We did it. We survived the fourth trimester. Our baby is three months old.

Oh, David, don’t look so surprised.

I’ve been waiting for this milestone. Anticipating. Dreaming. Imagining. There’s lots of hype about having a three-month old. First I read my sister’s take on three months. Then I stumbled across rumors on the Internet about three-month old babies eating less often and sleeping more. What more could a mom ask for?

We’re still working on all that. In fact this morning I’m more tired than I have been in weeks. David woke up twice last night and very early this morning. It’s 11am and he’s wearing his third outfit of the day and eating for the fourth time. David, how could you possibly still be hungry!?

We have made some progress, though. For example, I never thought it was a good idea to have neither head control nor a fully-developed skull, so I’m so happy for this.

All members of the Krieger family can hold their heads up!

He’s also started to wiggle and bounce around. He looks like he reeeally wants to roll over but can’t quite get his feet under him to make it happen.

Thanks to the grid lines on this blanket, you can really see how far he’s hurling his little body.

My parents tell this story about my sister when she was a baby. When they tried to put her down for a nap she’d hold her legs up in the air. Then when she finally drifted off to sleep her legs would fall and wake her up. Talk about willful.

Whenever I see him lift his legs like that I panic a little. You better not be taking after your Aunt Kristie, young man!

He’s sucking his fists with wild abandon now. Every now and then a finger or a thumb gets loose from the fist and apparently that’s too much for David because he starts coughing and CANNOT seem to figure out how to remove the errant finger from his mouth. Then he gives me a “Why did you try to choke me, mommy?” look.

Suddenly my little baby boy is opinionated about WHO is holding him and HOW they’re holding him and WHERE they’re going and they BETTER not sit down! Somehow we went straight from newborn to the dramatic teenage years.

I know some of his outbursts are his way of telling me he’s tired. It took me too long to catch on to his cues. In my defense, he doesn’t understand MY sleep patterns, either. Sleep patterns like sleeping through the night, for example.

He has slept through the night four times. By that I mean 9pm to 7am. Apparently “sleeping through the night” technically means sleeping five hours straight. Whoever decided that must have been the same person who coined the phrase “sleeping like a baby.” Sleeping like a baby, huh? That badly?

He loves his changing table. He wiggles and twists around so much we’re starting to call the nursery “the exercise room.”

David’s first love is still eating, and it shows. What a chunk. Check out these cheeks. They’ll be dragging the floor next month.

He’s started this habit of pausing while nursing to look up at me and grin. And he grins with his whole body, clenching his fists and snuggling into me before going back to nursing.

When his daddy gets home he smiles, lifting his whole face to celebrate, DADDY’S HOME! Then he hides his face in my chest, as if the wonder that DADDY’S HOME! is just too much to handle.

Yesterday I realized that he’s given up the habit of falling asleep on my chest; it used to be his favorite place to nap. When he woke up from his morning nap I could tell he was still drowsy, so I took him out of his crib, snuggled him in my arms and rocked him for an hour while he slept.

Dear sweet David, we love you so much. Even when you don’t sleep and scream at your daddy and spit up all over mommy at 4am. And we’ll love you when you slam the door and get your first reckless driving ticket (it’s inevitable, it’s in his genes). You’re nothing but a bundle of giggling awesomeness with a bald head and blue eyes. You turned our twosome into a family and there’s nothing we’d rather do than watch you grow. <3

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