Mostly the Kids: June 2014

Four Month (5/14/2014)

Dear Cameron,

My favorite thing about you right now is what I call a full body smile. When you see someone you like you smile with your mouth and eyes and then the joy just spreads. You throw your hands up in the air and kind of arch your back. I love it! I think you look a lot like Ian and especially so when you smile or in profile. Your birth hair fell out and seems to be growing back in black. I predict you will have Daddy’s hair color, but only time will tell!

Weight - 15 lbs, 8 oz

Length - 26.25"

Daily Activities and Playing
Routine is unchanged; we still have success with the wake-eat-play-sleep model. You are playing and interacting more with things and people around you. One new development is that you found your toes! You like to grab at them sometimes during diaper changes and when playing on your back in general. Besides gripping dangling toys with great ferocity, you like to gaze at ceiling fans while lying on your back. You are still not rolling over anymore after just a few successes at three months. You tolerate tummy time only for a short period of time before you get grunty.

Sibling
No real changes here… Ian and Ellen are both still in school so I am savoring the alone time with you! At the end of May school will end and everyone will be home full time all summer. It will be a nice change of pace and we have a lot of fun times in store.

Eating
You continue to nurse on demand at a predictable rate (every 3.5 to 4 hours) but you are not consistent in the number of feedings per day. Around 3.5 months you went from always nursing four times per day to increasing to either five or six feedings. I suspect you were either going through a growth spurt and needed to increase my milk supply, or a stuffy nose just made you nurse poorly. I don’t know if it was a cold or allergies, but it seemed to make you pretty unhappy. In general nursing is an efficient affair as you only spend 5 minutes on each side (maybe 10 if it is the first feeding of the day). You burp like a champ and still spit up some at each feeding but I can tell the problem is improving. You still aren't interested in bottle feeding.

Sleeping
After magically starting to sleep through the night, you just as suddenly stopped sleeping through the night. The routine has shifted so that you nurse a last time around 8 or 8:30 p.m. and go to bed shortly after, then sleep for a 6-8 hour stretch before waking again to eat in the early morning hours. The good news is that you aren't up to play at all – you just eat and go right back to sleep. You still take a nap consistently about 1.5 to 2 hours after waking to eat, but you often wake 45 minutes to an hour after going down for your nap. You have difficulty settling down, particularly in the late afternoon/early evening. The swing, and car seat are all tolerated if you aren’t tired at all or already asleep, but neither the swing or car rides soothe you. You are too big for any of the swaddle sacks but still seem to need your arms pinned down to help you settle down, so we use one of the muslin swaddle blankets to wrap your arms and just skip the leg part of the swaddle. As a last resort if you cannot fall asleep you will usually settle down if I carry you in the Ergo.

Special Events
I started running again! I am using the single stroller with the car seat adapter for now. You are fairly unaffected but the motion does seem to get you to go to sleep. I can’t figure out why that motion would put you to sleep but a car ride won’t. I am looking forward to you getting a little older so I can ditch the heavy and off balance car seat.