4 Months Old - Time Slow Down

I’m probably going to say this every month, but how in the world do I have a 4 month old? I still remember perfectly every detail of when I found out I was pregnant almost a year ago! And here I am, the mother of the cutest little ginger baby ever! Well happy 4 months to my beautiful Baby K. My love for her grows more and more each day. I never imagined loving someone this much, it truly is amazing.

Stats: 13 pounds, 3.6 ounces (31^st percentile). 23 1/4 inches long (9^th percentile, short like her mama!). 16 1/4 inches head circumference (73^rd percentile, gets it honest, this is a large head family!).

Development: She is grabbing a hold of everything and finally starting to really like toys. I love handing Baby K some toys and seeing her reach out and grab a hold of them. It’s awesome! She has amazing neck control according to her pediatrician; we have worked hard on that! And Daddy is practicing balance with her. His methods are quite scary for this Mommy to watch, but they are effective. J And Baby K loves it, plus I want her to be fearless and not a scaredy cat like me. She is rolling from her stomach to her back a lot, Daddy likes to work with her on this.

Loves: This girl LOVES to talk, which we absolutely love too. She coos and talks and laughs all the time. We try to catch as much as we can on video, but oftentimes she will see the camera in our hands and start concentrating so hard on it that she forgets to coo. We also discovered that she loves her activity mat again. Awhile ago, she would scream if I laid her on it for 5 seconds, so I thought the activity mat days were over. But I just tried it with her again a couple weeks ago and she played on that thing for a solid 30 minutes. I love to see her swatting and grabbing the little plastic animals that hang above her head. We also realized that she really likes it when Mommy and Daddy act silly, she will laugh at us all day long. And a recent discovery: she loves to air drum with Daddy and watch him head bang. And of course, she still loves to stand! Does this mean she will be walking soon? J

Dislikes:  She still dislikes being sleepy. The second this girl realizes that she is tired, the screaming begins. It’s a constant work in progress to make sure she takes sufficient naps. She also doesn’t like to be cold, but who does? If I don’t cover her up with a towel immediately after her bath, she will let me know I’m doing something wrong.

Sleeping: As you can see above, the naps are still eluding us. Some days she does great, others not so much. I did receive some advice from another mother telling me to try and keep her awake a bit longer in the morning before putting her down for her first nap. I used to just watch her cues and whenever she rubbed her eyes or yawned, I would put her to bed (which was usually about an hour after she woke up) and she would only take a quick catnap. But now we have been playing longer and she doesn’t go down for her first nap until 90 minutes to 2 hours later and we get an AWESOME nap out of her. So thankful for this village that I am a part of to help me raise my child!
She is still sleeping through the night, but recently decided that she would rather practice her monologues at 5 a.m. instead of sleep. She doesn’t cry and doesn’t seem to need us; she just wakes up and starts talking. We will go in after a little while and soothe her back to sleep and she will go until about 7:15 a.m.

Diapers: Holding steady in Pampers size 1. We continue to be diaper snobs and will only use Pampers (both the Snugglers during the day and the Baby Dry at night).

Eating: Baby K is rocking her eating schedule. She eats every 4 hours (we are following the Baby Sleep Solution) and does wonderful with it. She is growing a bit right now and seems to want more to eat during each feeding than normal.

Clothing: She is mostly still in 3 month size clothing, though I have been able to use a lot of 3-6 month sized clothing (6 month stuff is still way too big on her). A few 3 month sleepers are snug, but everything else still fits. Homegirl is rocking the adorable sleepers at night. For the longest time, we would put her to sleep in onesies, but now that the weather is turning cold she wears sleepers. And they are adorable!

Health: We had a sickness scare when Baby K was 2 months old and it turns out that she had a UTI. Her pediatrician ordered us to get some scans done on her bladder and kidneys to make sure that everything was working properly and that there wasn’t any back up. We went last week for the procedure and got awesome results. Her scans came back negative, so her kidneys and bladder are clear! Praise The Lord! We dodged an invasive procedure for her; she’s had enough of those already!