Our little man is three months old today - growing up so very quickly! It's amazing how much older he looks in pictures compared to even just a couple weeks ago. I'm thankful for digital photography and the ability to take so many pictures of him at each stage of development. The unfolding of new life is an absolutely amazing thing to observe and participate in!
A major highlight of this past month was Lukas' second out-of-state trip: down to visit Joseph, Ami, and cousin Ruby in Arkansas for a few days. At three years old, Ruby was curious about Lukas but not quite sure how to respond to him. When asked if she would like to hold her baby cousin, she said, "I'd better wait until I'm a little bigger." Gave us all a good chuckle. :D It'll be a lot of fun to see how these two interact more and more as time passes.
While down in Arkansas we also attended the wedding of a good friend, Mary, to her Knight, Ben. Mary is a midwife so a large percentage of the 750-some guests were babies and young children. :) We felt in good company hanging out towards the back of the church surrounded by plenty of other youngins. Lukas was awake and squirmy for most of the wedding but thankfully not too noisy. Of course, then he fell sound asleep as soon as we got to the noisy, crowded reception room! :) It was a lot of fun introducing him to the many friends who were also there.
Lukas continues to bring an infinite measure of joy to our lives every day - more and more all the time, really, as he is increasingly interactive. He likes to lay on bed and just "talk" away cheerfully, giving me the biggest grins whenever I give him attention. When I'm making lunch I often set him in his bouncy seat where he can watch me working, and he'll "cheer" me on with an unending serenade of coos and grunts. Many times I catch him holding both hands in fists as if holding a steering wheel, while making noises that could pass for imitating a car engine. Obviously he's not consciously pretending to drive a car, but it cracks me up to see him doing it so often! He's definitely noticing his surroundings a lot more and a few times has begun to consciously hang on to a toy or a blanket. Not too much longer and everything will start going into his mouth, hehe. Just in the last week he's also been showing a lot more motivation to starting holding his head up while laying on his tummy, so I suspect it won't be that many more weeks before he's rolling over, too. My days of being able to leave him on the bed unattended are numbered!
Nursing has been going a little better, as the cranio-sacral adjustments have brought down his palate to a not-quite-so-high position. He has a much stronger suck now, but is still not able to nurse adequately without the SNS (Supplemental Nursing System). We are thankful for even the smallest of improvements, though, and pray he continues to progress to the point where the SNS is no longer needed. We were able to buy a nice double electric pump from my cousin this month, and finally able to return the rental pump to the hospital. Very thankful we can afford items like this which make our daily life so much easier!
After only one day of more than 5 hours sleep in his first 2.5 months of life, Lukas has graciously granted me 6 hours about 5 different nights in the last few weeks. So lovely! Feeding, changing diapers, and pumping generally takes around 90 minutes, but I'm usually able to get back to bed at that point and catch another hour or two of sleep. It's been absolutely wonderful to face most days feeling quite rested after several months of near-constant sleepiness, and I've been able to finally catch up on some projects around the house.
One new thing I've done with this newfound time is to begin cloth diapering. I'd intended to start after only a few weeks, but all the nursing challenges and my own difficult recovery made us decide to postpone the additional time-commitment of cloth diapers (thankful for friends and relatives who generously gave us plenty of diapers to cover the first few months!). So it was exciting to finally be able to pull out the cute cloth diapers and put them to use. I've been delighted at how well they are working for us! We're using a mix of pockets, prefolds, covers, and fitteds right now (a few received as gifts, and the rest I picked up second hand), and all have been working great. At the risk of sounding ultra-cruchy, I've really been having a lot of fun diapering with cloth and am so glad Joe is completely on board with it, too. He's a huge help.
We are so thankful for our happy little buddy, and looking forward to seeing what the next month holds!
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