Sunday, October 20, 2013

Drew: 3 Months



Drew loves: sucking on his hands, his new crib mobile (just a cheapo Winnie the Pooh one I found at my fav consignment shop), babbling, story time at the library, his paci at nap time, his Lovie Lamb, hanging out in the Moby Wrap, "standing" on his legs, morning time, bath time, and smiling.

Drew hates: tummy time (he's had a love/hate with tummy time since we started doing it). That's about it.

Milestones: Holding his head up 90 degrees during tummy time, rolling over from tummy to back, grasping at and holding the toys dangling from his toy bar in his infant seat, putting weight on his legs when I help him "stand", lots of looking around and tracking faces, night time sleep is fabulous (8pm to 7am with a dream feed at 11 pm), naps are great most of the time (goes down without much effort and sleeps in his crib...we're a long way from 7 weeks), and he's officially moved into 6 months clothes.

Favorite moments: when he sleeps in the Moby Wrap on my chest, reading him his Jesus Loves Me book before bed, when he smiles so big his paci falls out of his mouth, rubbing coconut oil on his little arms and legs after bath time, when he rests his hand on my hand when he's settling down before a nap...so all the same things as last month! He babbles at me more now, which is so cute. Also, when he sneezes he always goes "sneeze, sneeze, ahhhhh"...of course, it's SO CUTE!

Playing with cousin Cope
Learning how to hold his ball
Ready for fall!
Practicing sitting in his chair
Drew's favorite things: paci, lovie, and mom.

Playing with his toy bar in his infant seat
Giving mom his serious face
Kyle took apart the kitchen to put a new faucet on the sink. Go dad go!
Tummy time with grandma at grandma's house
Practicing putting weight on his legs
Holding that head up!

Chatting with great-grandpa bob
Just being a pal
Afternoon nap with mom
3 month pic!
All snuggly warm for Husky tailgaiting
I got this cute cold weather suit at my fav consignment
shop...Drew looks like the kid from The Christmas Story ("I can't put my arms down...").
Drew has taking a liking to Uncle Zeke
Fam pic with inflatable Harry - Go Dawgs!

And here's two videos from the last month. The first one is Drew rolling over (please ignore my ridiculously loud and annoying mom voice), and the second one is Drew visiting with great-grandpa Bob.



Giving it grace:
Three months marks the end of the "4th trimester". The first three months was definitely a blur; I finally feel like I've got my head on somewhat straight now. Now that we have our wits about us, I want to go back and do it all again!

I loved the newborn stage, despite it's obvious downsides (the lack of sleep taking the cake). I currently find myself fighting the temptation to say "he's growing up too fast" or "time is flying by so fast". Because really, he's not growing up any faster than any other baby, and time is certainly not passing at a faster rate than before. It's hard to find a balance between being fond of the memories, embracing his current phase, and looking forward to the future. I find myself just kind of dancing between all three of those on a daily (or sometimes hourly) basis.

Now that I'm sleeping again, I can more accurately reflect on what happens in those first months after a baby enters your life. As an adult, I thought I had experienced the full range of human emotion. I think somewhere around 5th grade (when I had my first "recess boyfriend") I completed the full-range-of-emotions experience, and then spent the next almost two decades deploying those emotions throughout my daily life. When we had Drew, though, I realized God had been holding out on me. He had certainly instilled in me a wife's heart when I married Kyle, but I did not yet have a mother's heart. A parent's heart. I thought God would just take my existing heart and add to it. But really, that first day I held Drew it felt like God took my existing heart, broke a little piece off, and then used that little piece to begin growing my mother's heart. And the growing of the new heart is painful and clumsy; the new heart has emotions in it that I've never felt or known before. But now I understand how you can have one type of love for your friends, your family, and another type of love for your husband, and yet another type of love for God...and still a whole new type of love for a child.

And the best part is that love I have for Drew, my child, is just an invisible sliver of the love God has for me, for us, for His children. Before I really knew God, I certainly didn't think of Him as "God the Father". Instead, He was "God the rule maker" (or even sometimes "God the buzz kill"). But not God the Parent. Not the author of life, and eternal Father. And it's through God's grace that He's using Drew to give me some perspective on just how vast and perfect His love is for His children.