It's like she hit the 12 week mark and became the HD version of herself. The personality is starting to show, she focuses intensely on faces and sounds and its clear she's learning language, she reaches for toys and has discovered that snuggling into my chest or neck is an awesome way to fall asleep.
My favourite development is her sense of humour. She doesn't laugh at just any old thing and Trevor and I seem to be really funny in her eyes. When she laughs, it comes from her belly first and then she shrieks with delight. The whole thing is funny and the more we laugh at her, the more she laughs at us.
Her other new trick is the late night babble. Her last feed is somewhere between 20:30 and 21:30 and around this time she feels the need to converse. And she's loud about it too. We've put her to bed once before and she spat out her dummy and babbled so loudly that we just took her out and put her in our bed where she carried on for another half hour. It's as if she must exhaust her "talking quota" for the day and waits until we're tired and we want to go sleep before she unleashes the torrent of gurgles, coos, shrieks and vowel sounds she's devised as her vocabulary. They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Trevor is really not looking forward to the day when the apple starts speaking rapid fire and with enormous verbal volume like the tree he's been listening to for the last decade.
Her 3 month check-up was good. She only weighs 4kgs but she's reached all her developmental milestones and her paediatrician says she's pretty strong for such a small kid; dynamite in a small package :-) He told me the average baby gains 2.5-3.5kgs between the 3 and 6 month visits. Because she's so small, he's adjusted his weight goal for her and she only has to gain 1.5kgs. He also said the average baby weighs about 6kgs at 3 months. He hopes she weighs that much at 6 months.
Unfortunately, her visit to the doctor was on a crazy stormy day and we braved heavy rain to be out and about. As we drove from his office, I got to watch something incredibly beautiful: Wren-Lee staring at the rain falling against the car window and slowly falling asleep. There was something about the way the light just softened around her face, how peaceful she was and the rain drops in the background...I will never forget that sight.
And then came something totally unexpected. She's only just started enjoying being on her tummy and I popped her onto her playgym mat on my bed. She was up for a few minutes and then flopped over to one side. I thought it was the bed or that she couldn't hold herself up anymore. So I put her on her tummy again and she flopped over. I saw that she wasn't falling randomly. She was shifting her weight. I quickly transferred her to the floor and she did it one more time but to the opposite side and it dawned on me that she intentionally rolled over. I went beserk and she just laughed at me. Wren-Lee can officially roll.
While this is pretty exciting, it also means we have to watch her really carefully from now on. Once babies master rolling from tummy to back, they quickly figure out how to do it from back to tummy and that means they can roll off anything which is dangerous. She'll be spending a lot more time playing under close supervision and watching the world from her rocker chair.
Shame, it's such a pity all this excitement is going to be followed by her 14 week shots.
That's not going to be fun.
