My 4-Month-Old Adi Mae

Well, we've reached the 4 month mark for having Adelia in our family. Usually in these kinds of posts people mention how the time has just flown by, but that's not how I feel. My thoughts about it go something like this, "Adelia is 4 months old. Ya, that seems about right." And I feel like we lived every single hour of that last four months. If that makes any sense.

Adelia is a good baby, but she is a more difficult baby than my boys were. Things are getting better though. Slowly, but they are getting better. Her colicky sessions are a lot shorter and less frequent than they used to be. She still likes to be held most of the time, but she will let me put her down on her back on a blanket if I sit right with her and play with her. She likes when Lincoln or Ivan play with her too. She usually goes to bed between 10-11 now. We have very few midnight or later nights, for which I am very grateful. She usually gets up twice in the night to eat, but sometimes it's only once. I love those nights.She supports her head completely on her own now, which has made this possible:

We tried the jumpy seat out the other day, and to my shock and amazement, SHE LOVED IT!! She sat in it happily for a HALF HOUR!! I'm so excited about it I can hardly stand it. It's making me really excited to give her her Bumbo chair for Christmas, because now I think she'll really like it, and it's a lot more portable than the jumpy seat which has to hang in a doorway.

This last month, Adi has found her tongue. She plays with it like it's a toy, and I love it. She has a long tongue, and she sticks it out as far as it will go and then curls it up and goes back and for from side to side. It cracks me up. She's also really starting to notice toys. She looks at them, and then even grabs them and shoves them into her mouth like she hasn't eaten in a year. She really likes her monkey that hangs from her car seat, which has helped make the car seat experience a bit less painful. She doesn't scream bloody murder the entire time she's in it any more. And the other day, we even made a trip to the grocery store (and Aaron forgot the snuggly so she had to stay in her car seat, which is usually my worst nightmare) and were there an hour and a half, and she was awake and sat quietly until we got to the car. Thank heaven for small miracles.

And actually, in my mind it's more than a small miracle. Adelia is hard to take out in public because when she's screaming, the best thing to do is just finish whatever errand you are running as quickly as possible and get out of there. There's nothing I can do in the store to make her stop screaming. But there are plenty of people around to hear her scream. And they all come over and act so concerned and offer a million suggestions about what might be the matter, or say "oh, the poor baby, she's so tired" like they have any clue what's wrong with her, but the whole time they're giving me dagger eyes, so obviously they think I'm either the worst parent in the world, or the most clueless. Sorry people, she's just like that, there's nothing wrong with her, she's just crying, and I'll thank you not to touch her with your hands that have been who knows where. (Pet peeve of mine is when perfect strangers touch my children, just because they're little, doesn't give you the right to put your hand on their cheeks, or rub their head, or pat their arm, or stick your nose right into their car seat and breath on them...keep your germs to yourself, thanks.) So ya, when she chooses not to cry at the store, it's a huge relief for me. Large miracle.

It's also becoming apparent that Adelia has inherited my motor mouth. Once I get talking, I can't shut-up, and neither an she. But I love listening to her jabber and babble, like she already has an opinion on everything (heaven help us!). She still has her hair, so I'm thinking that maybe she won't go bald like I previously predicted. There is some blond starting to grow in underneath, but I hope it stays dark. More important than the color though, I hope it stays curly.

I should also mention that at the 4 month mark I am still nursing her. Hooray for me. However, during Thanksgiving break we tried giving her a bottle a couple times so I could leave her, and I noticed that she wasn't liking it very well...which is a big problem for our upcoming 14 hour drive to WA, where I'd planned on pumping so I could feed her without having to stop every 5 seconds. So since Thanksgiving I've been doing a little pumping, usually after she eats in the morning, and then giving her her next feeding in the bottle. Also, I kind of felt like we should give the formula a try. She won't touch it straight, but if I mix 2 ounces in with 4 ounces of breast milk, then she'll eat it just fine, and she's less gassy. So right now she's on a diet of about 2/3rds breast milk, 1/3 formula. She seems to be a lot happier about it. Which is good, because I think my New Year's resolution is going to be to stop nursing, since I still hate it. :) We'll see. The nice thing about this go around, is that I haven't set any expectations for myself as far as nursing goes. I haven't made any goals to feel guilty about not meeting. I haven't calculated an amount of time that I need to nurse her for. I'm kind of just winging it, and telling myself that I can stop whenever I feel like it. And so far that's going really well.

Side note: Something I've noticed about myself as a parent is that I tend to do better when I just wing it. And when I say wing it, I don't mean be clueless or go into it blindly. I do a lot of research about different areas (sleeping, feeding, potty training, discipline, nursing, educating, development, etc.) but if I try to stick strictly to one method, it usually blows up in my face. But if I take a little from here and a little from there and form my own opinions and do what feels right in the moment (aka winging it) then things seem to go a lot better for me. 

Anyways, we've made it to 4 months. I feel like it's much more of an accomplishment than when Lincoln or Ivan turned 4 months. Kids are a lot, and I mean A LOT of work. But (not to be cliche) I really do think that's why we love them the most out of anything else we could be doing. As moms, we put literally everything we've got (and sometimes more) into our kids, so it's nice that they are mostly always worth it. :)