Lydia's First Quarter

Believe it or not, sweet Lydia is already more than three months old. Sometime around two months postpartum, I lost track of her age in weeks. I know it will be just the blink of an eye before I am baking her first birthday cake!

I have to admit, although life is busy with three small children, Lydia is the easiest three month old I have had. In her newborn days, she cried whenever I put her down, but in recent weeks she has been content to stretch and smile while playing in her baby gym or lying on a blanket. For the most part, she only fusses when she is wet, tired, or hungry...or when I (attempt to) clean the grub out of her stinky neck folds. She is certainly the most smiley baby in our family. Though she has been smiling at random times since birth, her first seemingly responsive smile was delivered at five weeks. Since then, the amount of smile time has increased each day, and she now spends long periods enchanting us with her mirthful grins.

Another wonderful improvement has been in her sleep habits. Even in the early weeks, she typically had a stretch of four or five hours of sleep during the night. Then she fell into a pattern of sleeping from 12 to 6, but her wide-awake and often fussy periods in the late evenings left me quite sleepy. Around two months old, she started sleeping for even longer periods, up to eight hours, and now she typically goes to bed around 10pm, may or may not wake up to nurse in the early morning, and gets up for the day around 7:30. After having two boys who wanted to nurse every two hours around the clock for most of the first year, these full nights of sleep have been an unexpected blessing. Her tendency to sleep in makes it easier to get breakfast on the table or get ready for church on Sunday mornings. She sleeps well in her own bed or mine, on her back or (shh!) on her belly, and is quite likely to wake up full of smiles!

She continues to nurse well, to adapt well to different situations, and to patiently tolerate her brothers' affections. We are so blessed to have such a happy, healthy little girl in our family. Here's how the princess has grown in her first quarter!





Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
1 Peter 2:2,3