Bear Page: Four Months

Wow! I'm tired and I can barely think, but I am determined to get the four month post done, before it is time to do the five month post. I hope I remember the essentials.

Ash at Four Months...

He weighs 17 lbs and 9 ounces.

He is about 26 inches long.

He went from being in the 98 percentile in both the height and weight category at his two month appointment, to being in the 87 percentile at his four month appointment. It looks like my giant baby is slowing down a bit.

He went from giving me 5-6 hour sleep stretches at night (with an occasional 7 hours stretch) to regressing back to 2-3 hour stretches... if I'm lucky. Hence the reason for being so tired and barely coherent.

I was able to stop nursing him to sleep and just put him down drowsy, but awake and let him fall to sleep on his own. This made my life substantially easier for the fact I no longer want to kill River for waking up Ash right as I finally get him to sleep.

I still have to nurse him before his naps. I tried to cut out the extra feedings and all hell was released down upon my head. I just top him off though and then burp him and change his diaper, so he is not falling asleep nursing.

This has been the month of the drool. He is sucking and slobbering on everything. I am not sure if he is going to be an early teether. Maybe that would explain the fussiness at night???

He is loving sucking on his hands and as a result, has flipped me off quite a bit this month. It has been hard to get a picture of it, because he is very quick to act innocent once the camera comes out. He doesn't use it as a soothing technique like River did/does with his thumb and he doesn't seem to have a preference for which fingers go in... just whatever reaches his mouth first.

His eyes are still blue. I'm calling it. I officially have a blue eyed child. What a happy surprise. We love brown eyes around here, but we also love the unexpected.

He is really starting to interact with River and is starting to be a pain in the butt to nurse, because he can't focus on nursing when everything River is doing is far more entertaining.

I can tell when he is smiling, even when he isn't facing me, because he wiggles his whole body and you can almost see beams emanating from him. It's true!

He's in the grabbing phase, which is good, because he's starting to be interested in toys and bad, because he can pull out half my hair with one yank of his wet little fist.

We still mostly call him Baby Ash or Ash Phoenix, but I have caught myself calling him Ashy more than once.

The baby rolls are starting to come out in full force, but at the same time, I'm starting to see more and more of his cute little neck.

Ash has almost discovered his feet. He caught hold of his foot once and it kind of scared him.

He still wants to be held standing up. It's his way of helping me lose the baby weight.

He doesn't really like to put weight on his legs. River would stand with support all the time, but Ash just drops it like it's hot. (Is that still a valid pop reference?)

He loves playing patty cake and smiling at his reflection in the mirror.

He wears cloth diapers, but at night, we put him in disposables and we just changed to size 3.

He needs 6-9 month sized clothing, because just 6 months is too tight and very short in the legs. All of River's cloths this size are summer clothes, so I need it to be warm.

Ash is the world's loudest nurser. People turn around to find out what is making all the noise and then are embarrassed when they realize I am breastfeeding. I promise it's not me trying to draw attention to myself!!!

He is rolling onto his sides to reach for toys and getting ever so close to rolling all the way over.

He loves when I sing to him and he's ticklish, especially if you kiss him or blow raspberries under his ribcage
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He is always sockless, but not because he would wriggle out of them like River, but because River loves his feet and takes off Ash's socks the second I put them on. In fact, if River is tired, sick or sad, he lays on the couch and says, "Bring me Baby Ash's feet." Weird, but cute!

Mr. Ash has just about the sweetest disposition of anyone I've ever met and also the fiercest temper. I'm sort of hoping the latter fades out with age, but I'm not holding my breath.

Phew! I think that's it.