Nate, you are 12 weeks old today! I guess that means you’re also three months old. That part always confuses me, because you were born on the 24th of the month and today is just the 16th, so that doesn’t really make sense. I guess the math doesn’t really matter all that much.
The important thing is how much you are growing and how many smiles you add to our day. In fact, it doesn’t even seem to matter if we smile at you first now. Sometimes I just look over at you and you are smiling your little face off without us even being nearby.
Your very favourite thing in the world these days, other than nursing, of course, is to look at the books in the bookcases we have in the living room. I can put a blanket down on the floor at the base of these bookcases and lay you down there and you will coo and smile and wave your arms in the air, all excited about these books. I am secretly thrilled that you like books so much already, even if you don’t know what they are or what wonders they hold in store for you. I take it as a good omen that you will grow to love books and reading as much as I did as a child, and still do as an adult.
You’ve started going to bed at a more reasonable hour, lately. This doesn’t mean that you’re sleeping a whole lot more through the night but it does mean that your dad and I get a little bit more time to ourselves to do some things around the house or just sit together and watch tv without being interrupted. Your bedtime these days is sometime between 8:00 and 8:30. It just happened one night that you looked awfully sleepy and I swaddled you up and said to your dad, “I’m tempted to see if he’ll go down in his crib now instead of later,” and when I did you stayed there asleep for three and a half hours. You did the same thing the next night and the next and now that is your bedtime.
During the day, sleep is a different beast, however. You only take catnaps so far, sleeping for just twenty or thirty minutes at a time. These brief naps seem to refresh you, though, so I guess I should just take what I can get at this point! You still sleep your best naps in your swing, but I’m hesitant to let you take all of your naps there. I really hope you will take longer naps in your crib someday soon.
You are all about your hands these days, too. You hold your tiny fists up in the air and just stare at them as though you are trying to figure out some kind of puzzle. You put them up to your mouth and lick them like they are little ice cream cones (you can’t stick your tongue out as far as other babies do because you have a slight tongue-tie). In the last day or two you have realized that the things you touch with your hands have different textures and that seems to fascinate you. The other night I knelt down to your level on the floor and you touched my face clumsily with your hands, grabbing my mouth and swatting at my cheek. I loved every moment of sharing that experience with you for the first time.
Tonight I put you on your tummy in your crib and then squatted down to the side and looked through the bars at your face. You held your head up high, and your elbows propped you up, the way Charlie Brown and Linus sit with their elbows propped up on that brick wall, and when you saw my face through the bars of your crib your face lit up to see it there and my heart melted. It seems to me that the experience of being pregnant and giving birth are entirely separate from the experience of being a mother to you. Nothing could have prepared me for how it makes me feel when I look down at you and remind myself that you belong to me and your dad. That we are a family now. The newborn baby you once were is gone already, and the little guy you’ve become is so interested in and curious about everything…seeing the world through your eyes makes every middle-of-the-night feeding worthwhile.
