Happy Four Months

Today, my little girl is four months old. FOUR. While it feels like so much longer than that, it's also a shock that she's so old already. And she's come so far. Smiling like crazy, big melt-your-heart-and-make-you-smile-back smiles. She is starting to giggle/laugh. She has found her hands and likes to play with them, and has gotten a lot better at sucking on them...it won't be long before she probably manages to get her thumb in well enough to suck on it. She has been sleeping through the night for the past week, although last night she DID wake up at 11:30 wide awake, and then at 4:30am for food. So...who knows. We haven't weighed her in a few days, but I am sure she's in the 13-pound range, since she was just over that last time we weighed her, and I know she hasn't gained THAT much. She rolls like a champ, from back to front a lot (she's always on her front when she wakes up), and a few times from her front to her back. She drools unbelievably, creating oceans of slobber every day. Her hair is starting to grow back in, this short, soft little fuzziness. And she is just the cutest thing ever!!! Here are tons of pictures to prove it.

Happy Surprise Day!

Just felt the need to point out the fact that one year ago today, we were surprised to discover that we were pregnant. I woke up that morning, still recovering from our week-long camping trip, and preparing myself mentally for my grandfather's funeral service later that afternoon. As I was getting up, it occurred to me that I was late...that something should have happened while on the camping trip. I didn't hold out much hope that we were pregnant, considering it had taken us 2.5 years and a lot of help to get pregnant with Liam. No way that it could have just happened after only 2 months of being off the pill and not really trying. But Matt and I decided to take a test, just to see, figuring that if the miraculous HAD occurred, it would give us something happy to think about on such a sad day. And sure enough, we got our miracle...those two blue lines appeared, and we were just boggled. It had WORKED! We had actually gotten pregnant, no troubles, no months and months of heartache and struggle. And we had good news to share.

Because we only had that one test to go on, and no official bloodwork, and because it seemed to incredulous and almost not-real, we didn't tell anyone that day, aside from my mom. We decided to tell her, partly because I couldn't just keep it in and HAD to tell someone else, and partly because she was grieving over the loss of her father, and I wanted to give her something positive to think about, some hope for the future...that even in the midst of the losses we were suffering, something good had happened.
And now here we are...with a beautiful little girl who is almost 4 months old.
Happy Surprise Day...

Giggle, Chew, and Roll

So…started back at work, which means it harder to find time to post. But I am determined to keep up with it, especially in the beginning, when so much stuff will be happening with Maia.

My little girl is now 3.5 months old, or 16 weeks (tomorrow). She isn’t talking quite so much now, probably because she is busy discovering and trying out new things. She is more into manipulating her environment now. When we put her on the playmat, she kicks at the arches and jiggles all the toys hanging from it, watching them move. She will roll onto her side to see what else she might be able to touch. Sometimes she rolls onto her belly and lifts up her chest and head to look around at things. If you put something grab-able within her reach, she will stare at it and then attempt to grasp it. If she manages to get it, she shoves it into her mouth and gums it, spreading drool everywhere. She tends to grab her clothes right under her chin and attempts to stick it in her mouth. If the clothing is loose enough, like her sleep sack, she does a pretty good job of getting it in there and saturating it. Heh. She drools more than a Saint Bernard (though not as much as cousin Cole).

She is rolling from back to front pretty steadily now. It still takes some effort, but she does it a lot. She is always on her belly when we get her up after sleep at night. She does it while on her play mat. Apparently she is ahead of the game on this. Liam wasn’t doing this until at least four months, and even that was on the early side. It’s pretty cool.
She has also started laughing a bit. Not a lot, but over the last few days we’ve managed to get her to let out a few clumsy laughs that are pretty cute. It’s like she doesn’t know how to make the sound quite right but is trying with all her might. So it almost sounds like a forced fake laugh…except that she is too young to do that so it’s genuine. When she doesn’t manage the laugh, she has this huge wide-open-mouth smile that takes up half her face. Totally cute. And of course, she smiles a lot, and I just love it when she gets so excited and happy that she smiles widely and looks away from you with a little wiggle of her body…as if she just can’t contain the joy and is overcome with it. It makes me want to scoop her up and hug her tight (she isn’t too fond of the squeezing tight thing, though)

Big Brother Liam likes playing with her, interacting with her, even taking care of her. He will often talk to her, read to her, and show her toys. If she is fussy, he will sometimes try to cheer her up or distract her. He will wipe up her drool if he notices it (sometimes), and sometimes he berates me for making her cry if he comes to the conclusion that I must be causing it somehow. And as long as she is not super cranky, she loves looking at him and talking to him.

