Beau: Three Months

Beau is three months! ...I'll be honest--I'm excited!! This is when the personality and laughs start coming regularly and I like that. Beau is around 14 pounds already -- and I am proud of my little chunk!

He smiles pretty regularly and it just melts my heart every time. Isaac is still great with him and that makes me so happy.

Probably the most exciting news -- at least to me -- is that he is sleeping through the night!! I'm talking like 11-12 hours sleeping through the night! And a rested mommy means a happy mommy for all! Isaac slept through the night around the same time (3 months) and I just knew he could when we tried. It has been totally different with Beau. Since I'm nursing, I'm not as comfortable in knowing how much he is getting (although, again, he is 14 pounds, so it must be enough.) So with Beau I approached it as a gradual thing. He was pretty consistent going from 8 p.m. - 3 a.m. for about a week, so I thought I'd stretch his feeding to 5 a.m. The night I planned to do this, he woke up at 3 a.m. -- I put his pacifier in (another dilemma -- I did not want to get in this habit) did this a few times and then he slept until 7 a.m. So he was obviously much more capable than I thought. Then I was going to start pushing all night when he was 11.5 weeks but then Isaac got sick and we all didn't sleep well. Every time Isaac woke up crying, Beau woke up about 10 minutes later. So we postponed. Last Friday (12 weeks and 2 days), we put him to bed earlier and he woke up 5 hours later...I was so worried since we put him down earlier that I ended up feeding him. Then he woke up 5.5 hours later, again I reverted to feeding him. I remember thinking, "I have gone backwards in the process! I am so done!!" So Saturday night -- I was ready to let him cry it out. I didn't want to use the 'wait 5 minutes, comfort him, wait 10 minutes, comfort him...etc..' because then whenever his schedule gets out of sync, he's expect that and I'd have to do it. And I did not want to do that. Well, Beau woke up around 2:30 a.m Sunday morning and cried for several hours. I was so worried that Isaac wasn't sleeping, that it turns out he was and Taylor and I didn't! But it was all worth it when Sunday night he went to bed at 7:30, woke up at 4:45 a.m. and cried for about 20 minutes and then fell asleep again and I had to wake him up at 7:45! Every night since has gotten better and better and last night he went down at 7:30 and didn't wake up again until 7 a.m. Hallelujah! ....now if I could just get to bed at a reasonable hour...

At the start of this sleep training -- I was worried about making him go for so long -- but his temperament and disposition have been so happy that I am not worried. He eats about every three to three and a half hours during the day. He's also gotten on a good nap schedule -- his morning nap is between 8 -9 a.m and is his longest nap -- anywhere from 2 to 3.5 hours. Then he has one between 12-2 and then again between 3-5. His lunch nap is between 1 -2 hours and then his afternoon nap is between 1 -2 hours as well. Usually if his lunch one is only an hour, the afternoon will be two and vice versa. There have been days that he will take four naps -- and then bedtime is between 7:30 and 8. ... not like anyone may care about his sleeping and feeding schedules, but now it is written down and I'll have it for next time (since I didn't do this with Isaac)...

He has recently found his hands and will stare at them and then suck on them. We have a baby floor mat that has hanging rattles and such and he has also started to learn that he can hit them and make noises. He is becoming more and more fun (minus his weekly blowouts...grr!) We love our Beau!