4 Months

14 lbs 9 oz (75th)
24.5 in (55th)
40 1/2 HC (45th)

Dear MJ,

What a charmer, you are! Your days are spent sucking your fingers/hands/fists/wrists, gazing at me, constantly enthralled by your brother, and soaking up the sights of the world. As with your brother before you, I long to squish you back to your scrunchy newborn self, while concurrently loving each new stage of your development. I'm far less focused on milestones, and far more focused on just enjoying you--taking an extra five minutes at the end of your nap to play with you in your crib; letting you nurse longer than necessary if you need the comfort; watching you work SO HARD to get that toy in your mouth.

Your Favorite Things: You love your new bee dangly toy, the lights above the jungle playmat, being tickled, ANYTHING where your bro is involved, splashing like crazy in the tub. But your two ultimate thrills are 1) when we take off your pants, and 2) when we do leg stretches--specifically, the spread-eagle. Yep, we're definitely going to have to find other ways to make you giggle, or we're going to be in serious trouble when you hit your teen years. (Sorry, Internets...TMI?)

Notes:

You nap. If I stick to Dr. Weissbluth's rule of putting you down by the third yawn and within two hours of last waking, you rarely fuss. We stopped swaddling you only last week, even though you've been breaking out of it for months. It just seemed to help calm you. Now that you're in the sleep-sack, I definitely think it contributes to when you wake soon after being put down. You just need to learn how to soothe yourself after you get startled awake again. Anyway....you often nap for 1.5-2 hours, but also sometimes for 45 minutes. Your night patterns, however, while not especially awful, are still completely sporadic. Sometimes you wake twice a night, sometimes once a night, a few times you've actually slept "through the night" (6 hours), and one time you slept ALL the way through the night (11 hours). It's all well and good but consistency would be just lovely. You're not terribly into your pacifier anymore. Sometimes we can use it to help calm you down, but if you've decided you're going to cry, no amount of pacifying will change your mind. (It's for this reason that we've decided to start the "excinction" (aka Crying it Out) method this week.)

You've become a champ at rolling from your tummy to back, and you protest tummy time a lot less, as a result. You love to make this "ah-ah-ah" sound that reminds me of a vocal exercise one of my roommates used to do in college. You also "hoo" just like an owl, and squeal when something is particularly hilarious.

You are easily startled by unexpected noises. It's especially amusing when I blow my nose. Your eyes get as big as saucers, your arms flail out to the side, and you wriggle your little body like jello. This also happens when someone sneezes, when the dog barks, and, um, on New Year's Eve, when the big kids were blowing their horns. Too loud!!!

I'm glad you're at a healthy weight, are a happy nurser (minus our few Vampire Baby encounters...too gross even for the Internets), and have lovely "Thunder Thighs" to squeeze. Dr. E suggested we start cereal, as you (evidently) no longer get iron from breast milk. We'll see how it goes....In the meantime, I'm glad your daily nursing schedule has decreased from 8 to 6 feedings per day--minus the week we were in Arizona, when you decided to nurse every two hours. Must be really dry there. :)

I love you, my darling daughter.
Mom

(How you prefer your hands. See also, "Thunder Thighs.")