also got to try out our new stroller on the trip. It was stressful to get it in time (if you want to know the name of the store we recommend not buying from, just ask). But having something that clicked in with our car seat made the travel so much easier -- to just be able to have her hang out in the stroller while we waited at the train station and to be able to just use one hand to transport baby, breastfeeding pillow, car seat, and pump bag around here and there. Win.

Waiting for our train to depart -- 5 hours late. Thankfully, we knew it was late well ahead of our scheduled departure time, so we only waited at the train station for an hour or so. 

Greta also seems to have turned a corner with her meds. For those who don't know, we give Greta a pill each day because of a condition that she has had from birth. It's not easy to give a baby a pill. The way that we manage it is to crush the pill up, dip a finger in breastmilk, and then get her to suck the medicine off of our finger. We have usually managed to get the pill into her with minimal waste, but it's hard work, and there have been days when she is so upset and crying so hard, we end up just kind of wiping the crushed pill on her tongue and washing it down with the breastmilk -- which also works, but is generally more upsetting for all of us then when she casually sucks it off our finger. We're supposed to try to do it when she has "an empty stomach" (as her doctor said, "When a baby is eating every couple hours, how would you possibly know when their stomach is empty?") but about a month ago we first started giving her her meds in-between sides while breastfeeeding, rather than doing it at the start of a nursing session. This produced a very calm baby for medicine time the first time we did it, and so we've transitioned to this routine just about everyday. We still had only about a 50/50 chance of it going smoothly, though.

A few weeks ago, we had two really good sessions with the meds in a row. Then the next day it went well again, and the next. Just before we were headed to Chicago, we realized that we'd made it a week without any rough days with the meds! Now, for the last two and a half weeks, she's had only one or two rough days --- and if I'm remembering correctly, at least one of those was on a moving train. She's really turned a corner. Things aren't perfect, but our little girl is definitely growing up.

She's still sweet when she sleeps . . .

. . . but now she knows she can be sweet and awake.