Claire: 3 Months!

Our little girl is already 3 months old! She amazes me every day.

Claire is growing so fast, it seems like there is something new every week! At about 10 weeks, she rolled over for the first time. I had her laying on her tummy, and she flipped to her back... and I just happened to be recording! (see video on Facebook) She went awhile before rolling again, but the past few days she has been a rolling machine. The other day I layed her on her back on her play-gym and went in the other room for a minute... came back and she was on her tummy! I missed her first back to front flip, but she performed an encore shortly after :) On the milestone chart I have, it says your baby might start rolling by 4 months of age... I guess we have a little super-baby on our hands :)

She has been sleeping GREAT. Last night she slept... 12 HOURS STRAIGHT! I couldn't believe it. I changed up our routine a bit and we skipped her evening nap. I'm going to continue to do that and hopefully she keeps sleeping that long at night. Usually she goes about 8 hours and sometimes wakes up in the middle of that. I really can't complain!

Our friends let us borrow their jumper and I thought Claire might be a bit too small for it yet, but she's doing pretty good! Her feet don't reach the ground so we put some phone books under her feet. She loves it so far... all smiles :) I have been putting her in her crib for naps (as well as the swing sometimes) to get her used to it... We will probably be moving her into her own room soon... yikes. I'm sure that move will be harder on me than her. I'm so used to having her right by my side in her bassinet at night, within arms-reach. She is sleeping 8 hours in a row at night now, most nights... I put her to bed at 9 and she usually wakes up at 5. Sometimes she wakes up around 1, and I just put the pacifier in and she goes back to sleep. After I feed her at 5, she will sleep til about 9... so I have been getting a pretty good amount of sleep lately!

Claire loves going outside. When she starts go get fussy, I will step out on the porch and she usually stops fussing right away. We will sit and swing on the porch swing and she just loves it. Lately we have been going for walks outside in the stroller, and she loves that too. Last weekend, Ben and I started working on our first garden and she sat in the stroller the whole time, totally content. I think she's going to be an outdoors girl :)

We didn't have a doc's appointment this month, so I don't have weight/height stats... but she seems to be growing great! Ben helped her with her first doggie ride on Haley the other day.... so precious. (see video on Facebook) She is a very happy baby the majority of the time, and I just love watching her discover her world.

Our first Anniversary is on Monday... I really can't believe it has been a year since our wedding already! I have always heard that the first year of marriage/living together is the hardest. Well, if that was the hardest year, then we sure have a promising future ahead of us. God has been so good to us.

Claire @ 3 Months

My favorite baby products so far

Claire is 3 months old now, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite baby products so far-

1. Mommy's Bliss Gripe Water. If you have a colicky baby, this is the stuff to get. If she is crying/screaming inconsolably, I give her a little bit of this stuff and she almost always calms down immediately. She often falls asleep within minutes too. It is all natural, so I felt ok about giving it to her... and it made her feel SO much better.

2. Boudreaux's Butt Paste. This stuff is awesome... it works better than Desitin and smells WAY better. Trust me, you don't want to accidentally lick something off of your finger after you have had Desitin on it... nasty. You don't want to taste the Butt Paste either, but it is much more pleasant.

3. ItzBeen Baby Timer. I live by this thing when it comes to feedings. You just push a button at the start of one feeding and restart it when the next one comes. It is so hard to remember what time you last fed, and this makes it so you don't have to write it down. I tried just remembering times for awhile, but you forget. You can use it to track diaper changes and naps too, but I just use it for feedings.

4. Fisher Price 3-in-1 Baby Swing. I use this a lot. She falls asleep in it very quickly... I sometimes turn it off once she falls asleep so she doesn't "need" the swing to nap... but it hasn't affected her night sleeping at all, and she will nap in the crib just fine too. If she started relying on the swing to fall asleep, I would stop using it... but she does just fine :)

5. Medela. Of course I had to put my pump on this list... It works perfectly and I haven't had any problems with it. I also have a deep freezer full of milk :) I  was using the Lasinoh storage bags and those work great. Once I ran out of those, I have been freezing milk in 1oz ice cube trays. Once they are frozen, I put them in ziplock bags and into the deep freezer. Also works great!

Some other random tips-

-Olive oil (or baby oil) on baby's head when it gets flaky. Claire has had a really flaky scalp lately, so I tried some olive oil (I did not notice it was seasoned with herbs, so she smelled like olive garden haha) and it worked great!

-Babywise. I read this book and have done my best to stick with the eat, play, sleep routine. It has worked out great for us so far. Last night we skipped her last evening nap, and she slept 12 hours straight! I'll be sticking with that from now on :)

-Clean out those ears after baths! The other night, she was itching and tugging on her ear and fussing quite a bit... turns out, she had some soap left in there from her bath. I cleaned it out with a baby Q-Tip and that fixed it.

-Massaging the tear duct... Claire had a goupy eye that I had to clean out constantly. The doc told me she might have a partially blocked tear duct and to just massage it with my finger every so often. I tried it, and sure enough her eye cleared right up.

Ok that is all I can think of for now. Hopefully this will help someone.. if not, I will refer back to this when ever we have our next little one!