Dad is pretty funny

Last night, Dad was tickling me a bunch, and I laughed for the first time. I really liked it, so a little later I laughed at Mom and Dad when they were getting ready to give me a bath. I'll probably laugh a bunch more. It was a culmination of the progress I've made by smiling more, making new noises, and being a lot more alert and responsive.

Now that I'm three and half months old, I thought this would be a good time to summarize some of the changes I've been going through lately. They say that developmental growth comes in spurts, and I'm definately going through a spurt right now.

Last week, I started making all kinds of new noises, and doing it more often, usually in response to silly things that my parents did. Around that time, I also became a lot more alert, looking around the room, following moving objects, and noticing interesting things. I especially like looking at my hand - its pretty cool, trust me. I had stopped taking my pacifier completely by then, and decided that thumb-sucking was the way for me. In fact, the other night, I thumb-sucked myself right to sleep, all on my own. Mom is pretty excited about me "self-soothing," whatever that is. Not wanting to make my thumb jealous, I also suck on my other fingers occasionally (up to four at a time!), and will often grab my blanket or shirt and put it in my mouth as well.

I've also been excercising a lot more. I've been trying to sit up for quite a while - not quite there yet - and I've gotten pretty good at breaking out of my miracle blanket. In fact, Mom has now abandoned the miracle blanket for a sleep sack. A pretty exciting development, if you ask me. Last night, I even managed to roll over on my side, and slept that way for a bit.

I am a completely different baby from the Mitch of July and August. If you haven't seen me since then, you might not even recognize me.

In two weeks, I've got my four month check-up. The doctor had wanted me to talk more (check), laugh (check), and grab stuff (check). He's going to be pretty impressed.