Playful Baby

Aaron is about 3 1/2 months old now. In the past couple of weeks, he has finally taken an interest in the play yard's hanging animals. When he moves around in the bassinet, the animals shake and he seems to like this. He is very talkative when he is in the bassinet, too, just jabbering away at his animals. Part of our daily routine now involves spending time in the bassinet. (By the way, that dinosaur outfit is labeled 3/6 months and he is about to outgrow it.)

Aaron is also starting to touch things deliberately. We have a touch and feel animal book and he reaches his little fist out to the textured part of an animal and then awkwardly unfurls his fingers to try to touch the fabric with his finger tips. The other day, he was also reaching out to touch a little frog toy I was dangling in front of him. This is more hand control than he had even weeks ago.

But his favorite toy is still his burp cloth, which he likes to grab with both hands and try to smother himself with.

This is a great picture of Aaron with his Grandma. You can really see how big he is getting - he's going to outgrow Grandma's lap before long.

Although my hair starting falling out in handfuls a few weeks ago, it looks like Aaron's is going to stay. And it looks like he is going to be a tow head like his dad was as a kid. His roots are very light, unlike the darker, coppery hair he has on top. In a few more months when he needs his first haircut, we'll see.

In other exciting news, Aaron has been sleeping longer stretches again. In fact, his longest stretch was 7 hours - with 8 hours between feedings. That hasn't happened again, but he has been going about 6 hours or more pretty consistently in the last week.

And he is starting to sleep more often with his hands out. He usually manages to get his left hand out of his swaddle pretty quick, so most of the time we just leave it out so he doesn't spend 10 minutes struggling to get it out. In fact, he usually falls asleep faster when we leave it out. Later, he will wake up and try to get his right arm out and if it is during the day and we hear him making noise, we'll go in, let out his arm, put in his pacifier, and he goes right back to sleep. This morning, I even put him down without swaddling him and he went almost immediately to sleep. Granted, he didn't sleep nearly as long as he normally would, but it is progress. Right now, he is swaddled and sleeping peacefully.