Conditional formatting using months of dates

I've researched this and researched this and nothing is really working.

I would like to conditional format cells based on the month of the date entered into it.

For current month. example: MONTH(TODAY()), then it highlights Red
If it's next month. example: MONTH(TODAY()+1), then it highlights Orange
between 1 and 3 months out. example: MONTH(TODAY()+1<=Cell<=MONTH(TODAY()+3)

But for some reason I can't get anything to work other than =MONTH(C12)<=MONTH(NOW()) for the red

Thanks in advance for any help.