This morning Heather woke up and, as usual, started making all sorts of noise (mainly happy). Then we heard scratching/scraping sounds coming over the baby monitor. We’ve had the monitor clipped over the side of the crib, but I guess it’s time to move the choking hazard somewhere else.
Yeah, this post is a bit late. Sorry.
Well, I said last month that Heather’s feet would be in her mouth soon, right? Here you go:
She chews on her toes all the time. She even spent most of Relief Society one week, laying on my lap with both her feet pulled up to her mouth, going from one foot to the other. She’s also started sucking/chewing on her thumb, though not for very long at a time. It’s pretty much the cutest thing ever. And I don’t know if she’s actually teething yet or not, but she has definitely figured out biting/chewing. She spends as much time chomping on things as sucking on them these days. Even her pacifier! Speaking of which, she learned a trick a few weeks ago, going from this:
to this:
While sucking on the binkie, she opens her mouth as wide as she can, then pops the bottom edge of the binkie in with her fingers (while keeping the nipple in there, too) and bites down on it. I don’t know why this is so entertaining for her, but she does it all the time.
Solids are going great. She’s now eaten rice cereal, oatmeal, barley cereal (mixed with prune juice these days, to keep things moving), avocado, and sweet potato. (This week, her new food will be butternut squash!) So far, she’s loved everything we’ve fed her, though lately she seems to like the cereal less than before.
My least favorite recent development is that Heather will no longer fall asleep for Kyle. We have no idea why. This sucks because putting her down for naptime/bed was already my least favorite part of the day, and now I get no relief. On the subject of sleep, though, she’s started doing very strange things when she’s trying to settle down to sleep. She sleeps in basically two positions: (1) flopped over to one side or the other, with her legs out in front so she makes an “L,” or (2) flat on her back, with her hands up behind her head, elbows out, and her feet up near her bum, with her knees flopped out (yes, it looks ridiculous). Oh, and Henrietta is usually over her face. But before she’ll settle into either of these positions, she flops around like a crazy person! Her hands/arms pull up so she can rub her face in Henrietta, and her legs get pulled up, straightened out, and then slammed down onto the mattress, not unlike a bull pawing the ground before charging. Over and over and over. It’s insane, and I have no idea how it helps her relax. But it seems to.
Heather can laugh now, but Kyle’s the best at getting her to do it. It’s mostly when you tickle her, or do something along those lines. It’s really weird though, this kind of barking chuckle.
She really likes going for walks in her stroller. She just sits up (sometimes even leaning forward) and LOOKS at everything. Cars going by always get her attention, and it’s funny to see her head whip around as she follows them.
All of a sudden, Heather became quite mobile. She’s been able to roll from her stomach to her back for a while now, and there was a lengthy lead-up to learning that skill. But one morning, she just started rolling from her back to her front, and now there’s no containing her. She can roll around all over the place, and she can squirm a little bit to get things that are just out of her reach. It’s pretty funny to look away, then realize she’s moved a few feet in the time you were checking your email. The other morning, I laid her down on her playmat, then sat down to eat my breakfast. When I got up to put my dishes away, she was like this:
Originally, she had been turned the other direction (feet to the left of the picture) and was entirely on the mat. I really can’t figure out how she wriggled down between the chair legs like that.
So, to begin with, Heather would swat at things with her fists. Then she progressed to grabbing things. Now, she’s on to touching things. She’ll reach out and just kind of feel the hanging toys on her playmat. It’s really cute. And while she’s nursing, she’ll often reach up and play with my hand or try to reach some of my hair so she can run her fingers through it. (Also, she loves Kyle’s hair. She thinks it’s super fun to run her hands through.) She also reaches out for faces, particularly mouths. And when we read to her, she’ll sit way forward and try to grab the pictures on the pages. When do babies recognize the difference between pictures and real objects?
