[Update: 14 weeks old!]
Update: I started writing this post 2 weeks ago and didn't get around to publishing because I hadn't stuck enough pictures in it. Then for some reason I couldn't upload pictures. So I'm just giving up and posting as is before Setri turns 6 months!
Setri turns '3' tomorrow. 3 months old.
Shopping at Mrs Flannery's last weekend (where they were out of stock of Gam's favourite vanilla & almond granola crunch cereal), the man behind the counter asked how old Setri was. "He'll be 12 weeks on Monday", we told him. The guy did a double-take and blinked in surprise. "Um... is he kind of big for 12 weeks?", he asked.
12 weeks old.
The man told us his son was born 10lb- a big baby, albeit smaller than Setri... so I'm guessing Setri is still kind of big for his age! We haven't weighed him since he was 7 weeks old; when we took him for his immunisations it was at a library (yeah... don't ask me why) and not at a community health centre, so he hasn't been given the once over by a child health nurse since leaving hospital. The only reason I would like him weighed and measured is to satisfy my curiosity about how much he has grown- I'm certainly not worried that he's not growing well! Size 00 clothes are getting too small for him, and size 0 clothes are starting to look like a better fit. He has only a few centimetres of room left in the car capsule, and we'll have to move him to a seat restraint before long.
Setri will probably be glad to see the back of his capsule anyway, he's not really a fan! 10 weeks old.
Tummy time: sometimes he quite likes it!
On Tuesday I had a visit from my cousin Rachelle and Bec from the earthkissed blog (the second blog-person I have met) with her adorable 11-month-old, Xander. Unfortunately Setri had missed his morning sleep and passed out within a matter of minutes of Bec and Xander's arrival. I had been hoping that Setri would see Xander, who put on a masterful display of speedy crawling, and be tempted to emulate him instead of thinking that he was born with some god-given right to leap straight from lying down to walking! Xander was just as smiley and cheeky and adorable as he appears in Bec's numerous photos- he's a beautiful kid. After going home that night he took his first unaided step! Bec kindly gave us a brand new Bonnibuns modern cloth nappy to try- thanks Bec :) I think a post discussing and reviewing different kinds of MCN is in order soon, given how many different kinds we have tried!
12 weeks old in his Baby BeeHinds 'Magicall' nappy
On Wednesday we had the chance to compare Setri to some babies his own age- I invited 3 girls over for afternoon tea whose babies were all due within a few days of Setri; one- the boy- was born at 34 weeks and so is technically nearly 5 months old (corrected age same as Setri, though), but the others were born within a couple of days of Setri... only 2 girls and their babies ended up coming over, though, the little boy Seth and little girl Charlotte. More internet friends... meeting people in real life after 'meeting' them on the net used to be an unusual thing to do, socially, but I think it's much more common these days. Setri wasn't huge compared with the other babies- not so huge as his weight would suggest (maybe he really is just 'big boned'... lol), but definitely bigger, especially compared with little Charlotte, who I would describe as 'dainty' in appearance- small and fine-boned but all in proportion. The little boy, Seth- a real smiley, laid-back little dude- had an enormous head even compared with Setri (90th centile, his mum told us, while the rest of him was 50th centile). Unlike Setri, the other babies weren't really up to sitting up on their own, let alone standing with minimal assistance, but socially their development was at least on a par... perhaps even slightly better, seeing as they showed a lot of curiosity in each other and in Setri, but Setri showed minimal interest in them. He did, however, put on a big smiley, chatty show for the mother of Seth when I seated him on the couch next to her, surprising Gam and I. Usually Setri is very serious and puts on a worried scowl around strangers. Maybe he's lightening up a bit now that he's a little older. His mood very much depends on whether he's just woken up (happy, gregarious, easy-going) or due a nap (crotchetty, impatient, prone to put on his 'sadface' if a stranger is holding him).
Or when he feels entitled to boob and doesn't get it straight away...
