Kaitlyn's Fourth Month: Thanksgiving and Christmas

This month Kaitlyn really found her hands and feet.  Especially when she has her socks that have a big bow on them.

She has rolled over (stomach to back) a couple times, but continues to hate tummy time for more than a few minutes.  Once she decides she's done, she puts her head face down into the mat, splays her arms out to the side, and cries.  She also pedals her legs and sometimes comes close to rolling over when she's mad, but usually the splayed arms keep her from rolling.  

She does consistently roll onto her side from her back.  Usually she grabs her toes, then rolls to her side.  I think if she wanted to roll all the way over to her stomach she could, but she hates being on her stomach, so why would she?

She's gotten much better at hanging on to her toys, and loves to put them in her mouth.  She will suck on her fingers, or the hand of whoever is holding her.  Unfortunately, she only wants to chew on a pacifier, so she won't keep it in her mouth.  I got some different types of pacifiers from friends at church, but she pretty much always does the same thing.  She loves to suckle, so I still have hope that she will take a pacifier instead of me.

This month was probably the most difficult when it came to sleep.  She would take one or two naps, an hour or two each.  Two two hour naps was an awesome day.  But then she started making bedtime go on forever.   It would take us several hours to get her to go to sleep (and stay asleep).  At some point we moved her to her crib, which she didn't bat an eye at.  Things didn't get worse, but they didn't get better.

Once asleep, she ideally would sleep for around 4 hours.  Sometimes more, unfortunately, sometimes less.  When she wouldn't go down until 11 or 12, this put us around 4 in the morning.  I would nurse her and try to get her back to sleep.  Usually she'd fall asleep, but as soon as I lay her down, she'd wake up.  Out of desperation for sleep, I started using a three strike method.  If I got her to sleep and tried to lay her down three times, I gave myself permission to put her in bed with me and sleep like that.

Family beds work for some people, but it was never something we wanted to do.  I do not sleep well when she's with us, and she doesn't sleep as soundly either.  But in comparison to not getting sleep, it's better.  There was about a two week period in this month where she would not even sleep in our bed.  Those were really bad nights where I'd send my sister a Facebook message (so I didn't wake her with a text) asking her to come early the next day when Stephen had to work.  Knowing I only had to make it to 8 or so and then she would come rescue me so I could nap for a couple hours is what got me through.  She has saved me many days, and Kaitlyn loves her Auntie Megan.

At 3 months (November 26th), Kaitlyn weighed 10 lbs 13 oz.  We started doing monthly weigh ins instead of every two weeks because she is growing consistently, she's just small for her age.  At 3 months 3 weeks when we had her 4 month appointment (December 18th), she weighed 11 lbs 8 oz, was 24.7 inches long, and had a head circumference of 40.9 cm.  The doctor said her weight was the 8th percentile, according to the WebMD app I have, it's the 14th percentile.  But her height is in the 76th percentile and head is in the 57th percentile.  Since she's meeting all her developmental milestones, her low weight just needs to be watched.

She's still in 0-3 month/ 3 month clothes, but they fit well.  So I expect we'll be moving up sizes by the time she hits 5 months.  Mid-month we moved up to size 2 diapers, mostly because we ran out of size 1 and we thought we were close to when she'd need to move up.

Here's our month in pictures:

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving morning at my parents

Waiting for Thanksgiving dinner at Grammy and Poppy's

Hanging out with Poppy

Scott Family Christmas

Scott family Christmas

Lots of kiddos

My mom and her siblings

Beckner Family Christmas

Beckner family Christmas.  Second cousin is 5 months older than Kaitlyn, next Christmas will be lots of fun!

Velveteen Rabbit from an aunt and uncle.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve watching Holiday Inn.  Kaitlyn likes to hang on to Stephen's beard while sitting with him.

Christmas Eve bath

Christmas Day

Christmas morning with Grandma

Santa worked overtime

Not quite as big as her stocking

Interested in the presents, but didn't quite understand what was going on.

Getting much needed sleep on Grammy

Lily wore out from spending Christmas Eve and day with my parents

Stephen put each month on his blog if you want to see all the pictures from each month here.

