Three months old!

Natalie is three months old today! Before she was born, I heard talk about "the fourth trimester" - those first three months wherein babies are still sort of incubating and realizing that they live in the outside world. I don't know about the scientific veracity of this, but I do know that Natalie has, of course, changed a lot in these first three months.

Obviously, she's bigger. We've now had to put away almost all of the newborn clothes (we're in the three months size now, natch), and we've moved up to size two diapers (when we buy disposables, that is - other than last weekend in Austin and at night, we're pretty much using cloth diapers all the time [and, yes, the promised post about that is still coming]).She can now pretty reliably hold her head up on her own, which is exciting. She's also started babbling: sometimes in the morning we wake up to her making the most adorable sounds. This is far and above the best way to start the day (even if it happens around 5am). We often try to bring her to bed for a snuggle with us, but Natalie wakes up hungry and has only one thing on her mind! Most nights, Natalie does have a long stretch of sleep that actually corresponds closely, although not exactly, to what the rest of us would call "night." During the day, though, she will only sleep on one of us. Those extra snuggles are very sweet and adorable, but do interfere with getting other things done. The trade-off, though, is well worth it.Sometimes she laughs or giggles, but this doesn't really seem to be in response to anything in particular yet. Natalie does smile in response to sounds you make (the horse whinny, for example), songs you sing (Mike sings her a Japanese song with words "kuru, kuru" in it), or if you smile at her. Occasionally when she's done nursing, she'll push herself off the breast, roll on her back, look up at me with those big brown eyes and babble and smile. Melts my heart. Every single time.Natalie is also learning to like the bath - we've had several baths with no screaming whatsoever. The other day she even joined me in the big-girl bathtub, and she seemed to like it. The new thing she dislikes is "tummy time". I try to put her on her stomach and get down near her and sing to her and distract her. This lasts all of twelve seconds. So we are definitely figuring out the ways in which the angry cry sounds different from the hungry/other types of cries.As the weather has cooled down a bit and we've been able to take more walks outside, we realize that she doesn't like wind or breezes. I realize that to her it must seem that we are in control of everything: we make her bed vibrate, we play music, we change her clothes, etc. But we cannot make the wind stop blowing! (Although we do our best to shield her, this isn't always easy when she's in her stroller)At this point, Natalie has lots of nicknames: kitten, Sweet Peterson (a take-off on sweet pea, coined by her father), Rear Admiral Poopypants, baby human, little one-zel, and tiny. What we call her depends on the situation - I'm hoping this is good for her cognitive development, not just confusing the heck out of her.

Here's the latest set of pictures (also available here):