4 Months Old

Annie is 4 months old!  And I’m behind posting this, as usual!

She is so alert, aware of her surroundings and just really intrigued with this world.  Big milestones are she now can grab and pick up small toys, everything goes to her mouth it seems like, rolling from back to tummy every day, and babbling more and more. 

She started rolling consistently at about a week shy of 4 months old.  She did a lot of rolling onto her side and hanging out there for the majority of her 3^rd month; now I can’t keep her off her tummy hardly!  We did have a scare, one morning we walked into her room and found her still swaddled tightly and she had somehow managed to flip to her tummy.  We have no idea how long she was like that for.  From that day on we stopped swaddling her arms so she can have more control when she flips in the night like that.  From that point on, my sleep pretty much went downhill.  I’m petrified that she is going to suffocate sleeping on her tummy and was waking up all throughout the nights and flipping her from tummy to back just to literally walk back to our bedroom and look at the monitor to see she managed to be on her tummy again.  I realized it was a battle I was never going to win at and the Pediatrician has rested my fears and thinks she will be fine if she flips to her tummy at night. 

Babbling.  It’s still as cute as ever to have little conversations with her.  She is still exploring what sounds she can make.  And does it with such effort, you can tell right before she is going to babble because she is so focused and tries so hard to bring out just the right sound.  Good gravy, I could seriously listen to her babble all day long and never get sick of how fun it is.

Her colic hasn’t gotten much better.  We took her in before her 4 month appointment and she is now no longer on baby Zantac and now on a form of Baby Prilosec.  So far, not seeing much of a difference.  Our Pediatrician said some babies are just ‘high maintenance,’ they want to be held exactly a certain way, have a constant need to be ‘hands-on’ and are very vocal about it.  I really think this does apply to Annie.  I cannot wait for her to mellow out some.  It’s exhausting.  We’ve had some challenging days in the past month.    

I know every parent has their challenges.  I have to tell myself often that we are blessed in that our challenge really should be temporary.  Happier days ARE ahead.  A coworker recently told me something that resonates with me, one thing she wished she would have realized is that when people tell her ‘it’s just a phase’, it really IS just a phase.  That is reassuring. 

One thing that has changed for me the last few months is on the weekends I really sleep in way longer than I have in years.  On the weekends, I use to wake up around 8ish and now I can barely pull myself out of bed before 10/10:30 am.  Thank goodness Aaron is a morning person and takes the weekend shift with Annie so I can sleep in.  Monday thru Friday I go nonstop from 5:30am to 10 pm every day with very little time to stop and just do nothing.  Aaron does too but he can just handle it better than me, I’m use to more ‘me’ time than what I get nowadays.  So sleeping in is my new ‘me’ time.  And I look forward to it every. single. weekend. 

Here are a few pics from her 3 month professional pics!