Three Months! And Easter!

Hey again! I'm trying really hard not to be so incredibly late with the monthly post this time. Riley reached the THREE MONTH milestone this past Thursday. On tax day, of all things. Lucky for her, we waste NO time doing our taxes (as the refund was both received and spent long ago), so we were able to spend some time with her instead of with the IR.S.

OK, let me try and think of the fun and exciting things that have happened in the last month:

• The baby girl started sleeping in her crib. IN HER VERY OWN CRIB, people! Do you know what a huge deal this was?? I spent SO many weekends telling H and one of my BFF's, "All right. This is it. I'm going to put her to sleep in her crib tonight." And then I would chicken out at the last minute and put her back to sleep in the basinette right beside our bed. But I finally worked up the nerve and it was a success!! Yippee!!


• So, how is she sleeping? Pretty well, for the most part. We put her down after her last feeding of the night, somewhere around 9:30 or 10:00. She usually stays SOUND asleep until somewhere around 4am. At this time, one of us has to go in and either re-position her or move her to the bouncy seat. She goes RIGHT back to sleep until it's time for her 5:30/6:00 feeding. When it works like this, it's fantastic.

• Does it work like that every night? Of course not. Some nights, she get squirmy and needs to be soothed back to sleep three times in the same night. Some nights, like last night, she wakes up at 4am and is WIDE-frickin-AWAKE and doesn't wanna go back to sleep. But we manage.

• Are we doing the "lay baby down while she's drowsy, but not actually asleep, so she learns to put herself to sleep" thing? No. And I hate that, mostly for what it might mean in the future. But at night, she falls asleep on her own at about 7:30, we have to WAKE her up for the 9:30 feeding (trust me, if we don't, she wakes up at 2am - starving!) and H barely gets her through that night bottle because she is so sleepy. So, she's always completely sound asleep when we lay her down at night. As far as daytime naps go, I'm only with her 2 "daytimes" each week, so I can't do much about that. Ah, well.
  
• She IS starting to take better and "more regular" naps, which is awesome! When she's home with me, she usually goes down for at least a one hour nap in the morning and another, longer, nap in the afternoon. She loves to sleep on her B.oppy on her side or her tummy, so I put her like that in her crib for day naps. We have this great breathing monitor that we borrowed from H's cousin, so I don't worry so much about her on her tummy. (She's strictly on her back at night, though. Just in case!)

• OK, enough about sleeping. What else? Well, she squealed for the first time the other day. It was pretty darn cute!

• She LOVES LOVES LOVES the camera now. Usually, when I get it out, I'll get at least one big smile from her, so we are starting to get some great pics!

• Sometime between 2.5-3 months, she moved to size 1 diapers. *sniff, sniff* No more newborn teeny-tiny diapers. Speaking of diapers, we have also started using our assortment of cloth diapers. Sometimes. If I were home with her, we'd do them every day, but we're workin on it the best we can. How do I like them? Well, it really deseves a post all it's own (maybe one day this summer...), but the short answer is I LIKE THEM! Way easier than I thought....my only complaint is the bulkiness. It makes some of her clothes (the bottoms) not fit well.

• What else? She loves to sit up! No, of course she can't do it on her own yet, but she likes to try. She likes to be sitting up in someone's lap and she likes sitting in her Bum.bo seat that the Easter Bunny brought her.

• Oh, and one other big thing. She's teething. TEETHING AT THREE MONTHS. Yeesh, I couldn't believe it, and I wasn't sure for about a week or so, but there's no doubting it now. She drools, makes bubbles and chews on her hands all day long. Not just politely puts her hands in her mouth to check em out. CHEWS on them, I tell you. We can't feel anything on her gums yet and, luckily, she isn't too fussy over it....but I'm sure it's coming.
  

All right. Now for the "Easter Post." We had a busy day planned for Easter this year. First up was church (no big thing for Riley--she's an old pro at this by now). Then it was back home to open her Easter basket. There just wasn't time to get it done before we left. Then, we sprinted over to H's mom's house for lunch. After lunch, we got in some "lazy time" with family at her house. Late afternoon, we made a quick stop by H's grandmother, so she could see her favorite new baby in her pretty dress. Last stop of the day was my parents' house for dinner. It was a busy, but nice, day.

But, can I just TELL you what all this "back and forth and go-go-go" routine did to my sweet baby girl? It made her have a complete meltdown by the time we go to my mom's house for dinner! I mean, full-on, crying and screaming that could be consoled by no one but me. And even I couldn't keep her calm for long periods of time. We certainly learned our lesson about babies and holiday visits. I'm thinking things will be a bit different at Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.

Here are some of the "pre-meltdown" pics.

And last, here is her official 3 month photo. I have the video, too, but I think I'll try to put it in a post by itself to see if it'll load better. Oh, and up next for REAL posts will be the one about her baptism, which was this weekend!





See? I told you everything goes in the mouth!! :-)