So I think I’m subconsciously dreading Alethea’s next milestone.  How do I know?  Well, the other night I was dreaming that it was morning and I heard Alethea waking up, so I went in to get her out of her crib.  She looked up at me and smiled, just like she always does, only as she grinned up at me I saw that she had 6 or 7 teeth.  The teeth were all in random spots in her mouth, so it was a pretty gappy grin and some of them were even sticking out at odd angles!  I was quite horrified!  My beautiful baby girl has a smile like an member of the NHL!

Well, I’m glad it turned out to just be a dream, although when I woke up and thought about it, I realized that it might be nice if Alethea just suddenly grew teeth during the night and we didn’t have to go through days and days of grumpiness to get them.

Anyway…

I’m not sure how to end this post, so I’ll just close with a picture of Alethea’s current (toothless!) grin:

Today is one of those days you just want to lay outside in the grass with a good book and a glass of lemonade.  Warm, but not hot, light breeze, sunny… ahhhhhh……

Alethea and I went out in the backyard and laid in the shade of our oak tree.  It took me about 10 minutes to clear the giant acorns off a patch of grass large enough to put the blanket down, but with that accomplished, we had a lovely half hour to revel in the day before it was time for Alethea’s nap.

(Oh and if any of you are wondering about the orange stains on Alethea’s onesie, those are from the peach I was eating while carrying Alethea.  She saw me put it in my mouth and then eagerly leaned over to try it herself.  When I went to detach her from it, she started sobbing.  Funny girl…)

Today is Alethea’s 4 month birthday.  Happy birthday, Baby!

On Tuesday Alethea had her 4 month well baby check up.  Her current stats are: Height – 24 1/4 inches, Weight – 16 lbs 6 oz, Head Circumference – 42 1/2 cm.  That means she’s still in the 90th percentile for weight, but has slipped to the 75th percentile in head circumference and is all the way down to the 50th percentile in height.  Her pediatrician said, “You might have a short girl.”  And I said, “Have you seen her parents?  I don’t think that was ever in doubt.”

After discussing Alethea’s reflux with her doctor, she was prescribed zantac and we were advised to start her on solid foods.  We also walked away with a second prescription because apparently the white patches on the inside of Alethea’s mouth are thrush (a yeast infection in the mouth).

While we were at the doctor’s office, Alethea got her 4 month immunizations done; two shots, one in each leg.  She looked vaguely surprised at the first, and cried a few half-hearted sobs at the second.  I was so impressed with her and the nurse even commented that she was a tough little girl.  She must get it from her dad because goodness knows that I don’t have a high pain tolerance (a fact to which my older brother can attest).

So poor little Alethea’s systems are completely overwhelmed.  She’s had shots, started two medications and gotten to eat solid foods all in the same week.  Other than being really gassy and waking up a lot last night, she seems to be handling it really well.  She likes the meds.  One is peppermint flavored, the other banana.  I do not give them to her at the same time though (banana peppermint = yuk!).  She has taken to rice cereal like I wouldn’t have thought possible.  Last night was her fourth time eating it and she ate the whole tablespoon that I mixed up for her.

Other recent developments include her no longer being interested in her activity mat where she lays with the toys dangling over her.  We were surprised because the mat was her favorite toy for two months and then one day we laid her down on it and she suddenly wasn’t interested anymore.  “Oh, mom, this is a baby toy.  I don’t want to play with a baby toy.”  Now she likes her exersaucer best.  I suppose it’s because it holds her upright so she can look around and see what’s going on.

On Monday Alethea rolled all the way from her back to her tummy for the first time…. and then seemed to realize “hey, wait, I don’t like being on my tummy!” and promptly rolled back onto her back.

I would say over all this month was easier than her third month, mostly because we are making progress on maintaining a daily routine, which makes life easier for everyone.  Hurray for routines!

Last night Alethea was up 5 times between 3:00am and 7:00am, which makes for a bit of a rough night for me.  However, I was encouraged by a couple of things:

The first good thing is that when I went in at her 3:00am wake up Alethea had managed to roll all the way to the bottom of the crib and get stuck in a corner, so I had to pick her up to reposition her.  Now in the past, if I have to adjust her at all during the night, she gets quite upset with me for picking her up and putting her right back down, but last night, she just whined a little, I gave her the nuk back and she went to sleep within about 20 minutes (down from two and a half hours of whining after repositioning on Saturday night!)

The second encouraging sign is that in two of the five wake ups, she actually went back to sleep without the pacifier in her mouth.  I heard her spit it out, and thought, “O great, I wonder how long we will play the ‘spit out the pacifier and then whine because it’s gone’ game.”  But no, she just talked to herself for a few minutes and then everything was quiet and I just lay there listening for the cry that never came.

I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up, but maybe this means we are making some progress on the journey toward independent sleeping.

Today marks the 2 week anniversary of my going off dairy.  It seems to have significantly helped Alethea with her gassiness and I thought it was helping with the reflux, but then yesterday was a bad spit-up day again.  However, yesterday she also had a long bought of crying which always seems to make the reflux worse, so it’s hard to determine the exact cause and effect relationship with so many variables in play.

Yesterday she also refused a feeding for the first time in a while, so when we take Alethea for her 4 month well-baby check up next Tuesday morning, we will be talking to her pediatrician about further steps we can take to manage her reflux including the possibility of medication.  Peter and I talked about it and decided that if her pediatrician is willing to prescribe the meds, we’ll definitely take them and we may even push a little bit in that direction.

One thing I think we’ll try in any case is putting Alethea on solid foods, which apparently can help reflux since it makes the stomach contents a little less sloshy.  She seems anxious to try eating anyway since she will follow the motion of food to my mouth with wide eyes any time I eat in front of her.  We’ve also let her taste a couple things and she seemed to like them all, including the pickle.  The carrot stick did confuse her a bit, I think.  She tried to suck on it like a nipple, but of course nothing came out and then she just kind of looked at me as if to say “What gives?”

As far as the dairy free goes, I think I’m going to stick with it for now, since at the very least it seems to have improved her gas.

On a totally unrelated note, I was looking through pictures of Alethea’s first 3 months of life and found this one from her second week that I really like.  Enjoy!

The other day I was playing the piano and Alethea was on the floor.  She seemed interested in the piano, but frustrated that she couldn’t get a better look, so I put her on top of the piano and she loved it!  It made for a cute photo-op too.