Mostly the Kids: Ellen, 4 months (9/11/2011)

Dear Ellen,

The “Generic Newborn Look” is starting to fade and “Ellen Paige” is starting to finally make an appearance! This is such a fun age as you start to look more like “yourself” and little bits of personality are appearing. Many people think you look like me, but I will have to do a comparison to my baby pictures in a few months to really be able to tell. Everything is going smoothly and you continue to be a fairly effortless baby!

My Favorite Thing: Laughing is definitely a highlight! You started laughing around 15 weeks old. We can usually make you laugh by tickling your arm pits or tummy, and Ian generally has a higher laughing success rate than anyone else.

Daily Activities and Playing: You are really starting to pay attention to people and turn your head to look at someone when they are talking to you. Since you are sitting up supported fairly well, we try to give you upright sitting time in the Bumbo chair instead of always putting you in the bouncer (reclined). You seem to like sitting up on the kitchen table with us while we eat. At 15 weeks you turned from back to tummy, but you don’t do it very often and prefer to lie on your back looking around if given the option. However, you are happy to stay on your tummy, either looking in the mirror or playing with toys, when put on the floor that way. Grasping and grabbing now comes very easily to you and you are starting to bring more and more things to your mouth to chew on. Let the drool fest begin!

Sibling: Right now you can’t get enough of your big brother. You are always looking around to see what he is doing, and you smile when he comes in close for a kiss. Although you will smile at most anyone, Ian gets the BIGGEST smiles by far. He likes to get up VERY close to your face (“Hi Ellen!”) and that always makes you smile and giggle. You start to bat at his face and he thinks that is pretty funny, too (“Ellen poke eye! Haha!”). You also blow lots of little bubbles and Ian likes to point them out (and occasionally try to pop them).

Eating: You eat 4 times per day: about every 4 hours, and 12 hours between evening and morning feedings. No big changes in the past month except that we have been sending 6 oz bottles (instead of 7 oz) to day care and this seems to be sufficient. The pediatrician gave us the go-ahead to start solid foods but we are waiting until close to 6 months.

Sleeping: You are sleeping a solid 10 or 11 hours every night, consistently waking up between 6:30 and 7:00 for your morning feeding. You occasionally want to sleep longer, so sometimes you “sleep in” until 7:30 on the weekends and sometimes I have to wake you up to eat before heading out to work/school. Naps are still not consistent at day care because of the group schedule. They start turning off the lights for group nap time at 11:30, so that’s when you want to sleep, too. You usually have at least 2 good naps during the day and almost always snooze in the 30-45 minutes we drive each morning and evening. You still take fairly solid morning, noon, and late afternoon naps when you are at home, so I think the higher noise and activity levels have quite an impact on you at day care. Also, about 10 minutes after I wrote the 3-month update, I stopped swaddling you for either bed time or naps. You didn’t skip a beat and slept just as well.

Special Events: First over night stay with Gram and Pops when you were just over 3 months old. Mama and Daddy got to go on the first real date since you were born… even though it was about 3 months late, we considered it our (3^rd) anniversary celebration. You also went to Rowena twice this month! You are no stranger to long drives, so both of the 4-5 hour trips were uneventful. Mimi and Grandpa loved to see you at their house.