Levi at 3 months

oh, the cheeks. love!

The past 3 months have felt like the longest of my life, but I'm starting to feel the time going by faster. Adjusting to 2 kids and having a super fussy baby for the first 5 weeks made the time drag by, but I can tell I'm going to blink and he'll be 6 months, then blink again and he'll be one year old.

Levi is wearing both 3 month and 6 month clothes, but will be in all 6 month soon. I love seeing Levi in some of the same clothes that Isaac wore.

Levi is actually pretty similar to Isaac at 3 months. He tries to sit up from any reclined position and has started drooling. The drool still isn't excessive, but I know we're getting there.

About a week ago he figured out how to put his fingers/hand in his mouth, and he loves it. I love it too, because even though it will introduce more germs into his body, it keeps him more entertained.

He is now tolerating being worn in the Ergo. He loves to chew his hands while I'm wearing him, but I think getting older is the real key. He never really liked the Moby. I haven't tried it recently, but I think being more aware and having greater head control is contributing to enjoying being worn.

I rock Levi to sleep for most of his naps. Occasionally he will fight me and will not let me rock him. If that happens I simply lay him in the rock n play and he falls asleep on his own. Part of me feels like since he can fall asleep on his own, I should let him do it every time, but the other part of me can't let go of rocking him yet. Maybe it's because he's my last baby, but I just love watching him relax in my arms and drift off to sleep. At this age Isaac was napping in his crib and falling asleep on his own for most naps. I pressure myself to get Levi in his crib, but I know his naps will become shorter, and he will become crankier, and that's not a battle I'm ready to fight yet.

At 2 months Levi was waking up around 4 or 5 am to eat, then back to bed until 8 or 8:30. Around 9.5 weeks he magically dropped that feeding and started sleeping all night long! It was wonderful and we did nothing different, it was all him. Bedtime is now 8:00-8:30 and he wakes up in the morning between 7-7:30.

We did move him from the rock n play to the pack n play at night this month. He started getting much more squirmy and loud at night and we felt like he might be more comfortable with more room in the pack n play. He did well from the first night, but he does require many pacifier replacements through the early morning, usually from 2:00 on, peaking between the hours of 4-6. It's not that bad because the pnp is right beside the bed and it's easy to reach over, pop the paci back in, and go back to sleep, but we definitely aren't ready to move him to the crib because of this issue. His room is completely across the house from us, and neither of us feels like walking across the house several times in the middle of the night. We're hoping he outgrows the paci thing during the night or if we have to we can "sleep train" for that when he gets old enough. For now we're just dealing with it.

His eczema got much worse this month. It used to just be on his cheeks, where Isaac struggled with eczema as an infant, but then I started noticing patches around the creases of his elbows, then more on his shoulders and arms. The eczema battle is not a new thing to us, but Levi's is starting earlier than Isaac's did. Isaac actually was referred to a pediatric dermatologist at 4 months, and we may be heading down that path for Levi too.

I don't think I mentioned it in the past updates, but for the first 2 months of his life, Levi screamed 90% of the time he was in the car / car seat. He hated it. Somewhere after 2 months he started getting better, usually only crying when the car was not moving. He is now typically ok when we're moving, but it really all depends on how rested/hungry he is. Still, we have made progress this month.

He got his second cold of his short life this month. At least we thought it was a bad cold, until we went to the doctor and he tested positive for the flu. At that point it had been too long since the onset of symptoms to take Tamiflu so we were given instructions to keep doing what we were doing to keep him comfortable and it should be over soon. He handled it amazingly well, getting super mad when I would suction his nose and fussing for a bit after that, but then he got over it and was his normal, happy self.

Our favorite baby items this month:

new discoveries...Nosefrida! I ordered one of these when Isaac had his first cold around 5 months, and probably used it only once. I just didn't get the appeal. I honestly liked the bulb syringe better. Fast forward a few years...I love it now! Poor Levi was so congested this month and I was desperate so I tried the Nosefrida again. It's amazing how much snot I can get out. I think I just didn't suck hard enough when I used it with Isaac. I recommend it to all my friends now and I even told the nurse practitioner that we saw that she needs to recommend it to all her patients. She wrote it down.

I was a little uncertain about how I was going to be able to love another little boy, but this little guy pushed his way in and took up residence. I can't wait to see him grow up!