She now weighs 13-lbs 2-oz. Still has the chunky thighs, and a definite double chin when she scrunches down. But I wouldn't say she was overly chunky...just perfect.
She unfortunately is beset by eczema and we have to try to keep up with that so that it doesn’t bother her so much. Looks kind of horrible, her arms and legs all scaly and patchy. Hopefully it isn’t itching her and making her more cranky. She is cranky enough without that. Although she has gotten better. She isn’t quite as gassy now, and she no longer seems to require us to walk around continuously in the evening, holding her. Now you can sit her in your lap, or on the edge of a surface (couch, bed, table) and talk with her, look at her, let her look around. And MOST of the time she is good with that.

As for sleeping…well, that’s not as steady as I would like it to be…but I also know it could be worse. She sleeps solidly for the most part, just not always as long as I would like. I feed her anywhere between 10:00 and 11:00pm. Any earlier and it she just wakes up again in an hour or two. Then she either sleeps through the night and wakes up after 7am. Or she wakes up anywhere between 3:00 and 5:30am. The last few nights it’s been in the area of 5:00. *sigh* Since I can’t get to sleep until after her last feeding, that means that most of the time I am only getting 5 or 6 hours before she wakes me. And I don’t really get much more sleep after she is done, since my alarm goes off for work at 6:30. *sigh*I am hoping that soon she will sleep straight through until I am ready to get up, and that I can shift her an hour earlier. I would LOVE to feed her at 9:30, be in bed by 10:00, wake up at 6:30 and feed her sometime between 6:30 and when I want to ideally leave at 7:45. I've told her about my wishes a few times, but she has ignored me so far. *huge sigh* She always flashes one of those grins that melts my heart and makes me forget what I was saying.

Need sleep...

*sigh* Maia's nights are getting worse again. For a few days there, she was doing very well. I would feed her between 10:00 and 11:30, and she wouldn't wake up until I was already getting up, anywhere between 7:30 and 8:30. I was hoping that she would shift a bit earlier, so that I could be in bed by 10/10:15, and when I got up around 6:30 (which I will need to do for work) she would be ready for feeding. But instead, the last three nights she has woken up in the middle of the night for feedings again. First it was 5:00, then 2:30, and then last night it was 3:30. And last night, she didn't stay asleep after I laid her back down, and it took my husband an hour to get her to settle down and fall asleep solidly again. *ugh* We are both exhausted. And as a result of the lack of sleep, I snoozed the alarm more than I wanted, and certainly did NOT get up in time to make it to work at 8:00, which is what I want to happen next week, when I finally return to work. So...if this keeps up, I am either going to be severely late to work all the time, OR I am going to be a zombie.

Please Maia...please go back to sleeping through the night. Or at least staying asleep once I am done feeding you. Please please please. *sigh*

Let there be giggles!

Maia is working on all sorts of firsts, apparently. I got her to giggle! At least, it's the beginnings of giggling. I was kissing her cheek over and over, like I tend to do (they are so kissable), and starting kissing her neck. I did it a few times, with her smiling as a result of it, and one of those times she let out a little noise that can only be the beginning of a giggle. It was awesome. She was so happy. She did a few more times throughout the day, as a result of me kiss-tickling her neck.

Oh, and with regards to her rolling over, she's rolled over to her belly the last two nights as well, and twice more while playing on her mat. And once I laid her on her belly for tummy-time and when I momentarily left the room and returned, she was on her back starting up at her toys. So she figured out how to roll from her belly to her back as well. Not sure how often she will do either, but she is definitely making progress there. And she is apparently a month ahead of Liam, according to the journal I kept for him. My mom says it's because she is a girl. heh.
Go Maia!

Belly Flop

Maia's done it twice now this weekend, and come close many other times during that same period. We've laid her on her back to play or to sleep, and she has curled to her side many times, for the last few weeks. Last night, I put her to sleep on her back. This morning she was asleep on her belly. She rolled over! And that was the second time in the last three days. On Saturday, she was on her back on the playmat and rolled over as well. She has been curling onto her side a lot when on her back, and will even roll onto her belly, but her lower arm is still under her, so she never really quite makes it fully, and ends up flipping back onto her side and then back. She managed to get her arm bent under her before rolling onto her belly, and that allowed her to go over completely and end up in a sphinx pose. We thought it was just luck, and maybe it still was, but considering that this morning was asleep on her belly, with both arms free and hands near her head, she apparently managed to do it again...overnight...while sleepy.
YAY! Our little girl is growing up! Of course, now I am worried about her being on her belly while sleeping. I am hoping that she soon learns how to roll from her belly to back. That is actually supposed to be what happens first, but...oh well...guess no one told Maia that.