arden - three months

Wrote the whole post by April 19th, edited the photos, but apparently never put the two together and posted?  Whoops.  Getting it up before she is four months old in two days!

This month didn't fly by as fast as the first two, but still.  Three months old!  Can someone please slow down time?  All of my girls are growing up so fast, I can't stand it.

Little Miss Arden is still the petite girl of our bunch.  Obviously my scale methods are never all that accurate, but by my estimation she is 10 pounds 9 ounces.  So she gained maybe half a pound over the last month?  Still growing and changing daily, but I'm hoping her growth curve hasn't flattened out too much.  The older girls were between 12.5 and 14 pounds by this point.  Measuring length on my own just isn't worth it.  She is wearing 0-3 month clothing, occasionally something in the 3-6 month range, and a size one diaper.

My sweet little magical unicorn baby has still been a relatively fabulous sleeper for me.  For a few weeks she mostly slept 10 to 11 hours straight at night.  There were a handful of days that she napped so well that I was waking her just to make sure we fit 4-5 nursing sessions in a day.  The last couple of days haven't been quite as good, but still I have the opportunity to get a decent amount of sleep myself.  Bed time and wake time still vary quite a bit, adjusting for how well she naps throughout the day.  Arden is usually asleep for the night between 8:45-10pm, and up for the day between 7:30-8:30am.  She has only woken once a night a handful of times over the last month, but that time has been completely sporadic.  One night she was up at 12:45am, we've seen 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00am, and once 5:30am.  Each night it took about 45 minutes to feed her and get her back to sleep, but even the night she woke at 12:45am, she still slept until 7:45am.

We sort of attempted to transition to the crib, and at first it was pretty promising.  I started with naps, and the first day she took nearly a three hour nap in the crib.  I was so impressed.  The rest of the day they were pretty short and I think I let her take a nap in the rock n play, but overall, not bad.  That continued for a few days, and I think we had almost a week straight where she napped only in the crib, but was still in the rock n play at night.  Then for a few days she just stopped napping well in the crib, she got over tired and I got frustrated.  Annnd now shes back to being in the rock n play 90% of the time.  I still try to lay her in the crib for at least a nap or two a day, so the space isn't so foreign.  We also moved the rock n play to her room at night without any issue, so we're making progress towards spending the night in her crib?  Maybe?

Arden usually nurses about five times a day, with a sixth little top off feed, or really, an I'm tired of standing and bouncing and what not before bed so let's take the easy route to get you to sleep.  But she rarely lasts long during that feed, and totally uses me as a human pacifier.  Whatever, I'm over it.  We have also done a little work on her falling asleep on her own.  She has been successful in both the rock n play and the crib, but definitely not consistent.  She does the best in the morning, and ok mid afternoon.  But by late afternoon or the evening she just screams if I set her down.

Girlfriend has been really finding her voice over the past month.  She spends a lot of time cooing in general, and definitely seems to respond when you are talking to her.  I love it so much, and so do her big sisters.  They get a kick out of having a 'conversation' with Arden.  Elsie uses the funniest highest pitch voice ever when she talks to Arden, but it gets her to smile and coo so I guess she likes it.  :)  But by far the best noise I heard all month was a sweet little giggle!  I didn't believe it at first, as I felt it was too early for her to be doing any form of laughing, but it really is a little giggle.  It is tough to get, and if you try too hard she just spits up.  But man, baby giggles, I love them.

Gross motor skills wise, Arden's head and neck control continues to get better, but that is about it.  No rolling over yet.  She seems like she might be gaining some control of her arms and hands, but it isn't obvious.  She often spends some time just staring at her hands though, watching her little fingers move.  One afternoon while she was flailing around she scratched her face, so I pulled the little mitts of the sleeper over her hands.  I swear she stared at them like "what the heck?!? where did they go?!?" It was rather cute.

We seem to have made it out of flu season unharmed (granted it is still 40 degrees outside.  Get your act together mother nature).  But Arden seems to have picked up a cold that one of the girls brought home from preschool.  Her poor little stuffy nose.  Really that seems to be her only symptom, but it makes it difficult for her to nurse effectively.  And we now know that Arden strongly dislikes the nose frida.  Sorry girl.  We're also dealing with some eczema.  I'm not sure if it has to do with anything I'm eating, just the weather, her being a baby, what.  But it's a bummer.  We're constantly slathering the kid in cream from head to toe.  Arden also has some pretty bad looking spots on her neck, my best guess is from her spitting up and being in the car seat.  It just looks so raw and sad.  I need to figure out a way to protect her little neck from rubbing on the straps too much.

Love you Miss Arden.