Mia, Month Four

Stats:

Weight: 12 pounds 11.5 ounces. She’s in the 19^th percentile for weight. I asked her doctor about this because it seems light (she feels much heavier to me anyway) but he assured me that she’s perfectly healthy and gaining weight at a good rate.

Height: Mia is 25 inches long. She’s in the 73^rd percentile for length. She’s going to be a tall girl!

Size: 3-6 months/6 months for clothes and size 2 diapers.

Appearance: Not too much has changed on this front from last month. Her thighs are definitely getting chunkier though, and her hair is filling in a bit more (still red!). Her eyes are currently a dark blue, kind of like the ocean, but I really think they’ll end up some shade of green.

Food:

We are still exclusively breastfeeding. I’m hoping to continue this way until she’s 6 months old, and then start introducing solids in combination with breastfeeding. When I was working, I would pump 3 times a day and she’d be bottle fed for 3 feedings a day.  Now that I’ve decided to stay home, we’re switching back to only nursing. She’s still on a pretty consistent feeding schedule. Her first feed is generally between 6 and 7 am, then again around 10. After that, she’s pretty consistently eating every 2 ½ hours until bedtime.

When she was still bottle feeding, she was drinking 4 ounces in a feeding. She generally nurses for 30-40 minutes, with the exception of her very first feed of the day which is rarely longer than 20 minutes.

Sleep:

Mia is still sleeping awesomely at night. She’s generally asleep by 10 or 10:30, but we did have one week his month where teething was particularly badly and she wasn’t asleep before midnight any of those days. She sleeps all night until her 6 or 7 am feeding, which I generally have to wake her up for anyway. After her first feed, she goes back to sleep for about 3 hours.

She’s getting ever-so-slightly better at taking naps. We usually get one nap a day out of her, but never at a consistent time or for a consistent length. They’re rarely longer than 45 minutes. I’m hoping to get her on a better nap schedule eventually, but it’s not something I’m super stressed about since she sleeps well at night and in the mornings.

Just this week we’ve started her in her crib at night. So far she’s doing really well with it. I think I’m the one who’s struggling honestly! It’s weird not having her right next to me.

She prefers sleeping on her sides (primarily her right side, but she does mix it up sometimes).

Milestones:

A few weeks ago, Mia laughed out loud for the first time. We were outside with the dogs (we were watching the in-laws’ dogs at the time, so there were 3 of them) and they were running up and down the fence playing with the neighbor’s dog. They were all barking and getting excited and all of the sudden Mia laughed! At first you could tell she didn’t know what was going on, but she knew she liked it, so she kept laughing. It was such a precious sound! That night we got her to laugh two more times. Since then, she’s been a little greedy with her laugh and only lets us hear it every now and then.

Mia can also now roll from tummy to back. In fact, she rolls this way a lot more than she does back to tummy. Since she seems to hate tummy time, she now rolls onto her back pretty much any time she’s placed on her belly. She seems to figure out that it’s a game, so she’ll roll onto her back, then I’ll place her back on her belly, and so on and so forth. Smart girl.

On the rare occasions that she allows tummy time to happen, she’s really good at picking her head up and holding it up.

She follows us with her eyes, and she’ll also follow our fingers or toys.

Even though she can’t sit unsupported yet, she really likes to be sitting up. Because of that, we’ve started putting her in the highchair at night during dinner. She still leans back quite a bit and ends up slumped down a good ways, but she really seems to enjoy the highchair. We’ve also got her sitting upright (slightly reclined) in the stroller now instead of in the car seat clicked into the stroller. She loves taking walks and seeing all the trees and neighborhood critters!

She loves playing in her bouncer! We usually get an hour of good bouncer time every day. It makes me happy to know that she’s having fun, learning and making her legs strong all at once!

She can hold onto toys for a good amount of time now. She’s still not particularly interested in playing with them (except for her play mat), but she will hold onto the toys for several seconds and she’ll follow them with her eyes if we move them.

Unless she’s teething really badly, Mia is a super happy baby. She’s all smiles now.

She still really enjoys watching TV. It’s so funny to watch her watching with us in the evenings. Sometimes she’s more into the show than we are. Oh and, she loves watching her Longhorns play football!

Mia is my little chatterbox. She’s discovered that she can shriek and scream, so that happens a lot. She also enjoys “singing” as we call it. She’s added ‘b’, ‘m’, and ‘c’ to her list of consonant sounds.

I’ve started signing basic signs to her (‘milk’ and ‘all done’). Obviously she’s not signing back yet, but I want to start early. I’m hoping to also incorporate ‘mommy’, ‘daddy’, and ‘dog’ soon too.

Her fingers are almost always in her mouth. This is probably because her teething has been insane this month. She soaks through 3-4 bibs per day with all of the drool. She’s had a few bad nights with teething too. I hate seeing her in that much pain!

She’s also discovered that she can get her feet in her mouth, so that happens pretty frequently.

She now takes a pacifier! Okay, this was totally random. One day she still hated them, and the next we put it in her mouth and she sucked on it for an hour. No idea what happened. We think it might be because she’s teething so actively now. She seems to want it the most at night, which makes sense because that’s when she’s the crankiest generally. She’ll have it in her mouth until she falls asleep and then I take it out.

Things I want to remember about this month:

One of my favorite things is when I go to wake her up in the morning, she’ll smile at me first thing after opens her eyes. Sure makes being up that early worth it!

How active of a baby she is. Unless she’s fast asleep, she’s moving!

Having ‘conversations’ with her. She loves when we talk to her and she can talk back! Sometimes, she’s even ‘sassy’ and has appropriately timed ‘back talk’. Uh oh!

How she loves holding onto my finger as she falls asleep. It’s so sweet!

How much she loves Luna. Most of the times that she’s laughed, it’s been at the dog. She smiles a lot when Luna licks her feet. Luna is definitely our nanny dog. She always comes to check on Mia when she’s crying and is never more than a few feet from her during the day. I can’t wait to see their relationship grow more.

Mia loves when we stick our tongues out at her. Most of the time she likes to copy us and stick hers out too.

How much she loves her highchair and stroller!

How she always smiles when I say ‘Mama’. In Jason’s defense, he gets them for ‘Dada’ too J

My happy girl!

Pacifier success!

Mia's first grandparents day! Not gonna lie, I didn't know this was a holiday. Sadly, she did not see any of her grandparents that day, but we sent them all messages!

High-chairing like a boss.