3 Month Round-Up

How in the world do new mothers ever find the time to do anything let alone post to blogs? I have a good baby, a really really good baby who generally only takes 45 minutes naps and during those naps I am frantically trying to do office work, wash clothes, wash dishes, take a shower, put the nursery together (rooms are finally done, yay!), etc. So the blog has been neglected.

But for posterity's sake here is what's happened in the last 2 months and what's happening now.

Cloth Diapers
When Ada first came home she was way too tiny to fit into any of the cloth diapers we had. So we started out with preemie disposables. Once she got a bit bigger we started trying out the different cloth options. We started with the Bummis Super Whisper Wrap with a standard pre-fold cloth diaper. This option leaves poor Ada with a huge wad of cloth between her legs and when she is lying on her side she can't bring her legs together, one is always propped up in the air and it looks very uncomfortable. I've tried folding the cloth diaper is the opposite direction of the recommended tri-fold and that works better, however it is less absorbent.
Next we tried Kissaluvs snap diapers inside the Bummis Super Whisper Wrap. Guess what? The Bummis newborn size wrap will not close over the Kissaluvs size 0 diaper. Just too much fabric. I've order some bigger wraps so I'll try those out soon. Last up is the Swaddlebees All-In-One Snap Diaper. I like them for their ease of use but they have their drawbacks too. They are very bulky and I have to put in an extra insert or Ada soaks through and leaks immediately. And they do leak. I just can't get the leg closures tight enough. Actually all the cloth options leak so far.
So we are currently doing a mixture of cloth and disposable. She gets a Pampers night-time diaper that will last her a good 9-10 hours at bed time and we are trying to alternate between cloth and disposable during the day (Nana bought us 3 large packs of disposable so we've got to use them anyway) and she gets disposables if we go out. She definitely gets much fussier when she has a wet cloth diaper as opposed to a wet disposable so I think sticking with cloth will help when it comes time to potty train. The laundry for cloth is not that bad, especially now that she's older and the poopy diapers have tapered off considerably.

Sleep
Since Ada was about 2-3 weeks old she would pretty predictably sleep at least one 5 hour stretch each night. She has kept that up and some nights she sleeps as much as 7-8 hours in a stretch. The issue is of course the very late bedtime. She wasn't going to bed until midnight, but then she slowly started going to be earlier and earlier and we were down to 10:45 which was awesome. Then this past week she has been going through the 12 week sleep regression (she is 14 weeks but since she was born two weeks early she hits some of these growth spurts later). She does NOT want to go to sleep and she fights it tooth and nail. Even naps times are torture. She used to be so easy. When she was sleepy she wanted a bit of a snuggle and then she'd drift off. Very often she would go to sleep if you put her down drowsy. Not now - oh, no. There's a lot of screaming and crying involved. I've read that this should resolve itself in the next few days and for my sanity I truly hope so. For the past 3 days the longest stretch of sleep she got a night was 4 hours one night. The rest of the nights she was up every 2 hours. I am a zombie.

Developmental
Ada squeals, coos, makes combined vowel-consonant sounds like "ah-goo", smiles, laughs a little bit, mimics mouth movements, and is almost blowing raspberries - she sometimes seems surprised when she does it, like she wasn't quite sure she meant to do it. She follows me around the room with head and eyes if Melbourne is holding her. She recognizes my voice. She is holding her head steady and has been doing so for a while. She puts weight on her legs and can almost hold herself completely steady on her legs with minimal support from me or Melbourne. She "walks" - If you hold her upright she will shift the weight from one foot to the other and always brings the moving foot slight more forward than then stationary one so if you help her along it looks as if she is walking. She is grabbing toys and her little face gets the funniest look when she's concentrating. Her upper lip sticks out and her brow furrows. She HATES tummy time so we are behind on upper body strength. She can lift her head while on her tummy but can't do the mini push-up yet.

And she's awake, 35 minutes this time hooray!, so I'll have to continue later.