Three Months Old--part 2

I almost forgot, but I took a little video on the morning he turned three months old. He seemed quite happy when I told him how old he was... :)

Three Months Old!!!

Three months ago, when we brought Ashton home from the hospital, he looked like this:

Now here he is, three months old, twice as big and finally filling out the outfit he came home in!

We're so happy that he's growing into a big, happy baby! (And that he doesn't look like an alien anymore!) Here are the rest of the pictures I snapped that day. What a cutie!

Me and My Daddy

After a long day of seeing no one but Mommy, Ashton is very excited when Daddy comes home. Just being held by his Dad makes him happy. And it's no wonder why...Tyler comes up with some of the funniest ways to hold him. (And most of them involve only one arm!) :) I haven't caught some of the funniest ones with the camera yet, but here are just a few.

This is the one where Ashton holds on like a little monkey hanging on to a tree.

He keeps bending over and sliding down, and he likes it! If you try to move him up, he'll just slide back down again.

This is the one where he dangles until he falls asleep. It only works if he's in the right mood. :)

And this is the one that he likes the most. Tyler holds him under his bottom and squishes his legs up to his face. Usually those little legs are much higher than that--like sticking straight up in the air--but this is the best picture I could get.

And maybe I'm a mean Mommy for thinking this is cute, but I like his little angry protest face. :)

Bad Mommy

I think I've unintentionally stunted my child's development! When he was first born he was so cranky and gassy, and he cried all the time. People suggested that I lay him on his tummy, but he HATED it, and I just didn't want him to cry any more than he already did, so I never put him on his tummy. Well, now he's so much better, and I put him on his tummy, but since he hasn't had the tummy time that he should have at this point, he kind of stinks at holding his head up. He holds it up just great when we sit him up, but on his tummy, he can't do it very well. I didn't know that's why they needed tummy time!!! I just thought it was so their heads didn't get smooshed flat in the back! Poor kid. His mother has ruined him!

So now, we're trying to work on the tummy time/holding-your-head-up thing. It's just so funny, because he can kick super hard with his legs (if he had the head/arm strength at this point, I swear he'd be crawling already!), but that just pushes his poor face into the ground, and he can't figure out why. Toys help him a little bit, but he still face plants into them.



But oh well. At least he is getting better. I think he wants to try and pull himself up, because he'll grab the blanket he's on and pull it towards him and grunt.


He really does try so hard. This isn't a great picture of it, but he does this cute little pout thing with his lips when he's concentrating hard. He almost always does it when he's on his tummy.


Well, hopefully someday he'll build those neck and back and arm muscles that I've deprived him of. I'm sure as soon as he does, he'll be rolling and crawling all over the place...oh boy, that will be crazy!

Wo is Me

It's pictures like these that make me wish I had a fancy camera and great photography skills. Then I could really do his cuteness justice. Oh well, I'll leave that up to the professionals, I suppose. :)

His Royal Highness

Ashton is so funny. He lays back with his little hands behind his head like he's the Crown Prince of the whole world, waiting for us to fan him with palm leaves and bring him bottles on a silver platter. But of course we would never spoil him... :)

Take me out to the ball game!

Two weeks ago, Tyler's work gave all the employees and their families a treat--they bought everyone a ticket to the Minor League baseball game in Orem, and they even paid for us to go to a barbeque beforehand! It was Ashton's first sporting event experience. We got him all dressed up in his baseball bib and jeans, and he seemed pretty excited at dinner.




He drooled over all the yummy food that he's not allowed to have yet. (Look closely--there really is drool dripping from his mouth!)




Then the baseball game started. The Orem Owlz played the Ogden Raptors. It was pretty exciting, and we had great seats along the third base line, near home plate. It was the last home game for the Owlz of the season. At first Ashton wasn't too interested.





He looked around for a while, made a little fuss, and was asleep by the bottom of the third inning. A few innings went by, though, and he woke up. By then it was getting dark and cool, so we put his little hoodie on him and waited to see if he would watch after all.






He didn't want to stay sitting down, but as soon as we got up to walk, he was very into the game. He got especially excited when the crowd would cheer, and he would watch all the people running around on the brightly lit field.





In this picture, not only can you see Ashton watching intently, but you can also see the big fat guy sitting at the back of the field, shouting his trash-talk to the umpire...and the batter...and the pitcher, the coaches, the mascot, and pretty much anyone else he could think to shout at!




As the night wore on, Orem was beating Ogden senseless. It was getting a little late for Ashton, so we left at the bottom of the seventh inning, but by then they were beating the Raptors 17-0. It was pretty ridiculous, actually, but still fun to watch! Maybe now Ashton will grow up to be a big baseball player! :)

Toys!