Setri has progressed a bit with his 'talking' since 9 weeks- he's practising as hard as ever, and seems completely convinced that we should understand his every 'word'... he gets quite cross sometimes if we don't understand. He does seem to say "Yeeeah" a lot when I talk to him now. He always smiles at the same time. I think it pleases him that he can make a sound that sounds like a word that we use a lot. He is also making a lot more fricative, spit-bubbly sounds- maybe because he's drooling more. I am starting to be convinced that Setri can almost say a word- namely 'kicchhh' for kiss (think kind of like German 'ich' but with less of a hard 'k' sound). The main reason I reckon this is so is because sometimes he says 'kicchh' and others 'kichhkichh' like I do (according to whether I give him one or two kisses), smiling when he says it and breaking out in a big grin when I kiss him after he says it. Which isn't necessarily the case when he makes other sounds and I kiss him (indeed, sometimes I'll get told off for it because he was clearly demanding I do something else!). Gam thinks I'm suffering deranged-mother-syndrome, given he's only 3 months old, but it's not out of the realm of possibility and Setri will say it to him sooner or later. Setri's favourite games with both of us involve him standing up and us holding onto his hands and either moving his upper body around in a circle while his feet stay planted on the ground, or leaning him back and forward and planting a kiss on him as we pull him towards us. He gets a really happy expression on his face and opens his mouth as he comes in for a kiss, in the latter game, or around towards our faces in the former. The other day he was a bit complain-y and we couldn't understand why. Gam thought he might be tired and I said it was too soon since his last sleep. As soon as I took Setri from Gam and let him stand up on my lap, Setri started trying to move around in a circle motion, opening his mouth as he leaned toward my face. He had been whinging for us to play with him!
I was pretty sure that Gam and I got him to do a wave of his hand when I said 'hello' to him the other day, but I haven't been able to get him to repeat it (at least not recognisably- he waves his hands around an awful lot, but I wouldn't interpret any of it as deliberate waving). I think it helps that quite a few other people we've met have said 'hello' and waved to Setri, which is something I've been doing every day, so he'll learn soon enough.
This picture makes Setri look way smaller than he actually is. Or me look like a giant, I'm not sure which!
He did the cutest thing the other day. He often looks in the mirror when I run a bath for him in the bathroom sink. At first he used to look only at me, making eye contact and smiling. Lately he's started looking at himself. A couple of days ago he made eye contact with himself. Stared intently, then gave a shy little one-sided smile and turned and buried his head in my chest. After a second he raised his head again and leaned forward towards the mirror, with a lovely little smile on his face. Naturally, his reflection did likewise. "Eh-O", said Setri, breaking into a big grin and leaning forward eagerly, looking pleased when his mirror-friend reciprocated. Then he opened his mouth wide and poked out his tongue- it looked more like it was from the effort of leaning forward than a deliberate act. When he saw his reflection in the mirror doing the same thing and looking a lot less friendly than it had a second before, he jumped back in shock and looked a little bit upset! I'm quite certain he doesn't yet recognise 'mirror-Setri' as being his own reflection... I probably don't help matters by saying "Hello, mirror-Setri! Wave to mirror-Setri!" and waving every time he looks in the mirror...
11 weeks
Since Gam and I started playing the 'game' of pulling him into a sitting position at almost 9 weeks, Setri has gotten extremely good at standing up from a sitting position. He now chooses to do so almost every time (meaning we have to push him down and tell him "No, sit!" if he tries to stand when we actually want him to sit) and can support his weight for long periods- it's quite handy for picking him up, because when I get him to do it on the bed or the change table I only have to wrap my arms around him rather than actually lift him!
10 weeks
I tell him to 'hold my hands' and then say 'up' before helping him up, and he at least connects the noise with the action he's supposed to take (reaching out to grasp my hands), even if he doesn't yet understand what 'hold' means or what 'hands' are. Gam did tend to grab him by the arms and pull, while gruffly ordering him to 'stand up!', but ever since Setri demonstrated his understanding of what to do when you tell him 'hold my hands' (or just say 'up!', apparently), Gam has started doing things my way. Either way, Setri always looks very pleased with himself for standing up... it's so cute. He's ridiculously cute. While he is capable of pulling himself up from a sitting position into a standing position just by pushing up with his legs as he holds on to our hands, mostly he uses the momentum from us pulling him into sitting position to save himself the work.
2 weeks vs 13 weeks... I would also like to say that censoring pictures of babies' bodies weirds me the hell out, but I did it for Facebook.
