Soren update: 3 months

I can already see the shift from newborn sleep patterns to baby sleep patterns in Soren.  It happens so quickly that it took me as a new parent by surprise.  I finally thought I'd mastered combining parenting and a social life by carting Oliver with me to restaurants or parties at friends' houses, when he suddenly seemed to have forgotten how to fall asleep anywhere.  He had slept through the fire alarm going off right above his head when I almost burned the house down two days before we sold it and moved, yet the chatter at a dinner party sent him into hysterics.

But I was better prepared with Soren.  On my birthday two years ago, I was out to dinner with family and I could hardly enjoy a rare evening eating out because I didn't think Oliver would make it through dinner napping in his car seat perched next to our table.  (He did.)  This year, my birthday marked the first time I didn't take Soren with me for an evening out with friends.  In his first three months of life, Soren attended a number of social gatherings in an Ergo nestled against Mommy's chest, but the days of being able to take him anywhere, anytime are already over.  He's going to bed earlier and the meltdowns he sometimes has when he gets overtired remind me of those Oliver had until we realized that nothing was wrong with him other than that he wanted to go to bed. 

Soren  is still at a portable age though, and we can go out for walks and assume he'll nap in the stroller and bring him along wherever Oliver is going without concern for his nap schedule, which is still non-existent.  He is sleeping a lot more at night, hallelujah.  As a birthday present to me, he slept from 7:45 p.m. to 5:45 a.m.  He hasn't done that since.  He's still waking once or twice a night, but sometimes I can get away with giving him back his pacifier and getting him to go right back to sleep after the first waking of the night. 

With the major changes in sleep patterns also comes much more awake and alert time.  He's not always content to just sit in his bouncy seat while we eat dinner and likes instead to sit on my lap at the table.  He's quite good at sitting up and I can easily support him with one arm while eating with the other. 

In other physical development, he's starting to try to roll to the side.  Oliver is probably assisting this as he's always darting around the room and I think Soren's realizing he's got to be able to do more than just lie on his back and look at the ceiling if he wants to be able to see what Oliver is doing.  He's also discovered his fists and likes trying to shove them in his mouth. 

The jury is still out on Soren's eye color. If anyone thinks that Soren's heavily blue wardrobe is a sign that I've begun to conform to gender stereotypes in clothing, I'm in fact trying to sway his eye color. If I just keep dressing him in blue, I'll keep believing that his eyes really do look blue, when in reality, I think he's going to end up with brown eyes like everyone else but his mother.

The poor kid is already taking abuse from his big brother.  Oliver is actually very good about being gentle around his baby brother and I don't worry about him even accidentally hurting Soren, let alone doing something on purpose.  So I was shocked when I left the two of them lying on the floor together and came back into the room a second later to see Oliver sitting on Soren's face and proudly announcing, "I sit on baby's head."  Soren, the ever easy-going one, wasn't even crying by this, but both boys were

by the time I had lunged for Oliver and yanked him off his brother.  For the life of me, I can't think what possessed Oliver to want to sit on his brother's head. 

I'm enjoying the baby stage so much more the second time around, because I have the perspective that this is an easy and innocent stage and parenting Soren is only going to become more challenging.  Even though Soren is at an "easy" age, there's a lot about caring for a baby that's pretty monotonous.  But I have a big kid who's doing more interesting things and who gives me an excuse to do things with a baby I wouldn't have otherwise bothered to do.  We waited until Oliver started crawling before taking him to the Children's Museum, but Soren has already tagged along countless times, which he's luckily really chill about doing.  We go wherever Oliver wants to go, but I let Soren participate in the few little ways such a little baby can, whether it's taking him with me through the tunnel of mirrors as I trail Oliver, or letting him roll around on the mats in the tot room while Oliver romps about. 

I can't capture every moment on camera, so the best I can do is hope I can never forget certain images.  And the one from Soren's baby stage I hope I will always remember is when he was cradled in my arms and we were just staring and grinning at each other until he began to fall asleep.  He kept fighting sleep, wanting to keep his eyes open and keep smiling at me.  His eyelids would flutter closed and then he'd force them back open halfway and see me still smiling at him and he'd smile back wider, even as his eyelids slowly fell shut.  I couldn't stop looking at him and watching what was at that moment probably the happiest baby in the world.