Dear Mack - Month Three

Dear Mack-a-roon.....

Happy Three Months! Or as you would say "Aaaaaahahahaha oooooh gaaaaaahhh." For your whole short life before this, you weren't really much for making too much noise unless you were crying or hungry. If you were happy, you were mostly pretty quiet and for the most part, you still are. However a couple weeks back, you started test driving your voice for other emotions and sounds. Your talking is usually accompanied by a lot of smiling and a few sounds that I think will soon become your laugh. This is immensely rewarding, because you now actually respond to my various attempts to entertain you. I am not sure if you actually think I am funny or you just enjoy watching me make a fool of myself, but either way, it's all a good time. And when you smile that open-mouthed gummy smile of yours, it makes up for every minute of fussing you might do at any other point in the day. I frequently stop what I am doing so I can look at you when you start smiling, and I will do pretty much any ridiculous thing to get you to keep smiling once you start. And then I have to go get the camera or find someone nearby to try to get some pictures of your cuteness.

 It's a vicious cycle.

You have accomplished quite a lot in the last 90 days or so.  One of your most notable accomplishments has surprisingly come in the form of projectile pooping. They warned me about the pee, but no one said one thing about the poop, much less the ability to make it shoot across the room or all over me. I think that if it turns out you are an alien that your mission on Earth involves pooping on as many Earthlings as you can hit.  In fact, your first act outside 

the womb was to poop all over me and the doctor that delivered you. Since then, you've pooped on me multiple times, your Gram, and your nanny. So far the score as best as I can tell is Baby Mack: 7 Everyone Else: 0. So good work little man! You are making the mother ship proud.

You were again proclaimed perfectly healthy by your doctor at your recent 3 month checkup. You now weigh 13 pounds, 6 ounces and have grown a whole inch to 24 1/4". You rank in the 50th percentile across the board...or as I like to think...not too big, not too small....but

 juuuuuust right.

However,  I do have a bit of a concern I feel I need to share with you. I read something the other day that made me feel you might be falling behind your peers. I have this baby development book called "What to Expect the First Year." It is put out by the same people who wrote "What to Expect When You're Expecting," which I think of as "The Big Book of Things That Could, Maybe, Possibly Go Wrong in Your Pregnancy and Oh By the Way, Don't Gain Too Much Weight"

Before I realized how much I would come to hate the title "What to Expect..." I picked up the guide to a baby's first year. At the start of each chapter, they list things that you might be learning to do that month. I was reading about month Three in preparation for this time, when I came across this statement: "Baby should be able to pay attention to a raisin or other very small object" Really? A raisin? A raisin...I had no idea that I was supposed to be dangling raisins in front of your face, but apparently you should have been "paying attention to a raisin" since sometime in month Two. So if you have trouble getting into college in 18 years, you can blame it on me...and the raisins.

In spite of the lack of raisins, you are coming along quite nicely in your development and growth. You have progressed to the point that you no longer look like a newborn but are rounding out into baby-dom and now look 100% like baby. I can't believe I miss your scrawny little newborn legs. I was warned it would all go by quickly and I am now starting to see how that works.

You can hold your head up really well now. You can also push yourself up on your forearms. You also can roll from front to back and back to front. I say you can do these things because you most often choose not to. I think you have my attitude toward physical exertion (Sweat? Why would I want to do that?) because oftentimes when I put you down on your stomach for some muscle-building tummy time as advised by the baby book you decide that it would be a good time to have a lie down. This is so cute that I usually let you, as opposed to ordering you to drop and give me 50 pushups , or whatever the What to Expect people would tell me to do.

The bath is still your favorite time of the day. You have now saved your disdain for rides in your car seat. You can really put on a performance back there...it breaks my heart. You sleep well at night - usually 11-12 hours with only 1 or 2 wakeups for a snack. You do not nap well during the day which makes it very difficult to get anything else done at all during the daylight hours. You also now ride in your stroller like a "big boy" so you can see the world out there. I think you look supercute in that big ol' stroller.

This week you and I are leaving to start our lifetime of travelling adventures. First we are headed to my home state of Texas for your cousin Ashton's 10th birthday extravaganza. This is also where you and I will spend our first Mother's Day. There are quite a few people in both places that are excited about meeting you. I think they are right to be excited, because while you have only been on the Earth for 90 days or so, I get to spend most of my time with you, and it is really a privilege to see what a unique and wonderul little soul you are. I can't take any credit for that, but still, I am so proud of you. So I am so looking forward to month Four and all the new things that await us. 

Remember to pay attention to your raisins.

I Love You,

Mommy