It's unfortunate that Setri doesn't seem too keen on the developmental stage he's supposed to be working on- the one where he goes from lying on his tummy to figuring out how to sit up by himself- because he actually plays very well by himself when he's sitting up. He can only sit up for any length of time if he's resting against something, however. If we leave him sitting up unsupported it's not long before he's bent double and grizzling because he doesn't know how to push himself back upright with his hands. He generally gets cranky with frustration if we leave him on his tummy and he wants to sit up... patience is not his strong suit.
Setri loves the shower. His favourite thing is drinking the water. I think he'd love a bath, or learning how to swim (as long as the water was warm!) but we couldn't afford to renovate our bathroom such that we could fit a bath and a shower, so shower won.
Still, we persevere. Setri's preferred mode of tummy-time seems to be when we leave him without a nappy- I think because it might free up his legs a bit. When we give him nappy-free tummy-time he seems to have the instinct to want to crawl, but while he can push either his rear end or his front end into the right position at any one time he can't manage both at once. When he has his bum in the air and is positioned on his knees he will move his legs and face-plough, propelling himself forward in a rather uncomfortable, undignified fashion. Whether it's a step up from his army-crawl I don't know, but he always seems to get very frustrated doing it- as if he never gets to whatever destination he had in mind when he started!
Fighting to look at the computer screen instead of the camera. Setri loves the screen!
Setri's control over his arms improves by the day. He no longer does his 'Kuarto hands', as Gam would call them (Total Recall), instead he does a Monty Burns impression ("Excellent!"). At the moment he's fascinated by his own hands. He barely even realises he has feet. Gam held them up for him the other day and it was as if Setri had never seen them before- he was bewitched!
While he is much better at pooing and farting without a great fuss these days, Setri's digestive system seems to be maturing to the point where he only poos two or three times in 24 hours. If you'd asked me about this a couple of months ago I would've said it was a blessing (there was a time when every. single. nappy during the day was pooed in and the only time he didn't poo was through the night). Only thing is, when he does only a couple of poos per day it's as if the period of him feeling like he
needs to go is that much longer, so he seems uncomfortable for a long time. It interrupts his sleep during the day- he definitely seems to sleep better and for longer on the days where his poos are more frequent. Oh and small poos are so much easier to deal with than big ones... When it's a big one he bloody well sharts a mid-size volcanic eruption into his nappy, risking spillage when said nappy is removed. I long ago took to placing a terry-towelling nappy (old-style cloth nappy) on top of the towel on the change table so it Setri wees or poos I can just change the nappy-towel instead of having to wash a soiled bath towel (cheap ones bought from Target for the purpose... I regret going cheap though because the damn things leak dye and have to be washed separately). Believe it or not, dealing with poo all the time really isn't that bad. Pre-baby I thought for sure it would be quite a job getting used to it, but breastfed babies' poo isn't super-stinky, and it pretty much just looks like digested milk (complete with little undigested curds much of the time). Gotta wonder how it gets turned bright yellow in transit through the digestive system, though... that colour is quite eye-popping at first! Something else Setri does is put on a concerned look and make a noise that sound like "oh dear" when he's having difficulty pooing. Lol. Very apt given that it usually precedes a change-table natural disaster.
Setri loves all the games that Gam makes up.
Something that worries us about Setri is his obvious love for the screen, particularly the television. He was very young- I don't know if I might have mentioned it in an earlier post- when I first caught him trying to peer around me to see if there was anything on TV (it was off at the time), and one of the first things he now does when brought into our living area is look at the screen to see if there's anything on. First thing he does when we bring him into the living area is check out the TV to see if it's on- even though mostly it's not! Gam has even caught Setri trying to watch TV reflected in the mirror behind the couch when Gam had him on his lap for a chat! It's easy to see how little kids can become screen-junkies... if it's a worry at 3 months then it's going to be exponentially worse when he's older. I'm afraid I always put to much TV down to bad parenting (we're not big TV watchers ourselves), but I often play CDs or MP3s in the Xbox and put the screen display on for Setri to watch (bright coloured patterns, constantly changing) and we're going to have to be careful not to fall into the trap of using TV as a babysitter ourselves. Gam and I are kind of screen-junkies ourselves, in the sense that we make heavy use of the internet, and I have to be conscious about devoting my attention to Setri when he's with me and not making the mistake of looking past him to read something on the screen. He is usually pretty quick to start getting narky if I do, mind, but I don't want him to have to remind me- he's a little person and it's just as rude for me to ignore him and look at a screen as it is for me to do it to anyone else. Moreover, his developmental needs are such that he requires input from me, so if I were to treat him like I do the cats (i.e. sit on my lap getting pats but otherwise ignored while I read), it would be bad for his development.
