Daphne is 3 months!

...and change. On Thursday last week she weighed in at 15 lbs 12 oz. To compare, Eli hit the 16 lb mark at 4 months (14 lbs at the 3 month mark) so she's still bigger than her brother was at this point but the weight gain has slowed a bit, I think. Even so, her 15+ pounds lately have made for one heavy newborn. I think she's officially an "infant" now, right? Yeehaw!

Things have been pretty busy around here, hence the lack of blogging. As soon as I wrapped up my one lingering order I switched gears to work on Eli's preschool fundraiser and birthday party in June. I'm not sure how I blogged so frequently - about once a week or so - with Elias since he never slept! I guess I had less to do when he did nap. Now, when Daphne is not napping on me (while lovely, those extended cuddles are getting increasingly uncomfortable as she gets heavier and longer), there is a seemingly endless list of things to do just to keep the laundry, clutter, and cat fur from taking over the house (anyone want a couple of aging cats??). There was less of that with Elias and more of my co-parent to go around. As it is, I'm getting very little break from the baby. I end up bringing her into bed with me for the final stretch of sleep, which continues to be pretty restless. So I get up when she gets up and we hit the ground running from there, with little breaks from the couple of cat naps I try to get at home (with another couple of cat naps happening in the car seat, on the go). If I'm lucky, she conks out for the day about 13 to 14 hours later, shortly before or right around when big brother goes to bed (ideally) and I stay up a little later to take a quick shower, make Eli's lunch for the next day, throw in laundry, fold laundry (how did one tiny person double our laundry?), catch up on email, work on any extra stuff I have to work on, and try to get to bed before 10. Neal does his best to give me little breaks here and there but between having another kid to take care of (and one who, as Louis CK might describe him, is a total "bullshitter" - he can brush his own teeth but he won't) and his commute, most of the baby duty falls on me.

Daphne's reflux seems to have plateaued. I don't dare use the term peaked lest it get worse again before it gets better. To say we've hit a plateau seems safer. That said, I am living for the day she begins to outgrow it. I think we've got the general reflux symptoms and crankiness under control but the spit up has been epic and that makes the logistics of our day tricky. I spend a lot of time cleaning spit up off of myself, the floor, changing her outfit (and forget about a bib - that would only keep a small portion of her outfit dry) and all of this is annoying enough at home. I've lost count of the number of different public places where we've left our mark, so to speak (at the grocery store, for example: "Cleanup on aisle 4! Cleanup on aisle 5!" You get the idea.). So that's a drag. On a positive note, she doesn't seem to mind hanging out in the car seat as much as she did early on so she's a bit more portable. I just tend to keep her somewhat confined - in the car seat or in the carrier - when we're out and about. It keeps the spit up on us instead of projectile, over the shoulder, splat on the floor of wherever we are. People are really not accustomed to this level of spit up and look very alarmed when they witness it, which makes me think reflux babies are a lot like baby pigeons. They tend to stay close to the nest, so to speak, until they've outgrown the reflux.

With the reflux leveling out (knock on wood) we can focus our attention on sleep which has started to fall apart a bit. Just when our evenings were beginning to settle (and start a bit earlier, with Daphne conking out before or by the time Eli does), she's gotten really difficult to get down for the night yet again. She's also incredibly restless at night, only waking once or twice to eat, but waking (me, at least) a couple more times on top of that with, primarily, the incredibly noisy act of bringing both swaddled legs up and down at the same time. I think it's a combination of various GI issues, a little bit of the reflux, and being in that gray area between still sort of needing the swaddle and fighting it. Daytime naps, when I can get them at home, are no longer swaddled and while on the short side she seems to be doing pretty well with it (although I still have to get her to sleep - I can't just plop her down "drowsy but awake" as the sleep books encourage). Once she gets that down we'll work on un-swaddling for nighttime sleep. We're waiting until she hits the 16 week mark to begin the hardcore sleep training so I'm hoping some of these more gradual, "no cry" measures will help in the meantime. Less than 3 weeks and counting!

I've got a lot of pics of both kiddos to post from the past couple of months which, now that Neal has uploaded them, I'll try to add over the next week or so. Stay tuned!