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Three Months

Today is Julian's 3 month birthday. We're glad he is here. He wakes up happy every morning, charming us with his huge smiles. Just this past week he started giving his first little baby chuckles. He started rolling over too. So far just from tummy to back, not back to tummy, even though he likes being on his tummy the best.

Those first few weeks of taking care of a newborn through the night always seem endless. For awhile I spent most of the night in the recliner, sitting up dozing and feeding him on demand. I really missed lying down to sleep. I wondered if I would ever get to sleep in our nice comfortable bed again! But somehow we have made it through those first few months and now I spend most of the night in bed. Right now Julian usually gets settled in his bed for the night somewhere between 9 and 10 o'clock at night. Then he nearly always sleeps until 2 a.m. I get up to feed him and we go back to bed. Then he usually wakes up to eat again at 5 and then we go back to bed until about 7:30. Two feedings a night is SO much easier than the 5, 6, or 7 times he wanted to nurse at night back in the first month.

Until now I've had him in a little cosleeper bed right beside my bed. Now I think I am ready to put him in a regular crib in the corner of our bedroom. This morning I ordered a new crib mattress from Amazon. He'll be in Micah's old bed, a beautiful golden wood crib someone gave us a couple of years ago but we had to throw away one of our crib mattresses last winter because the plastic was badly ripped.

The first month of Julian's life was a little more eventful than we wanted it to be, as we had to take him back to the hospital with a fever when he was 1 week old. He was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and had to be in the hospital for about 12 days getting antibiotics. Since then he has been doing great. He is supposed to follow up with the pediatric urologist in September. Thankfully, so far we have had no reason to worry about repeat infections.

As he moves out of the newborn stage I've enjoyed seeing him interact more with the world around him. He watches his brothers while they play. What is he thinking? During tummy time he has learned to reach out for toys and drag them toward him. He gnaws on them or listens to the interesting noises they make. Recently he learned he can make noise by scratching his fingers on the mesh sides of his bed, which is very cute.

One interesting thing is I noticed while he was still in the womb that he is sensitive to loud noises. If one of the older boys was crying loudly in my lap Julian would start squirming and twisting inside me. That's been true on the outside as well. He is scared easily by loud or sudden noises, much more so than the older boys. I think he is getting used to his rowdy brothers, though. In the last couple of weeks, rather than cry inconsolably if his feeding is interrupted by one of his brothers' loud noises, he is able to just pull off, frown a little bit and then go back to nursing. Still, "Don't scare Julian!" has been a frequently repeate phrase here and I still find myself trying not to sneeze while I'm holding him.

One Sunday morning at church few weeks before he was born we sang the hymn "Immanuel's Land" to a melody I'd never heard before. The next day I tried to find it on YouTube. I couldn't find the version we sang at church but I came across a version by Audrey Assad. It was gorgeous and I listened to it probably 50 times or more before Julian came.

Immanuel's Land by Audrey Assad

Not too many songs have brought tears to my eyes multiple times over the years but that is one of them. Christopher and I both think Immanuel's Land is a beautiful hymn though Christopher firmly maintains he likes the old original melody by Urhan the best. He wonders if he is the only one who does. I said probably, yes. Anyway, that is mostly the story of choosing Immanuel for Julian's middle name. Christopher has always liked the name Immanuel, though. It took the Audrey Assad song to win me over.