4 months.

Dear Beck,

Four months!!! Where is the time going? You are such a joy.

We will get your official stats tomorrow at your four month checkup. But we do know that you are a big boy. All of your three month clothes have officially been packed away. You are wearing a 6 month onesie from Carter's in your monthly picture and even fit into some 9 month clothes as well. You are one notch away from being too tall for your carseat.

What's new? Last week you rolled over for the first time. I wasn't here to see it. You were home with dad and he didn't see it either because his back was turned! Thankfully, you were in a safe location. You were on a blanket on the floor and when your dad turned back around you were face-down on the hardwood floor. Oops. We have since seen you roll to your side (even in your crib), but not all the way over again. This means we have been starting to wean you from your swaddle this week--switching you to having one arm out.

Speaking of sleep... We are right in the thick of what 'they' like to call the four month sleep regression. You haven't been sleeping well since getting over the bronchiolitis. You still go to bed at 7 every night and sleep for 3-4 hours. After that feeding though, things get rough. There are nights when you go back to sleep for a couple hours and there are nights when you are up every hour on the hour. This has been especially frustrating since you were spoiling us before. Once I realized that this is a common occurrence, I felt much better though. My scientific nature always drives me to research such issues and i have found comfort in the Dr. Sears sleep book--an oldie, but apparently a goodie. We are working our way through it and that mostly just means waiting it out. Waiting for your little brain to develop more mature sleep cycles and patterns. Again, once I learned the biological reasons behind your wakings (turns out you're not just doing it to torture us!), I felt much better AND more patient once again.

You are airplaning during tummy time, lifting both your arms and legs as well as your head. You hold toys and hold onto whoever is holding you. You try to hold your nightly bottle. Everything goes in your mouth. We're pretty sure you are teething (which also doesn't help the sleep). You are trying to sit up when in a reclined position. You are babbling. Sometimes even when you're falling asleep, you're babbling. You're also giving us rare giggles, although I'm still waiting for that outright, busting up, musical baby giggle. I feel like all of these things just happened in the last two weeks!!!

Favorite toys: anything you can put in your mouth

Nicknames: The Boy, Dude, Mister, Munchkin, Becks, Bucket (from your Dad's coworker)

We are having more fun. Sunday was a particularly pleasant day. A late morning nap with Dad, a trip to Costco in the afternoon, a long walk as a family with Lita Loo, lots of smiles and playtime in between.

I'm still enjoying being back at work even though it means being away from you. It's good that you spend time with Dad, Oma, and Gramma though. They all take good care of you. And you have your special things with each one of them.

We found out this month that your Nona and Gpa are going to be moving to Ohio. This makes your Dad and I very sad because we know they'll miss seeing you. We will miss them as well! But we will try to make sure that you still get to know them. And I know there will be visits.

We are defiitely becoming more comfortable as parents. There are so many more exciting things in store for us!

We love you!

3 months: State of the Mommy

The kiddo has been around for over three months now and I've kind of been putting off writing this post since then. Don't get me wrong, I am feeling good. I'd be lying if I said that I was perfectly comfortable in my post-baby body.

I'm only about 6 pounds up from my pre-pregnancy weight, which is pretty awesome. Honestly, I was never really concerned too much about my weight gain during pregnancy. I knew that I was eating well and knew that there is only so much you can do to control how much you gain in the first place. I gained about 40 pounds. Sounds like a lot. But I was healthy. No high blood pressure, no diabetes. I was literally a giant belly. This has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, only my stomach was increasing in diameter every week. On the minus side, being a smaller framed person, that giant belly did an awesome job stretching out my skin. Which means that I now have a lovely jiggly belly. I don't know if this will ever go away. It's also covered in a spiderweb of stretch marks. If this is the worst thing resulting from the birth of my beautiful munchkin though, I'll take it.

What else has changed? The boobages have mostly returned to their normal size, but continue to makes delicious noms for the munchkin. There was a while there when I didn't think I'd make it another day breastfeeding much less 3 months, so I'm super excited about that.

Other than that, life sure has changed. I miss my husband. Oh I see him, but we certainly don't get quality time together right now. It's not unheard of for us to try to have a conversation over a fussy, squawking baby. And when baby goes to bed, I'm often close behind since I know I'll be awake for several feedings during the night.

Laundry never ends. It's kind of amazing how much more laundry a little person can produce. Part of that is because we've chosen cloth diapers and wipes, so I'm washing those at least every other day. I love them though, so it's worth it to me.

As my husband pointed out, having a kiddo has also somehow morphed me into a morning person. Not that I have much of a choice. :). I function on less sleep these days too. I've gotten used to wearing loungewear around the house and being covered in spit up. Yes, I'm the mom that goes grocery shopping in yoga pants and I'm pretty sure I've unintentionally left the house without brushing my teeth at least once.

Dishes stack up, dust bunnies multiply, it's hard to not care, but priorities! If I can keep up with laundry, grocery shop once a week and generally maintain everyone's health and well-being (including our four-legged resident), then I think I'm doing pretty good.

Someday soon maybe I'll even get used to the idea of being someone's mom and saying the phrase 'my son'.