Happy Three Month Birthday Clare! Our girl is now a quarter of a year old. Three more of these and we’ll be celebrating with a party and cake – I can’t even imagine that far ahead.

The past week has been quite eventful in the world of Clare. She’s made major developmental steps forward, getting a lot more vocal, grabbing things, seeing objects further away, watching things for longer, etc. Generally she’s just more engaged with the world and capable of interacting with it. It hasn’t come easily though. Clare decided last Friday that sleep was for newborns and big girl three-month-olds didn’t need it. Seriously, J and I had nights of sleep like we haven’t had since she was a week old. We had several nights of struggling for hours to put her down and then she woke up every two or three hours. I’m not sure how effective I was at work this last week, but hopefully I didn’t make any major mathematical errors. Fortunately last night, when we were approaching the breaking point at Chez McPherson, she only woke up twice and we got that blessed four-hour block of sleep. There’s nothing quite like a full REM sleep cycle to make someone feel human.

It’s an amazing thing though, even after a rough night of sleep (or lack thereof) where I’m about at the end of my rope all it takes is one smile and I forget the exhaustion and frustration of the last ten hours. Look at this pretty smile though – can you blame me?

Here is a picture of my Dad with Clare. You can see how happy she is. I say that when she’s not mad about something she’s a very happy baby. When she’s mad about something though… watch out world!

Finally here’s another video courtesy of Clare’s nanny. It’s a pretty good example of her current verbal and motor skills.