Hunter turns 3 months; Wilder skinny-fies up a little

Hunter turned 3 months old this weekend. I remember reading somewhere once that babies really don't become fully gestationalized (word?) until they're 3 months old ... how it's almost like they need to spend another quarter of a year inside the womb, cooking, but instead emerge early from mama's oven. (Bear with me; I'm reading too many cooking-related books recently).

So anyway, it's not with any small amount of excitement that I look forward to the 3 month mark. There is something more "realized," for lack of a better word, about an infant that age. You can start to see a glimmer of his future facial features. He can grab at things. He's checking out his hands, feet, can hold his head up better. You can see that he's checking out the world and seeing the possibilities. Example: "There's that big brother of mine that keeps screaming 'happy baby!!!' in my face at high decibels. Look, he's holding a wiffle ball bat. Hmmm, if I learn to use my arms and legs better I can take that bat from him and crank him over the head with it."

You get my drift.

So it was with some alarm that, at 4:30 a.m. on the day of Hunter's 3-month mark, I woke up to his curdling screams -- and I do mean SCREAMS -- as he slept nestled right beside me. It was somewhat akin to the night I woke up to a cockroach crawling across my body. I mean, one minute sleeping, the next minute: "AGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Jerry, who'd fallen asleep on the couch watching some movie about swords and war (those who know Jerry best have mental pictures in their heads now -- in fact, I swear this is not made up: I woke up the next morning and discovered the evidence in the living room of him dragging his sword, shield and arm bracers out to watch the movie with him. My husband = HUGE adorable DORK), came running back to the room.

We eventually got Hunter calmed down, chalked it up to being too warm and a bad dream, and drifted off back to sleep, all of us (on a side note, every single one of us, including Wilder, slept until almost 9:45 the next morning -- Jerry and I noted that that hasn't happened since before Wilder was born). But Hunter's newfound love of mood swings didn't end there. It wasn't a horrible weekend, but the calm, smiling boy we've come to know and love discovered that life can make you pretty damn grumpy sometimes. It was like he inherited a bit of my personality, because I = HUGE not-so-adorable GRUMP sometimes, especially when compared with my sunny-dispositioned better half.

Hunter was restless, didn't eat as much, fussed a ton, was obviously exhausted but would hardly sleep longer than 20 minutes, etc. We fretted a bit over this, and this fretting eventually led me to the 21st century parenting expertise that is Google. Har har. Anyway, I finally figured out what was bothering him last night when it hit me that his mouth had been leaking like a sieve all day.

Yep, teething. At 3 months. A dash to the pharmacy, we poured some Motrin down his throat, and 20 minutes later the poor fella finally slumped into a deep sleep on my chest. I think the teething has to do with the fact that he sits in his bouncy chair each night while Jerry, Wilder and I dine on any number of delicious things. That and Wilder running around the house screaming "ice cream," "sweeties," "cake," "snack" and "juice" all the time. Only imagine each one of those in bolded capital letters followed by many exclamation points and you get the idea of Wilder's general attitude toward food. It'd make me wanna subconsciously push out a chomper or two too.

That's about all in Hunter news. In Wilder's world, he continues to love the pool. He probably gets in it at least twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays. He's learning to use a kickboard and is very comfortable in the water, even with me now. (For awhile, it was like he thought Jerry was a dolphin and I was some poor flailing cat thrown into the deep end, all evidence to the contrary.)

Whether it's because of all this swimming or because he's growing up or both, he's really thinned out over the last couple weeks. He was running around this morning in his shorts with no shirt on and I could see his little ribs. Incidentally, I was seeing those ribs in between flashes of orange material as he hurled the shirt he was intending to be wearing over and over at my head while giggling maniacally. Ahh, boys.

Anyway, it's morning and my coffee cup is empty and work beckons. Bahhhh, work.

xo, k.