James is 3 months old!

Today is January 4th, which means James has been out in the world for 3 months.  It also means that Mommy has to go back to work tomorrow, so it's her last full day with James.  I (Daddy) will be home with him during the day, so goodbye Days of Or Lives, hello SportsCenter.

     James has recently started trying to talk, which is quite entertaining.  He picks a sound, like "hay" or "ah", and repeats it several times, getting comfortable with it.  The look on his face indicates he wants to tell us something, but we're not smart enough to catch on to his language.  It must be frustrating for him to have slow parents.  One of his preferred utterances kind of sounds like "Erin," which should make his aunt happy.

    He is also working on hand-eye coordination, grabbing for things that he is looking at.  He has a pretty good grip (at least I think he does; we haven't given him a dynamometer or anything), but he hasn't perfected the timing of the grip yet.  So he usually looks at something, reaches out for it, slaps it, then closes his hand a second later.  After doing this a few times, however, he has managed to synchronize the reach with the grip.  He has a little arch with fish hanging from it that he lays under, and he managed to grab the fish's tail and hang on for several seconds.  

     Yesterday he had his most successful tummy time (we lay him on his stomach so he can practice lifting his head up, in preparation for crawling), getting his arms underneath him and using them (mostly the left one) to push himself up further.  He is not a big fan of the tummy time, and only tolerates it for a few minutes at a time before crying.  But his attempts have gotten longer, so hopefully he'll get used to it.   

     I don't know if any of these things are on par with other kids, since we have never raised another kid.  We do what the doctors and the legitimate-sounding books tell us to do, and let James learn and develop as much as he can.  We are deliberately avoiding comparing his development to that of other kids.  There are probably three-month-olds that can juggle apples or list the presidents or have their own World of Warcraft avatar, but I see no good in comparing James to other kids.  We don't have other kids; we have James.  We'll give him everything we can to help him grow, but he has to do the growing.  There will be plenty of time for competition later.