The 3 month mark made a huge difference in this girl's attitude. She went from being generally frustrated with a lot of things (especially the act of falling asleep) to falling into a pattern of sleep and awake, easily falling asleep on her own and crying rarely, if ever. She's gone several days without crying at all a couple of times. I now know that she stays up between 90 minutes and 2 and a half hours between naps. She's never really awake for more than 3 hours at a time. She now rubs her eyes when she's sleepy and it's our cue to give her a nice environment to sleep in, even if that just means putting her in the other room. We still make noise during the day, and she can sleep through it. Yet, we make sure to at least help her to fall asleep so that she doesn't get too cranky.
In general, she's just a joy to be around, and there are much less frustrations than there were before 3 months. We can easily leave her with our friends for an hour or two without much trouble. When she sleeps, she sleeps soundly and comfortably. When she's awake, she's usually laughing, smiling at us or rolling around on the floor or biting on a toy. She's pretty contended to play on her own for short bursts of time, which has freed up a bit of time for me to get stuff done while she's both awake and asleep. Now that she needs less help falling asleep (she can fall asleep in the bed or in her rocking chair by herself), that also frees up some time.
I think my favorite part of the day with her are in the first few moments of her waking up in the morning. She usually springs straight into laughter upon waking up. What a noise to start the day -- your baby laughing at nothing in particular! My friend Jill who is an artist sent us some contemporary art which we have pinned to the ceiling for Isa to look at. One piece of art is a picture of a little boy. I think Isa thinks it's her best friend because each morning she wakes up, looks at the ceiling and bursts into laughter. It's really so much fun being her mama.
Patrick says he can't pick one favorite part of the day, but he loves it when he kisses her and she smiles so big he can't even kiss her lips because they're open in a huge grin. A chasm of happiness. She loves affection, but can also spend time alone exploring.
So, basically we're adjusting well. Things are getting easier as Isa gets adjusted to life outside the fish bowl and we get adjusted to caring for this little girl. She's a happy, smart, strong and relaxed girl. We are in love with this baby girl, and we think she could totally be a plus size baby model. :)
