Four Months: Part Two

Sorry if this takes forever to load. I went a bit nutsy with the pictures in this post. Here is Evie's outfit for going to see the doctor this morning. I've been putting her in hairbows a lot in the past week or so, much to Evie's chagrin. I have no idea why I'm all of a sudden a fan of bows. It must be hormonal.

At Evie's doctor appointment this morning she weighed 14 lbs., 14 oz. (holding steady in the 75th percentile) and measured 24.5" long (holding steady in the 50th percentile). Her head circumference is 16.25" which is down to 75th percentile, compared with her 95th percentile measurement at 2 months. The doctor wasn't concerned about her head growth and guessed that the nurse may have measured incorrectly at 2 months.

In terms of milestones (where you circle things on the chart...someone help me out, what is the chart called? I tried googling it and can't come up with the name), Evie is meeting most of the 6 month milestones but none of the 7 month milestones. The first milestone I didn't circle was the head lag one because her head still lags a bit when we pull her up to sitting. The pediatrician tried it out on her in the office and after a second Evie brought her head up in line with her spine, so she is getting there. She has a big, heavy head! :)

Evie's pediatrician again pronounced her "perfect:" no problems with head shape, eyes, ears, heart, belly, etc. Her birth mark is growing normally, her hair is growing in and she is developing as expected. She received the DTaP and Rotavirus vaccines today and will go back at 5 months for Pc, Hib and Polio. The pediatrician again tried to convince me to just do them all today; her argument was that bringing Evie back into the office at 5 months unnecessarily exposes her to germs from sick babies who are there at the same time. I understand her point but we are still going to follow Dr. S*ears' schedule because it makes sense to me in terms of not overloading her little body with so much aluminum and so many different vaccines all at once. Evie was a trooper and only cried for a minute or so after the stick. She didn't enjoy the rotavirus vaccine like she did at 2 months, and fussed about it, but calmed down quickly afterward. She was fussy for ten minutes after the appointment was all over, but then settled down for a long nap in her car seat and swing.

I talked to the pediatrician about Evie's medicine (baby Z*antac) and the fact that it's changed nothing. At first the doc was making noises about increasing the dose, but I rebutted her idea with the argument that if a larger dose was what Evie needed, wouldn't we have seen an incremental improvement with the current dose? So, we're stopping the medicine and assuming the change in her spitting up recently (seems to bother her more, make her cough and gag, etc.) is due to teething and drool rather than reflux.

This past month, Evie's fourth month, has been all about making a liar out of Mommy. I read back to my one, two and three month updates and found that Evie has, as everyone told me she would, changed completely. Here are a few choice examples and I have a few more listed at the bottom of the post.

She no longer likes So*othie pacifiers...now she likes N*uks.

Our "key and lock" cuddle position with her head in the crook of my elbow and her tummy to my tummy...doesn't work anymore. Now she prefers to fall asleep on my shoulder.

Or on chests (again):

Or to the sound of grandma's LOUD dishwasher cycle:

Or just in physical proximity to Mama:

Remember how adamant I was about NO TV for Evie? It is getting more and more challenging to keep her from it. Especially on Tuesday when the TV was on all day for the inauguration. Evie showed remarkable interest in Obama's inaugural address. The first half of the address she watched attentively from Grandma's arms. The second half she watched, equally attentive, in tummy time. Obama has such powerful, soothing, magnetic rhetorical skills that Evie could not resist. However, she did poop while Biden was sworn in and fussed as Obama was sworn in, so she's not a fan of Justice Roberts. Later in the week she showed the first signs of being a San Antonio S*purs fan by constantly craning her neck, trying to see the screen and follow the action. Whenever we're in restaurants with TVs on the walls, she watches with fascination, especially sports. And she loves O*prah. Sigh. I thought I could fold laundry and watch. Sure! I could just put her bouncy seat in the other direction so that she would play instead of watching. But the pull of O*prah's sonorous voice was too strong for Mommy's tricks:

This has been a month of vocalizing...most recently, shrieking:

She did her screech-bird routine for the doctor this morning and she said "my, my, aren't we loud?" Yes. We are loud. We get lots of attention in public these days!

This month has been a month of kicking, thumping, rolling and grabbing feet:

It has been a month to explore the world; flirt with strangers; look out windows; lunge for objects; reach for the dogs; scratch, pat and inspect fabrics; squeeze, hit, wave around and drop toys; generally look at everything new and different (read: NOT look at Mom and Dad):

It was a month of spending time with Grandma and Grandpa in San Antonio for two different trips, at Christmas and in mid-January:

The warm Texas weather prompted Evie's first pair of sunglasses (they are for ages 3 and up but she was supervised):

This picture is from January? This may be the only time she ever wears these shorts:

Evie had a great time playing on Grandma and Grandpa's floor. It is carpeted, clean, free of dogs and warm enough to lounge in a onesie or just a diaper:

Evie loves to play airplane and peek-a-boo and have raspberries blown on her skin:

She does push-ups in tummy time and reaches for objects:

She still spends a lot of time sucking and chewing on her hands, and has a new habit of grinding her gums together, making her jaw click (very disturbing to feel if you are holding her by the chest and have your thumb near her neck). Her drooling is out of control and we change just as many wet bibs as we do spit-up bibs. No signs of teeth yet, but they are on their way:

This month Evie spent WAY too much time in her car seat as we drove to and from San Antonio twice. Her car rules are 1. I will ride in the morning and sleep nicely but 2. I will not ride quietly in the afternoon, so you'd better bring earplugs or just give up and find a hotel. 3. When I want to eat I WANT TO EAT AND YOU'D BETTER PULL OFF ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD IN NOWHERE OKLAHOMA AND FEED ME NOW. (We had a handful of kind Oklahomans pull next to us and offer help, but unless they had some extra burp cloths we didn't need anything but a place to park for a change and feed.) and 4. If you get an early start I will be a pleasant traveling companion for up to 6 hours but no longer. Did you hear me? NO LONGER.

