Ant diary: 16 weeks

The past four weeks have been so much fun. Antony has learned to do so many new things, and he's just a joy to play with! Laughing and smiling are totally his thing now, which is just so rewarding.

Growth check: He's close to fifteen pounds already! We weighed him at mom's house a week ago, and he was 14.95 lbs with his clothes and diaper on. He's also gotten really long, he's grown out of all the 0-3 month clothes, and is even stretching the limits of a bunch of the 3-6 month sleepers we have, so now he's mostly in 6-9 month ones! I feel like he's grown about two inches this month. We had him in one of the bigger 0-3 month sleepers the other day, and he was super fussy at night - finally, Mark changed him into something bigger and he went to sleep almost right away. So we think it was just that his clothes were too tight, poor little guy.

Tummy-time: Much better these days! Especially when he rolls over himself from his back to his tummy, he really doesn't seem to mind it as much. He's able to push his chest all the way up on straight arms, and makes crawling movements too - I have a feeling he's going to be an early crawler at this rate! He also seems to enjoy playing superman on the boppy (see the attached pic).

Other movement: He's now rolling over both from back to tummy (started at 15 weeks), and tummy to back (started a couple of weeks before that). It's interesting though, the back to tummy roll definitely seems purposeful, as he flips over onto his side, then turns his head all the way over and rocks there until he flips onto his tummy. The tummy to back roll seems to be more accidental, and less frequent, even though it started earlier.

Smiles: Smiles have definitely evolved into laughs. We can make him laugh at all kinds of things now, mostly things that we do. Blowing on his tummy or his hands, blowing raspberries, making "yumyumyum" or "mmmmmm" noises while we eat, kissing his face and neck while making kissy noises - we can keep him laughing for a good 20 minutes! It is so totally sweet!

Teeth: Kate noticed "tooth bumps" at 14 weeks, and we had noticed quite a bit of drool in the few days before that, which Mark suggested might be from teething. I dismissed the idea, as it's really quite early for teeth to be coming. (Forgetting, of course, that I had gotten my first teeth in my fourth month). Well, they're both through as of last Monday, just shy of 16 weeks. He's bitten me a couple of times while feeding. Ouch! Hasn't been too frequent though, hopefully it won't become a habit.

Hands: This has been the biggest change - between 12 and 14 weeks he really started to use his hands to grab onto things, from the toys on the gymini, to his blue chair, to ribbons and stuffed animals that we hold above him. He also started bringing his hands together in the middle, and exploring them. You can really see him looking at something now, and then making a concious effort to reach out for it. His depth perception seems to be a little off, he'll often grab for something and miss, either going in front or behind it. He's also started bringing things to his mouth to munch on them, although he misses as often as not. He definitely wants to though. His hands do make it to his mouth without things in them, he sucks on them quite a bit, and has mastered the art of getting his thumb in there. I'm not overly concerned that he'll become too much of a thumb sucker, as he doesn't do it that much.

Feeding: We've definitely got this down. He generally goes four hours between daytime feeds now, and anywhere from 6 to 10 hours beween his last night-time and first morning feed. I'm looking forward to getting the scale back so I can weigh him before and after feeding a few times again - I'm getting huge amounts when I pump now (my max is 11.5 ounces, from one 5 minute session!!!), so I'd really like to know how much he's eating. He generally only takes 4-6 ounces from the bottle, but I wonder if he's getting more when he's eating from the tap. It's also really cute, sometimes he chats while he's nursing or drinking from the bottle.

Eyes: His eyebrows are getting darker, you can actually see them now. No change in his eye-color yet.

Sleeping: Still no rhyme or reason. I've been trying to get him up at around 7:30 each day, hoping that will get him to go to bed a bit earlier at night. It's not working consistently though. Some days he's awake for as little as eight hours, others as much as 12. I guess we'll keep tracking it and hope that he falls into a pattern on his own. He's sleeping through the night on a fairly regular basis, which is great!

Me: My hair is coming out in fistfuls! I know that this is something that happens when your hormones change at around three months... but when does it stop? I've lost a couple more pounds so that now I'm back at my "natural" weight. My clothes still don't fit quite the same, I think I still have a little more fat around my belly than I used to, mostly because I'm not exercising as much anymore. I also would like to get back to some kind of strength exercises, I'm so weak! I used to be able to do 40 pushups, now I can barely do 10. Although I think I still shouldn't do those for a while because I looked at my tummy while I was doing them and I could see a big lump, so I think it's not good for my abdominal separation. I'm hardly leaking at all these days (finally!) so I can quit wearing the nursing pads now. I'm half-way through my fifth box of 60 pads, plus the 30 that Michelle started me off with (thank god for those!!!), so I think I used around 300. Whew! The only other thing I wanted to mention is that I noticed when I bend over that I have a fair amount of extra loose skin on my tummy. It's not noticeable when I'm standing up, but definitely when I bend. It's kinda funny.