three months with alice

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Princess Lasertron in alice

Dear Alice,

Today you are three months old.

I feel like I keep waiting for the “hard part” to start. There have been some tough days, but those always come at the times when I stay up all night working as you sleep, or when I am taking you all over town to meeting after meeting. (Or when your grandparents are babysitting you, or so I hear.) But you are just an easy baby. An easygoing baby. A very smart girl.

You like to play by yourself, and I usually leave you alone for some period each day to roll around and explore without the distraction of mom or dad. Sometimes I turn on your Wee See DVD and you lay entranced on your side, playing with your hands, and watching the shapes on the screen move. Sometimes you prefer to play with your crinkly frog, or chew on your kitty wrist rattle, or gather up your blanket in your hands and stuff it all in your mouth. You like feeling fabric in your hands or brushed over your arms and tummy. You also really like being naked.

This month you exploded with expression, personality, and love. Seriously–until this month, nothing could have made you unhappier than a) being hung upside down by your toenails, and b) being held or touched or looked at by your dad. But now you are starting to prefer him over me in certain ways–you like it better when he changes your diaper, when he carries you in the wrap, when he holds you facing out and lets you suck on his knuckles.

Here are some of your new skills…
…playing with your hands–clasping them together, sucking on them, and and grabbing anything near them
…rolling over, both ways. The first time you rolled over back-to-front, you were on top of my craft table over a cement floor–Luckily I was standing right there and caught you. From now on, you have to play on the floor, and you HATE it because you can’t see anything. You would rather see faces and people moving around or posters on the wall or the tv than your toys on the floor. If you liked sitting in the wrap, you could be up with all the grown-ups, but as I said before, only dad can do that right these days.
…watching tv. It really distracts you while I’m feeding you, and if I put you on the couch facing away from the tv, you wiggle and turn yourself around to be able to see it. So. That’s the beginning of a great habit.
…enjoying the baby swing.

Once you mastered rolling over, you pretty much stopped doing it. It’s almost as if you are thinking, “Well, I’m finished with that project, give me another one.” You seem to be tackling crawling next–you kick ALL THE TIME and scoot around the floor, off the couch, around in circles, all over the place. Once you go mobile, my productive work days will certainly be numbered. Oh and I can’t wait for you to choke on a button. Obsessively babyproofing.

You still have the same schedule–you go to sleep each night around 2am, wake up to eat around 9, and then fall back to sleep until around 1. You are a WONDERFUL night sleeper, but a complete non-napper during the day. You are wide awake and ready to be entertained from when you wake up until the wee hours of the morning. That is okay though, because I still like to work at night and having you up that late to be able to sleep in works for us both.

Our bedtime routine includes a bath (when you become a bubble monster), feeding you and singing to you while I make blog posts and edit photos, and then letting you suck on my finger after you’re full in my lap until you fall asleep. It really works every time.

I keep thinking to myself that you are more than a gift–every baby is a gift. But I feel like you were almost created exactly for me, to give me what I was missing, to make my life easier and happier–much easier and happier than I expected. The more I learn about you, the more astonished I am at how perfectly your nature fits in with mine, like puzzle pieces. I feel intuitively tuned into your needs and it’s as if you, in turn, are aware of what I need from you. What I’m saying is that you could be a much more difficult baby, and I already have so much stress from work. I am so grateful and amazed and blessed that you are not a source of stress for me, but happiness and calm.

You are calm and observant and social. You give me those morning smiles and they melt my heart, and you happily look out the window or doze during car rides around town, and you sit alert at meetings and events, looking around the room, smiling at all of your new friends. You eat when I feed you. You sleep when I rock with you. You babble at me when I lean over you and sweep my hair across your face, tickling your cheeks. Thank you for being what I need, and thank you for teaching me to slow down a little bit. I love learning about you every day.

We love you, pancake.