Setri does have a very short attention span, even for things on the TV (he likes a lot of action- explosions, lights, car-chases). He enjoys playing with toys, plinking on the piano, exploring objects, being read a book, but only for a period of time spanning anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes at most.
We bought another sling/carrier- the Pikkolo- ostensibly because it's better for bushwalking than the Close Parent one, but we have been using it almost everywhere in preference to taking the pram with us. Setri is much happier in the sling, whether he be looking around or taking a nap. The pram is pretty much going to become obsolete for everything but jogging, I think.
Gam modelling the Pikkolo at the baby expo in Brisbane... he makes it look good!
Of the clothes Setri is rapidly growing out of, I have been able to give them to the mother of Seth- one nice little pair of trousers Setri was only able to wear three times before becoming too big for them! I could hold onto them 'just in case' we have another kid but that just seems silly given our limited room for storage and the fact that we don't know (don't agree on?) whether we might ever have another. Besides, if we do it will be planned and we won't be planning a pregnancy unless we have more than enough money to fork out for more baby clothes. So someone else may as well make use of them in the mean time.
I always thought that it was a bit silly to buy babies nice clothes. For starters, they don't appreciate them and second, they are less practical than the little jumpsuits. What I underestimated was the lure of cuteness. Setri looks so positively adorable in little 'grownup' clothes- jeans, cardigans and the like- that I really enjoy dressing him in them. Much to Gam's disgust. Our favourite item of clothing, however, is what I call Setri's 'cuddlesuit'- a little padded jumpsuit from Pumpkin Patch given to Setri by our neighbours. There are photographs of it in the Ron Mueck post. It's super-warm and easy to get on and off. We loved it so much that I jumped on the Pumpkin Patch website intending to purchase another one but we balked when we saw the price- $32.99 for a baby's jumpsuit! :-o We recently gave in when Pumpkin Patch had a sale and we finally managed to find one in Setri's size, and paid $20 for it. I'm sure if someone had told us prior to Setri's birth that we would one day spend $20 on a baby jumpsuit we would have laughed.
Setri in his cuddlesuit
If it was summer I think I'd rather let Setri nude up most of the time, or at least wear only a nappy, but it's way too cold for that at the moment.
At 3 months my maternity leave is 25% over. I can't believe it. It's scary how fast this time has flown... I am honestly loving every minute I spend with Setri, and I feel bad that Gam misses out (and feels like he's missing out) because he's at work... I don't miss work at all, I don't know that I would miss any kind of work if it came down to that or spending time with Setri. I do feel guilty about not missing it- I think because I was so unproductive when I was pregnant that I feel like I have a backlog of work already- and not earning any money. Also I want to set a good example for Setri and finish my PhD. But I would spend another year or two with Setri on top of the 12 months if we could afford it, before sending him off to pre-school. All this crap about mothers choosing to stay at home vs. returning to work is nonsense- I bet most of them have their hands forced and base their decision solely on what works best for their family's finances. If I didn't return to work we probably couldn't afford to maintain our mortgage. Even my measly APA scholarship is better than nothing.
So 3 months have flown and we have a beautiful little guy whose personality is really starting to shine (even those flashes of bossiness and intractability are adorable at this age). We've been so lucky that apart from that brief period of our lives made awful by the hospital, having a baby has been a painless, extremely enjoyable (Gam may beg to differ slightly, because he has to go to work even after a bad night!) experience. Every day I suffer cute-overload and every night I enjoy lying in bed next to him as he sleeps peacefully... and I understand more and more why parents feel that having a baby is such an incredible, special experience. Sloppy, eh? It's not as if things are perfect, but Setri absolutely is. I feel very lucky to have him :)
