12 weeks

It's amazing how much Julian develops each day.  His grasp is getting more precise, though still needs work. He loves the lamaze captain calamari and the giraffe.  Each day I can see him getting better at grabbing and playing with his toys.  During his bath, he is now grabbing his water toys and kicking them.  Sophie is the only thing that fits in his mouth, so that frustrates him while trying to eat other toys.  He is playful all day long, but after noon he gets bored quickly.  


Julian loves to be around people.  He almost jumped out of my lap at the new mom's group last Thursday.  He saw another baby and wanted to play with him.  I babysat last night and Julian was just sitting upright in my lap staring intently at the toddler.  He is a curious baby and I hope that continues!


I don't know how good their site is by 12 weeks, but I can be far away and he still looks at me moving back and forth.


He has still been sleeping at night so well.  8 hours has been our longest stretch, but 7 hours is average.  The only thing is that he goes to bed at 8:30-9ish, which means getting up really early (between 3-6am) and being wide awake to poop and then play.  I'm thankful for two morning naps, but those are only 20-30 min.  That is the longest he'll nap during the day.  I'm thinking of swaddling him during the day, but I wanted him to try to get used to soothing himself with his hand or pacifier so we could transition to this at night.  Routine is really up in the air though since he didn't feed much yesterday and slept a lot...not normal.  


With all that sleep at night I've been up pumping and getting a large freezer supply.  I was surprised that I got 7.5 oz the other night since mostly it's 5 oz at a time.  I think I get so much because I wait until I wake up on my own which is about 5-6 hours after I nursed him to sleep.  I'm just glad that Dan will have enough milk if Julian starts to cluster feed on a night when I'm working.


Julian is still having a lot of skin issues.  The 100 degree weather doesn't help, not that we're in it very much. He gets rashes on his cheeks...I think from us holding him so much.  He has eczema on his inner elbows and chest, and his scalp is a mess of dry skin, seborrheic dermatitis (which comes and goes), and his claw marks.  I have to cut his nails daily and put mittens on him in the mornings because he attacks his head, face, and eyes...and he started pulling out his hair.  It's only in the morning when he's sleepy.  Please tell me why he does this!  


The nice thing that I discovered is that he LOVES  soft things on his face.  If he's fussy, we'll rub his taggies blanket on his cheek and he laughs and coos.  This helps with diaper changes.  He has a soft quilt that he likes and we switched to using adult towels for bath time, so that is soft on his face as well.


Our little man is growing and I'm a happy mama!  Thank you Lord for this amazing opportunity!

He's starting to look like me.  It's the expressive eyebrows!  ha ha!