The toy in the bottom left of the above picture is S*ophie the giraffe that I mentioned in a previous post about teething. I was skeptical at first that we needed a $16 rubber teething toy, made in France, but I am now a true believer. Evie adores S*ophie and that giraffe saved our skins more than once during fussy spells in restaurants and stores.

Evie has also regressed in terms of eating habits. When she was tiny she always ended up with formula all over her chin during feedings, but that went away quickly and she became a neat eater. No longer. Now (teething, again?) she lives to chew on and play with the bottle and nipple as she eats (except when she's sleepy and then she's still all business). Here is a shot of Lil' Miss Milky Chin during an in-car feeding on our trip home this weekend (we're parked; J is not driving with her in his lap a la Ms. S*pears):

Let's see, what else am I missing?

• No cloth diapering update right now, I'm going to do a separate post about it
• This was the month of 3-6 month clothes and now that she's in her fifth month she is transitioning through 6 month clothes and into 6-9 month clothes (again, due to the fluffy cloth behind taking up extra room)
• She eats 6 oz. of formula at a time and 5 or 6 feedings per day
• Right before turning 4 months old she grew out of her sleep regression and started napping again, but we'll see what happens when I start trying to put her in her crib for naps again this week.
• Corresponding to the increased napping, she's stopped sleeping through the night. We were blaming this on the unfamiliar environment at Grandma and Grandpa's house and now the transition back to the home environment, but if she keeps it up we'll just have to declare a new phase. I'm fine with it because we got off so easy when she was little and started sleeping through the night consistently at 2 months. I knew there would be a catch. :) While we were in Texas I couldn't get her back to sleep in the P*ack 'N' P*lay in the middle of the night, so we felling into a routine where she slept the first half of the night alone and the second half in bed with me. J wasn't staying with us; he was sleeping in the hotel where his conference was. I loved the co-sleeping and waking up to her coos and kicks. She always looked so happy to see that I was right there next to her.
• She's stopped sleeping when I wear her, unless I'm in constant motion and don't bend over (i.e. no unloading the dishwasher, using the bathroom or checking e-mail).
• She is no longer fascinated by the singing star in her play gym. She'll still watch it and smile at it occasionally, but it is no longer a sure thing to keep her entertained.
• She's showing less interest in Rabbit during diaper changes and instead likes to look at/talk to me, grab her feet, kick the diaper cream into the diaper pail, suck her hands and, many times, fuss and cry because the diaper is the last obstacle in the way of getting her bottle.
• Speaking of her bottle, she will now reach out for it and try to hold it herself. If she's hungry and she sees a bottle next to the sink, it makes her cry. After she's finished eating she likes to sit and look at the empty bottle. I can imagine what nursing mothers mean when they say they feel like a cow at this stage. I'm sure she would be the same way with my bo*obs and it would annoy me.
• She's started to get bored with toys that she's used to, but at the same time she tends to cry the first couple of times we introduce something new, especially something new that makes noise. After a few tries and some encouragement, however, she ends up loving the new things. She is training me to be a persistent Mommy...please help me remember this lesson when I start feeding her solids and she rejects broccoli five times in a row.
• She is now a light sleeper. As a newborn, the dogs barking, phone ringing, Mommy typing, music playing...none of it woke her up. Now I find myself tiptoeing around the house while she's sleeping, making sure not to wake her. Yet again she turns me into a liar. I used to say that I wouldn't do the tiptoe routine because I wanted to train her to sleep through normal household noises. Now I realize that when you're a mom, it's more important that she take a good nap on this particular day so that you can eat lunch and less important that she be a heavy sleeper in the distant future. Anyhow, J dispelled this idea by telling me that he was a heavy sleeper as a baby and a kid even though he's now a light sleeper. Yet another thing I don't have control over. Sigh.

Overall, I just love being Evie's mom. She gives me warm fuzzies every day when she greets me with a smile in the morning, watches me as I enter and exit rooms (and cries for me to come back), inspects my clothing with fascination, reaches out to touch my face, turns to look at me when I speak, scoots closer to me and reaches out to touch me when we co-sleep, laughs when I laugh (as if she's in on the joke), holds on to my fingers when I'm feeding her and grabs the neck of my shirt when I'm carrying her. We are what you'd call securely attached.

The full weight of the responsibility of being Evie's mother is starting to hit me this month. She watches me all the time. I am the most significant influence on her physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual development right now. I knew this intellectually before, but now I'm starting to believe it and it freaks me out. Each of my flaws is magnified when I see them through her eyes. Paraphrasing Jack N*icholson: Evie Bea, you make me want to be a better woman.