11 Weeks

The Bitty Banshee is napping on my lap right now, which gives me a chance to write an update.

She's developing new and interesting cries, one of which is an ear splitting shriek, thus the new name.

She's outgrown most of the 0-3 month clothes and is now wearing the 3-6 month clothes. The onesies in this size are already almost too small.

Her hand-eye coordination is getting better. She can pretty reliably grab things and bring them to her mouth. Which means many, many more things are now covered in baby drool.

Which brings up the next thing - drool. Oh, the drooling. I now understand why we got so many bibs. But the bubbles she blows in it are cute!

She got some baby acne last week but it seems to be clearing up a bit.

Her night time sleep schedule is still wildly erratic. Sunday night she slept for 7 hours straight. The next night she didn't get to sleep until 2am, and woke up every 2 hours.

Ever since the possible diagnosis of acid reflux, she's been sleeping in her swing. It keeps her propped up so I can put her down to sleep right after eating. Otherwise I have to hold her for 45 minutes, which effectively means I get no sleep. The downside of this is that I'm back to sleeping on the couch. Someday I'll get to sleep in my bed again.

She continues to babble. She seems to concentrate on a particular sound each day. They're getting more complicated, too. At first, it might be a vowel sound. She'd say things like "ay, gay, bay, ray". Today, it's been "ree". She's said "bree, gree, aree, mree".

Tummy time is going well. I'm increasing the period of time from 5 minutes to 7 or 8 minutes at a time. She starts out with tummy time, and if she gets frustrated and starts crying, we finish with her looking at her fish. That keeps her entertained, so she doesn't mind it as much.

She's very interested in movement. Today during tummy time I was lying in front of her, and I realized she was watching my feet, that I was slowly kicking back and forth.

Because of this, she'll watch tv if we let her, so I'm careful to limit the amount of time the tv is on when she's awake. Sometimes when I'm walking her around the house late at night, I will turn old black and white movies. They have less violence and better dialogue, so at least she's being exposed to a greater vocabulary. And it gives me something to focus on so I don't fall asleep on my feet.

She's getting better at holding her head up because of all of this. When she's on my shoulder, for burping for example, she'll look all around the room.

She can push herself up onto her forearms and hold her chest off the ground for a few minutes at a time.

Once she has her forearms under her, she can roll from her tummy to her back.

She's learning to recognize objects. She doesn't like to be put down and I can see her gearing up to pitch a fit, but when she sees me putting on the baby sling, she gets happy and smiles until I put her in it. She also REALLY knows where her milk comes from. We'll catch her staring at my breasts and so we know she's hungry.

She likes looking at pictures of people. I have two boxes that have people with babies as part of the marketing on the box, and she loves looking at them. Sometimes she'll even talk to them.

She is enthralled with mirrors and will stare at herself for a while. Sometimes that helps her to get out of a grump.

She recognizes us. Last month, she'd let anyone hold her and be happy with it. Now when someone else holds her, she'll start to cry until I take her back.