Playing Life's Game...: Merida is 3 months old

Yes, it's a way more than a month late. And yes, I'm a horrible blogger for not keeping up with my baby's updates. Oh well. I'm a good mother and house wife though so who cares! Merida didn't have an official doctors appointment this month so all of the measurements are estimates.

Weight:

According to our at home scale, Merida weighs around 16 lbs 8 ounces. She is very chubby now and we are looking forward to that 3 month growth spurt to lengthen her out a bit. She is wearing size 3-6 month clothing but is starting to out grow some of those too. The Carter's brand runs especially small on her so she won't be fitting into those for long. She is still in size two diapers.

Height:

We tried really hard to measure our squirm-worm baby girl. We think she's 24.5 inches long, but it was really hard to tell. The big feet have already become a slight issue. Recently Meme and Mommy had to go purchase socks that fit 6-12 months. We went ahead a bought 12-24 month socks too-- just in case.

Sleeping:

Merida is successfully sleeping in her own crib at night. At 12 weeks we moved the Rock and Play into her bedroom and let her sleep in there for about two weeks. In the Rock and Play she was sleeping 8-9 hours a night straight. It was amazing. Then we moved her to her crib. The first week was really rough. Especially after having a nice stretch of 8-9 hours of sleep. She went back to 6 hours of sleep but has slowly been increasing to 7-8 hours. Which in general is pretty awesome. Right around the three month mark, Merida stopped wanting to be swaddled. She wouldn't mind being swaddled but as soon as we put her down to sleep she would struggle and fight to get free. So we ended up not swaddling her the next night and she did just fine. Made me sad though. No more baby straight-jacket. In order to help her transition from swaddling to no swaddling, we starting singing the same song every night as I would swaddle her. Since she doesn't like being swaddled anymore we continue to do the same nighttime routine but we just sing the swaddle song before her lullaby.

Merida naps best while sleeping in our bed. I know, I know. It's not reccommended. But I don't care. She can nap there for 2 hours sometimes 3 if she's really exhausted versus her 20 min - 1 hour naps in her crib. And I think if she can sleep in our bed for naps and sleeps well in her crib at night, it doesn't matter where she wants to sleep! Shh-- Sometimes we nap together which is really nice. Hehe. Sleep when the baby sleeps, right?!

Eating: Merida is eating 4 ounces of formula at each feeding still. We are occassionally giving her 5 ounces before bed or when she wakes up if she seems especially hungry. She is still on a three hour schedule and that seems to work well for her. It's definitely more of a routine than a schedule and that's okay too. We have stopped the cluster feeding now.
After trying a variety of formulas, I can (hands down) say that we like Enfamil and Earth's Best formulas the best. They both seem to digest easily and also don't give her a lot of gas. Similac (especially) foamed a lot when shaken and this, we believe, gave her some tummy troubles. If we could get Earth's Best for the price of Enfamil, we would be exclusively feeding her Earth's Best. But because we get so many Enfamil coupons and discounts at Publix and Target, it's hard to pass up a $10 difference.
I also had my first margarita this month since I got pregnant. I didn't realize just how much I missed them until I tasted this first sip. OMG is was delectable!

Milestones & Other Things I Want to Remember:

Merida has started to enjoy tummy time more. We have found that laying her on the end of the bed while we sit on the floor infront of her works best. We are at her height and we can sing and use our hands to entertain her more than if we all were on the floor. This also gives her a great vantage point for the dogs playing. She can push up to a 90 degree angle, but doesn't seem interested in doing it much.

We have found that Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is by far Merida's favorite song. I don't know why, but she loves it. Even when she's really upset, we can stand her on our tummies and start singing that song and a huge smile appears on her face. It's great.

We have started to cloth diaper our little girl. Yes, it's a lot of money up front, but we truly think it'll save us around $1,500 over the next two years. And that's money I would definitely like to spend on something that doesn't get pooped on and thrown away. It's a little intimidating to enter the cloth diaper world, but I think that with all the YouTube, Facebook, and Internet support, we will do just fine.

Merida has calmed down with the coos and is now more focused on watching us talk. Occassionally she'll chat with us in the mornings but I think she's really trying to figure out how talking works and is just staring at our mouths all the time.

Merida still does well in the shower when we bathe her and has slowly accepted being put in a towel on the way to her changing mat. But as soon as we put her on the changing table it's a serenade of screams and cries until she's fully dressed and picked back up.

Her eyes are definitely more brown now and the top of her hair is very curly. Her hair is still the first thing that people comment on when they see her. I'm starting to run out of things to say when someone wants to talk about her hair.

Here are some pictures of her 3 month photo shoot and some from 2-3 months: