Status report: Month 3

Chloe is three months old today. This feels highly significant, although I think that's because it's the age when babies can hold up their heads and boy howdy, does that make a difference. She does it very well. I'm not sure when that transition happened but now when I put her on my chest to try to convince her to nap with me, up pops her head; she looks around and mewls that she doesn't want to nap, she wants to be awake! and look at things! like the quilt! and the window! and the plain blue wall!


She just got her very first cold, unfortunately; she was snorfling all last night. She sounded miserable but has been pretty happy today, Miss Mimi told me when I visited daycare at lunch. Her first week there has been very good; there are two other babies in the infant room and the teachers claim that she's by far the happiest and most calm. Also, apparently she falls asleep whenever they put her down for tummy time. I guess the scenery isn't as interesting there.

Her hands have been a big thing this month; she's been sucking on them a lot for comfort, and just in the past few days she's taken to holding her fist up and staring at it. Her hands are the marker I use to detect that she's really getting bigger: they're so much larger than they used to be, and the fingers are getting pudgy. She used to keep them tightly furled all the time, and they're still often that way. But sometimes they're outstretched, and I love how her fingers swirl and mark the air and sometimes remain hanging in midair for no particular reason.

She bats at and grabs toys now, and likes her Tigger and teddy bears and things that rattle and crinkle. Whenever we go for a ride we turn on the pink elephant above her carseat, and she stares at it and smiles. She watches it intently as it swings back and forth, her head cocked to the side now that we've removed the carseat's newborn head insert.


She likes to stand, held in place for balance only, and look around. She likes sitting a lot, too; I put her upright against a pillow and she grins. This may be one reason she's liking baths better; we put her in the sitting part of the baby tub instead of the reclining one for infants. She sits in my lap while we read, and grabs at the pages. (Now I know why board books are useful even before babies are putting everything in their mouths.) She also grabs at my hair; it's time to either cut it or put it up regularly.


Bedtime has been getting better; she now goes to sleep between ten-thirty and eleven. (Getting up at six probably helps.) I'm nursing her to sleep a lot, partly because it's reliable and easy, partly because I'm a little afraid of putting her to bed because it's been such a struggle so far and I don't want to lose my sleep to coaxing her to sleep. (I know I need to get over this.) I had thought she'd be moving to her crib around now, but I think we're going to stick with the bassinet a little longer. It's nice to be able to get to her in the night before she cries. However, when she sleeps with me she seems to wake up more often than when she sleeps alone, so I don't know how long she can actually go; hence, we need to start putting her to sleep in the bassinet instead of letting her sleep in the bed.

She's a big girl now, chubby and long. She's outgrowing the only socks that really stay on, which makes me sad, but she's able to fit into an awful lot of new cute stuff, which makes me happy. I went shopping for baby clothes with Carol the other day, the first time I did any serious clothes shopping for her, and had a great time. She anticipates food now, seeming to know what I'm doing when I put her in position and lift my shirt. She coos, and is doing some babbling, and the other night started mimicking Eric as he made different vowel sounds. As Carol said recently, she's a lot more there now.