I was all set to tell you all that Heather’s sleep has gone back to normal, and even improved. For several days, that was true. It was easy to get her down, and she’d even nap for an hour or two at a time, which she has never done with any regularity. But now we’re back to lousy naps again. Honestly, I feel like I have two babies. Happy Heather seems to only show up for a few days at a time every few weeks, but she’s fantastically awesome and fun. She naps like a rockstar and is happy and a true joy when she’s awake. But mostly, we get Fussy Heather, who naps very poorly and is only really happy for a half hour or so after waking up. Much of the rest of the day, she’s cranky and clingy and very demanding, not enjoying anything for very long. I wish I knew how to make her happier more often. My personal theory is that something makes her uncomfortable (gas, constipation, teething, whatever), which both irritates her and keeps her from sleeping well, making things even worse. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, though, and even if it is, it’s difficult to tell what’s bothering her or how to help.
Even so, she’s totally adorable and we love her very much. How could you not love this face?
Recently, Heather has taken to screaming fits when we try to put her to sleep.
Often, we can get her to sleep and then after anywhere from 0-30 minutes she’ll wake up crying and then screaming and nothing seems to calm her down. She acts likes she’s just in horrible discomfort. And this will continue for what feels like forever, but is usually more like up to 30 minutes.
Last night this went on and off for about 3.5 hours before she finally stayed asleep for a few hours.
We’ve tried all our normal soothing techniques as well as feeding her and administering Colic Calm. There doesn’t seem to be any strong correlation between any of these actions and her eventual calming down.
Usually, once it passes, she’s in a really good mood like nothing ever happened. And this change can happen in a matter of minutes.
Anyone have any bright ideas about what she could be so upset about? Or magic ways to help soothe her?
She did eventually get used to it and was then very happy and excited about eating it, but I don’t have any pictures or video of that part.
Heather turned 4 months old on Tuesday. So let’s see, what’s new in her life these days? She figured out how to use her knees, so now when she’s standing on the bathroom counter, a lot of time is spent dropping down by bending her knees and then pushing herself back up. And she can still roll from belly to back, but she’s still not very consistent about it. Sometimes she just gets annoyed and gives up.
She’s found her feet and they are constantly in the air! She almost never lays her legs down anymore, which makes diaper changes interesting. And those little feet are frequently in her hands where she can keep better track of them. She hasn’t quite figured out how to get them to her mouth yet, but I’m sure she will. Everything goes in her mouth these days.
She just started reaching for our faces a few days ago, which is pretty fun. Except when she’s fussing and stretching out her hands to me, and then it’s just heartbreaking. “Mama…Mama…please…fix it!” It’s so pitiful.
Oh, and she now prefers being in her stroller, forward-facing, to being in her carseat in the stroller. She can see much better, and she seems to enjoy it much more. She’s so small, though, that she looks ridiculous in it. The straps don’t even tighten down enough to really fit her, and her feet just reach the edge of the seat.
Her four-month checkup was on Friday, and Dr. Daley said we should stop swaddling her. That’s an ongoing adjustment. She seems to be doing alright at night, but her naps suck. Of course, her naps suck anyway, so it’s not that big a change there, overall.
A couple weeks ago, she started nursing for much less time (5 minutes on each side instead of 10), so I emailed her pediatrician. (She also started spacing out her feedings, finally, up to 3 hours or so between them.) I’ve read that babies can become more efficient at nursing, allowing them to get it done much quicker, but with the concern about her weight, I wanted to check. Dr. Daley had us go in for a weight check last week, and she was 11 lbs. 8 oz., which put her down in the 12th percentile. The doctor still wasn’t worried, though, so we just carried on as usual, only with more time on our hands.
Well, at her checkup on Friday, she had lost weight, down to 11 lbs. 2.4 oz.! That’s the 5th percentile and not awesome at all. Dr. Daley put her on an iron supplement (apparently, iron deficiency causes poor weight gain because the metabolism has to run high to push the blood around faster to carry enough oxygen) and said to start her on solid foods! Eeep! So we went out and bought a highchair and feeding paraphernalia today. We’ll start the rice cereal tomorrow. We’ll let you know how it goes!
The good news is that whatever is causing the weight issues, it isn’t affecting her development otherwise. She’s totally on top of all the skills for her age, which is a relief.
Also, our tiny apartment is pretty much wall-to-wall baby stuff. Kyle just paced it out, and you can take one step to get from the stroller by the door, to the carseat, to the bouncer, to the glider, to the blanket on the floor, to the high chair, to the playmat. We need more space!
