Dear Alex,

Tomorrow you will be 3 months old, and no longer considered a “newborn.” It blows my mind how much we’ve all gone through these last 3 months. You’ve grown and changed so much, and frankly Dad & I struggle to keep up! Grandma told me in the beginning that we shouldn’t worry because you would teach us everything we need to know about taking care of you, and that has proven to be very true. You are a stubborn and thorough teacher. 😉 Haha! When something we’re doing or not doing isn’t working for you, you don’t hesitate to let us know.

For example, the big thing we’ve been working on this past month is getting you closer to sleeping through the night. You recently “let us know” that you no longer like to be swaddled at night by constantly breaking out of the swaddles. My maternity leave ends in just under a month (to be honest I have mixed feelings about it), and I’d REALLY like to have you sleeping through the night and on a semi-regular nap schedule before I go back. Not only will it be easier for me, but easier for the daycare lady as well. For awhile there you were doing really well and getting pretty close to sleeping through the night on your own… then we went out of town for Easter weekend & it completely threw you off. :-\ It’s taken us a couple weeks of intensive sleep training to get you back on track.

And let me tell you… sleep training is one of the hardest things I’ve gone through as a parent so far. It’s a little controversial at this age, but your pediatrician assured us that since you’re growing well and getting plenty of food & attention during the day it is okay to work on sleep training with you. Basically sleep training involves a certain degree of letting you cry in order to help you learn self-soothing skills. Listening to you cry, even for those few minutes before I go in to feed you & such, is excruciatingly painful for me. But I know in my gut that it is the best thing for you in the long run (and for your parents also… a well rested family is a happy family!). There’s more to it then just letting you cry of course, like watching for cues from you to tell us when you’re ready to sleep so that we can get you down before you become overtired, figuring out a “go to sleep” routine that works well for you, etc. As with everything else so far, it is all a ton of trial and error. I have faith that we’ll get there eventually! For now, we’ll keep looking forward to the precious gift of SLEEP from you. 🙂

In other news, you hit a HUGE milestone yesterday– you rolled over from tummy to back! It’s funny because it happened so suddenly, I thought there would be a struggle to roll over before finally succeeding… but you went straight from not showing any interest in rolling over to doing it the moment I put you down on your tummy that morning. So cool! If I’m being honest, it’s the first time since you began to smile that I’ve felt like we really are making progress, that this tough newborn stage really will pass eventually. It is fascinating watching you grow and mature, and even though you still have the occasional colicky period there are also many more periods where you’ve been more interactive. “Playing” with you is getting to be more fun for both of us!

As for the rest of the month, I’ll use pictures to help me show what you’ve been up to…

Earlier in the month you & I met up with some buddies from the birth month group! We spent the day at the Baltimore Zoo and had fun meeting other moms & babies.

On the weekends I bring you into bed with us in the early mornings & we cuddle/snooze together as a family. 🙂

You “informed” us that you now prefer sitting up straight as much as possible! I adjusted your swing & high chair accordingly. We also have one of those “Bumbo” seats that sit you up straight, but your head support isn’t good enough yet to keep you in it for very long.

Even though it messed up your sleep schedule, you sure had a blast meeting all of your extended family Easter weekend! Here you are hanging out with your cousin Solomon, who just turned 9 last weekend. He wanted to know when you will be old enough to play Xbox with him! LOL. Your other cousin Bobby wanted to know when you’ll be old enough to ride bikes with him. Lots of cousins looking forward to playing with you!

Happy 1st Easter! Nana got you the outfit, I picked out the bunny ears and basket. The Easter bunny brought you a book & toy this year! 😉

Hanging out with your Uncle Jeff. You two really hit it off!

All dressed up for your first Nats game! We had fun watching the team warm up and practice, but unfortunately it was too cold to stay very long. 😦 Oh well, there are many more games in your future!

We had another play date later in the month with some of our birth month buddies. On the left is Maddie & in the middle is Jack!

Now that the weather is finally warming up, we’ve been bringing you outside more. You spent one morning “front porch sittin'” in your swing while I worked in the garden. A few neighbors stopped by to say hello while you were out there. I’ve noticed people are much more friendly and talkative when you have a baby with you!

All dressed up to go visit my office! Clearly you were very excited about it. I think my coworkers got a kick out of meeting you. 🙂

Mommy and Alex! 😀 I told Dad that he needs to be better about getting pics of the two of us together… it seems like I’m never in the pictures since  I’m always the one taking them.

You & Daddy playing “cowboy” one Saturday afternoon.

My two boys watching tv. 🙂

Checking yourself out in the mirror during tummy time! Now that you can sort of hold onto things for brief periods of time, we spend a good part of our day on the floor playing with your toys.

More tummy time! Your butt is bare (LOL) because you have a diaper rash at the moment & letting the skin get some open air time helps with that. Also I think we’d be slacking as parents if we didn’t take some embarrassing naked photos/videos of you! Haha. Speaking of that, it took awhile to get a video of you rolling over, and of course the first time I was able to capture it was during naked time:

More front porch sittin’ while I was watering my plants today. You look so cute rocking your shades!

There are more photos from this month at http://s1169.photobucket.com/user/laurapachec0/library/Alex%20Month%203. As you can see, you had a lot of “firsts” this month! Getting to experience all these firsts with you is by far the coolest, most rewarding thing about being a parent. Looking forward to many more firsts down the road!

All my love,
Mom