End Fourth Trimester

Elisa had her 3 month birthday yesterday, which we celebrated with our monthly cupcakes from Lark, my favorite bakery in the neighborhood where I always eat way too many pecan bar samples every time I go in there. Yum. Of course, the only way to have her taste the cupcakes is for me to eat them. This is a good tradition. Yesterday we got the autumnal pumpkin flavor and our classic vanilla favorite.

I've been waiting for the end of the first three months. Not that I haven't enjoyed taking care of her and seeing her grow in the newborn phase, and I often really miss how little she was when she was first born. But everyone kept telling me - hang in there, the first three months are the hardest and my doctor even termed it the "fourth trimester." I had this glorious view of what this next period would be like, that maybe I would wake up on October 12 and she would be a perfect angel, no crying and fussing or anything. Wrong. Today has been a tough day, probably because I am itching to get more of our stuff packed up but frustrated that she won't seem to nap for more than 20 minutes. I finally got her to take a nap now after a fight with the swaddle blanket. Last week, Paul's mom and grandma came to visit and she was great in the mornings, but totally fussy every evening. It took tons of rocking, swaddling, and shushing to get her in any kind of state to go to sleep. We even had a meltdown episode at our favorite dim sum restaurant. For some reason, Elisa just wouldn't stop crying for the 1 1/2 hours that we were there. We had to take turns taking her outside, and just when we thought we had gotten her calmed down in the car, she started another crying session that lasted the whole way home. Suffice it to say that we won't be going back there anytime soon, unfortunately. So far the end of the fourth trimester has been pretty unremarkable, sadly enough. People were saying, the first three months are the hardest - it'll get easier. Now they're saying things get easier after six months! Hopefully things will get easier soon.