Another month has flown by in the Tricycle household. I know I’m a biased mama, but the cuteness kills me.

He’s our little Elmer Fudd!

Each month just keeps getting better – our baby is happier, I’m more confident, and we’re settling into what only can be described as a (mostly) comfortable routine.

We’ve come a long way, baby!

Sleep

I think every Mom agonizes about sleep – I know I sure do! I’ve had the last week off for February break, and the goal for this vacation was simple: get the baby to sleep in his crib at night. The outcome? We’re both really, really tired after seven days of struggling with the concept.

His poor crib sleep isn’t due to a lack of routine; Mr. Tricycle and the Trikester read together every night after bath time.

The first two nights of crib sleep went great. I totally dragged a mattress into the nursery and slept by his crib – embarrassing and crazy, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep unless I was right there to make sure everything was ok. After the second night, things went downhill fast. Although we didn’t alter our bedtime routine, the Trikester bawled every time I laid him in his crib, even if he was out cold in my arms. I tried heated bags of rice, soothing but not picking up (he refused to be soothed), letting him cry it out (but I gave up after 15 minutes), and taking him out of the crib and bouncing until he feel asleep. No matter what I did, he just didn’t want to stay in that crib. After two or three hours of trying, I gave up every night and went back to co-sleeping. I’m not sure if he was too overtired to soothe himself back to sleep, or what, but we soldiered on for six nights, and then I decided it wasn’t worth it. There was no way I could sustain this once work started, so I gave up. Not proud of that, but it happened. So we’re still co-sleeping. End of story. #Mamafail

I love staring at him while he sleeps, so there are advantages to skipping the crib.

Food

Nursing is still the easiest part of our routine, though it got a little more stressful at the end of the month when I went back to work. I pump three times a day at work and I’m making JUST enough to keep the Trikester in bottles. I’m pretty sure we’re going to have supplement a bottle or two of formula during the day, but I’m not quite there yet. Would you go through your freezer stash and THEN supplement, or start supplementing before you ransacked your stash?

Disposition

It’s getting easier and easier to keep this little dude happy. We were out and about with a friend earlier this month and he wanted to know if the baby was always this well behaved. We kind of stopped and looked at each other – yeah, our baby is usually this good. He still has his cranky times – like from 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM nearly every evening, but for the most part he’s easygoing as long as he’s slept and eaten.

Smile, Baby!

Milestones

Our baby just talks and talks and talks. It was like someone pushed a button – one day he was mostly quiet, and then the next he wanted to recite a novel. He’s also started using his hands to grab things with purpose (and we’re a little worried about the safety of certain parts of his anatomy). He can easily lock a fistful of my hair, t-shirt or jewelry in his grasp and then hang on for dear life. He’s also figured out how to put his fingers into his mouth – it started with his whole fist, but now he can usually manage to get specific digits between his lips, though no thumb yet.

Many, many photos from this month feature him shoving his fist into his mouth.

At eleven weeks he rolled from back to belly in his crib. The first time it happened I thought I’d accidentally put him down on his stomach in my middle of the night fog, but the second time it happened I realized the little squirt had done it on his own. It’s only happened those two times, and in both instances he was super mad and thrashing around, so I’m not sure how purposeful the action was. I’m still swaddling both arms for naps and keeping an eagle eye on the monitor, but on the rare occasions he’s in his crib at night I leave his right arm out of the swaddle. Our little dude hates tummy time. We enforce it twice a day, but it hasn’t encouraged him to do the mini push-up that so many babies have mastered by now. It’s little things like this make mamas worry – hopefully he gets the hang of it soon!

A rare smile during tummy time – he’s looking at me in the mirror. Melts a mama’s heart.

Adventures

I headed back to work at the end of month number three – which is definitely an adventure! So far it’s gone well and I can relax knowing Father-in-Law Tricycle is taking care of our little man.

My first day back – notice I couldn’t be bothered to blow-dry my hair (this new routine is demanding!) and the baby is not quite sure why we’re taking pictures before 7:00 AM, poor guy.

We’ve been braver about going out and about, and ate at a “real” restaurant with the baby in tow (does Olive Garden count as a real restaurant?). We sat at the nearly empty bar at lunch time, and got soup and salad for speed’s sake, but we were able to down a glass of wine and enjoy ourselves before the crank set it.

The Trikester is becoming a smiling little ball of deliciousness and we’re so excited to see what new developments the next month brings. I think we’ve finally found our groove as parents. When did you really begin to feel comfortable in your new role?