12 Weeks

It's weird what to think and count - is he still a week away from being three months? But, as of today he's 12 weeks. Well, actually it's a week from tomorrow that it will actually be September 18, but 12 weeks is the official count right now.
No - it doesn't just seem like yesterday that we brought him home. But, I can't remember counting down 12 weeks quite the same as this. It's everyone's nature to say the time flies by - especially in a retrospective look back. But, being in the moment, 12 weeks has seemed like 12 weeks with Kole. There are so many milestones you can't wait for him to achieve, in order to maintain your sanity, but there are times when it seems like it just flies by in an instant.
I am elated that he spends more time smiling than crying, coming from a stage where crying is all he knew how to do and poop. Now he smiles and laughs and goes Ooooooohh all day and all night. This morning I sort of woke him up from a dead sleep at 6am. He was already kicking a little, shifting, but I rubbed him then turned him on his back. It's our little routine to get him worked up and want to eat. We're now keeping him on a fairly regular eat/sleep schedule. So I roll him over, he has the bewildered look anyone should have when they've just snapped out of a dead sleep, but within seconds he notices me and smiles his big cheeky, toothless smile - kicking his feet and flopping his arms around. It's a great daddy moment.
I'm attaching a photo of the clothes he has now left behind - 31 onesies or outfits since we brought him home. One has a tag left on it, plus there are two others he never wore. Even when we brought him home there were a handful of outfits we struggled getting his head through. He outgrew many, quickly. Really, it's his length that is outgrowing things the quickest. The quickest way for us to tell he's outgrowing something is when we have to struggle to button up his pants from the bottom, between his legs. From his shoulders to his crotch they just get more and more stretched - eventually barely hanging of his shoulders and arcing underneath his neck, plus being tight around his diaper.
Kathy has always dodged the topic of having a second baby - especially since Kole's birth and her ... well ... recovery. Another childbirth just wasn't on the radar. But, she has made the initial vow to hang on to these onesies and such "just in case" an oopsie comes along anytime soon. Of course, she admits, keeping boy clothes would almost guarantee a girl if another should come.
As the Just the Facts notes on the left, we weighed him at 15-and-1/2 pounds today. I measured him at 25-and-1/2 inches. He's a growing boy and he's adjusting great to his schedule. He gets to sleep around 10:00-10:30, and for the last few nights [knocking on wood] he has slept until 5:30-6:00am. As noted just above, today he was barely stirring at 6:00, and if I hadn't stirred him up and turned him over he could have easily gone another half hour.
We'll get a better idea of how he is measuring comparatively with babies his age when Kathy catches up with her buddies from childbirth class next week. Both of their babies were born a day or two before Kole.
I'll put one one more picture - with me reading (actually showing) Kole his new book Fletcher and the Falling Leaves. A very clever and astute find by my friend Sara in Iowa. It's about a little baby fox named Fletcher who gets freaked by falling leaves when Fall comes - he thinks the tree is hurt and he tries to put the leaves back on. Eventually, after the plot drags through nearly 10 more pages, an ice storm creates a pretty display of icicles hanging off the tree and it makes Fletcher happy. Unwittingly, he's a perfect Fletcher - innocent and a little dimwitted. Eventually, very entertained by nature.