Kaitlyn's Third Month

8 weeks was a huge turning point for us because we discovered: the swing.  The glorious swing in which she will nap for hours.  Hours!  It's amazing how much easier the day is when I can actually take a nap with her and get a break.  I actually discovered it on accident.  It was a day my sister couldn't come and I was on my own.  Usually, Kaitlyn would let me lay her on a play mat or in a bouncy chair for 5 - 10 minutes at a time (so I can get dressed, shower, go to the bathroom, etc).  On this particular day, she was having none of it.  No matter where I put her, she was crying.  I finally had to go to the bathroom, so I strapped her in the swing.  Within a minute, she had stopped crying.  After two minutes, her eyes were closed.  And she slept for two hours.  You have to understand that she had never napped outside of someone's arms for more than half an hour.  Ever.  (Except a night) So this was huge!

I'm trying to wean her off the swing by slowly decreasing the intensity and will hopefully have her napping in her crib soon.  So far, she wants nothing to do with that.

This month she has continued to interact with us more and more.  She smiles and will lay on the bed and "talk" to you, especially in the mornings.  She is starting to learn people, I think, and will calm down better for those she knows.  She doesn't cry nearly as often, although sometimes she is fussy (but not the hours and hours of screaming).

At her 8 week appointment, she had fallen off her weight gaining curve she was starting to establish.  The doctor has us offering her formula after every feeding, whether she acts hungry or not.  This means a lot of wasted formula because she doesn't always want it (which is good because it means she got enough breast milk from me, bad because formula is expensive).

Halloween was in this month (she was just over 8 weeks).  We went to my parents' so they could see her, then down to Stockton to Stephen's dad's church's carnival (his dad is the children's pastor and runs this huge event).  She did great that night, I think there were enough lights and interesting things to look at.  She only cried a little.  Stephen and I went as Alaskan explorers/tourists and she was our polar bear.  I had planned on being farmers and had a little pig costume (with a cute little curly tail in the back) that I got before she was born.  But it was 3 - 6 month sized and she is barely fitting into 0 - 3 month, so that outfit was out.  The polar bear is actually just an outfit, but it worked as a costume as well.

During the day

Our polar bear was "roaring"

The next day we went up to Tahoe with my family.  This was our first trip with Kaitlyn, so it was nice to have lots of extra hands.  She had a hard time going to sleep the first night, but she slept her two longest nights in a row while we were there.  I guess we wore her out!

Nursing break at Apple Hill on the way up.  Feels like I have that cover on a lot. 

Family picture at Apple Hill

Happy girl

We all "fit" in our car.  Megan's not happy about the lack of escape route in the back seat.

Eating the breakfast Megan and Evan prepared

At the lake

She seemed unimpressed by Tahoe's beauty.  We'll work on her.

The newlyweds

Another family picture attempt...crying baby again.  Kind of looks like she's smiling with her eyes closed, though.  I'll take it.

My parents

Everybody

Kaitlyn also discovered that her hands are pretty tasty, particularly her left hand.  Maybe she'll be a lefty?  She's started to bat at her dangling toys, but still hates tummy time.  She'll do it if it's on someone, but if you try to lay her on her blanket on her tummy (even with me down face to face with her, jangling toys, singing, everything I can do), she will last about 30 seconds and then scream.  But she can hold her head up if you sit her up, lay her on your tummy, or hold her with her neck above your shoulder.  I know tummy time is important, so we still try it, but it doesn't happen as often as it should.

The above was written about two weeks into the third month.  Then all the good napping fell apart and then even her longer night stretches stopped.  Hence why I never finished this blog.  When she was taking longer naps twice a day, I would sleep during her first nap and then felt good enough to do other things (like blog) during the second nap.  Now I try to sleep whenever she does because it doesn't happen very often.

Here's some pictures from the rest of the month.

My parents know I start getting depressed if I stay in the house too much so they took me out to the Cosumnes River Reserve to go for a walk.

Growth group baby update:

January 2013:

July 2013 (in order by due date)

November 22, 2013 (in order by birth):

The babies, youngest to oldest

The babies with their parents

This is the first month she noticed the bunny...

... and wanted to eat it.