One day, a little while after I noticed that Ashton discovered his hands, I decided to hand him a toy and see what he did with it. Up until this point, he would sit in his bouncy chair and stare at the toys, but that's all. So I handed him a bright, soft, rattle toy. He just sat there looking at it for awhile.

Then, very slowly, he brought it up and tried to put it in his mouth.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the best hand-eye-mouth coordination, and it kept slipping to the side.

It didn't take too long before he just got frustrated that he couldn't get it in his mouth where he wanted it, and he was done with trying. Later on that same day, he was laying on the floor and started swinging his arms. So I decided to see what would happen if I dangled some toys over his head. It was great! He started batting at them and getting really excited and kicking his legs...it was so funny that I had to take a little video of the moment:

Ever since then, he has loved his toys, and his coordination is getting much better. Here's a video from three days ago. We were at the store and he was chomping on his toy like there was no tomorrow! I'm glad he's learning how to entertain himself a little bit more...it makes things more fun for him AND for us!

Our good little sleeper...

Well, up until a couple of weeks ago, we could not get Ashton to sleep anywhere at night except in his car seat...unless we put him in our bed and held him, which tended to make sleeping quite difficult. Our theory was that the gas in his tummy hurt him worse when he laid flat, but when he would sleep sitting up (sort of) in his car seat, it wouldn't hurt as much. But anyway...a couple of weeks ago I noticed that he would fall asleep at random times (in the middle of playing on the floor or changing his diaper), even though he was flat. Here's one time I changed his diaper, and before I was even done, he was out cold:

We decided we were going to try to put him to sleep in his pack-n-play bassinet again. The first night he did it, he kept waking up every couple of hours, but we'd just put him back down in it, and he'd go back to sleep. After that night, though, he sleeps in his bassinet with no problem, and he hasn't gone back to the car seat since! Hooray!

I'm a paranoid mother, so his bassinet was still in our room. However, he wasn't sleeping through the whole night, and I finally thought that maybe it was due to the thrashings and snoring of a certain man in the room. (At first I thought that he would just wake up because he was hungry, because the sounds never seemed to bother him before.) So, even though I'm paranoid, we decided to move his bassinet into his own bedroom. And a miracle happened! He slept the whole night through! He went to bed at 10pm and didn't make a peep until 8am! And the greatest thing of all is that he's done it every night since then. I'm knocking on wood and praying like crazy that it sticks and stays a permanent habit, because it is beautiful. WAY TO GO, BABY BOY!!!

Curious George

Ashton is getting so much bigger and smarter, which means he's starting to get very curious about things. It's so funny, because he gets this incredibly cute curious face when he's looking at things or watching us do something. I've tried numerous times to capture it on camera, because it's my favorite thing ever, but here's the closest we've come:




I'm SOOO sad that it's out of focus, otherwise it would have been the perfect representation of what he looks like. I love it! He is just so cute when he's looking around and learning. This picture is also okay...it's a better picture as far as being in focus, but it's only sort of the face he makes. It looks more tired than curious. :)

Bottle Baby

I didn't ever think I'd have a bottle baby. But Ashton did not catch on quickly to nursing, and even when he did, he still liked the bottle better. He also was really gassy all the time, and it made him cry a lot. Eventually he stopped nursing altogether and would only take a bottle, so we tried this formula made for sensitive tummies. He hardly has any gas at all now, and he's much happier for it...maybe he knew he should be bottle fed the whole time! :) Ashton eats his bottles funny, though. When he's really hungry, he'll chug it down, but most of the time, he likes to close his eyes and eat it slowly, like this:


Now, don't even think for a minute that he's asleep, because if you do, and you take the bottle out, beware! You will feel his wrath! Sometimes he does fall asleep in the middle, but most of the time, he'll just drink it down and be wide awake again when it's time to burp. Strange kid... And, the other funny thing he does is he likes to put his hands behind his head...as if he wasn't trying to get comfy enough already! Oh well, whatever works!

A Real Baby...

Poor little Ashton had a hard time after he was first born. It seemed like instead of a baby, I had a little, LOUD crying machine! Thankfully, he has grown out of that "colicky" stage, and he is such a happy, content baby! I love that he'll sit on the floor and smile when you talk to him, for such a long time. He's usually mostly happy now...I feel like I finally have a real baby!

Chubby Cheeks

I didn't realize how chubby Ashton's cheeks were getting until I took this picture!




Hard to believe he's still only in the 22nd percentile for weight, huh? Keep growing, little guy!