Natalie Grace- 3 Months

Three months?! 

I tell you, months seem to go by faster and faster these days.

We are loving this sweet girl more and more every minute and are so thankful for her happy, go-with-flow personality.

In the past month, she has worked herself into a little sleeping and eating routine that looks like this most days:

7:00 wake up and eat

8:30-10:30 nap

10:30 eat

12:00-2:00 nap

2:00 eat

3:30-5:00 nap

5:00 eat

short nap or sometimes stays awake until bath around 7:30

8:00 eat and goes to bed

If we're on the go (which most days we are), one or two of her naps are interrupted, but she seems to be okay with making up her sleep during a different nap time stretch.

The girl is an efficient nurser and is done 10-15 minutes after she starts. So far, she seems to like spreading out her feeds between 3-3.5 hours. So much so that I wake her up to feed her if she's still sleeping!

At night, she wakes up once and occasionally sleeps all the way 'til morning. This month I'll start slipping her the paci to see if she'll hold off with the nighttime feed and start making it to morning on a consistent basis. But for now, I think she's done a pretty great job sleeping long stretches at night.

The other big change for her this month is sleeping without her swaddle. Ryan was a tummy sleeper pretty early on, so I was so nervous about how breaking a swaddle would work for her since I never had to experience it with Ryan. I was so relieved when she took to sleeping swaddle-free without a problem!

I plan to write a separate post about adjusting to life with two, and how parenting a second baby has differed from how we parented our first (our approaches have been completely different!) but for now, suffice it to say we are so thankful for how smooth the transition has been so far.

Here is a recap of her last month:

Her big brother loves her so much!

2 month checkup!

Smiling at her big brother

Snuggles with her daddy and brother! (There's a lot of skin in this picture- Matt included, hah- so sorry about that) ;)

Her one-arm-out nap that transitioned her to sleeping without a swaddle. She was 9.5 weeks in this picture and went to sleeping swaddle-free without a problem that night. Sweet girl is a little dream!

Her first visit to the school where I used to teach- love her little smirk in this picture!

This look- the "I think my mom might be crazy" look. :)

Before she started her little sleeping/naptime routine, she napped just about everywhere. In this picture her tummy time turned into nap time while Ryan and I played with blocks right beside her. It's amazing what a difference a couple of weeks makes at this age though, as now she needs her quiet space in her room to take a good nap.

Love this little look before she feel asleep... and the way she holds her hands together. :)

Post nap smiles! And a spit-up stain on the couch. #reallife ;)

Sweet Tal- I laid Natalie down for some tummy time and he came and rested his head on her legs less than a minute after she was down. Love that pup!

First day in Waumba Land at our church... and from what we were told, she did this the whole time.

Natalie meets Aunt Mea!

Her sporty look on one of our chilly May days :)

Either the pollen was getting to her or she caught her first little cold after going into the church nursery for the first time, but her little eyes watered and she sneezed and had a little cough for a couple of days- but the sweet thing was still as happy as could be!

Napping at Nonna and Papa's while we cleaned

Hey!

Ryan was eating his dinner and stopped and said, "Sister right there. Give her kiss real quick." I mean you can't say no to that. So onto the table he went. ;)

I love her scrunchy-nose smile!

Strawberry picking day

She has definitely mastered the furrowed-brow look. ;)

Meeting Muggie- her great grandma- for the first time!

Can't wait to see what changes come in the next month with this sweet girl!