4 months

Here is my happy 4 month old.

  Her stats are:
Weight: 11lb 11oz     (20%)
Height: 25in.     (80%)
Head: 15 3/4     (25%
So, she long and lean. She is getting to be so much fun, just this last week she has started to turn her head and look around, and just seems more aware of the world around her. She went from having a tilted head to straight. She gives the best open mouth smiles. I can already tell she is not her sister at all, she is so different, Julie was so sober and would hardly crack a smile. Melanie will give smiles to whoever wants one and I love those smiles. She still doesn't sleep through the night and probably won't since she probably needs the calories still. Bummer, her longest continuous sleep so far has been 4.5 hours. I guess I will have to wait on the sleeping through the night. For the most part she is a happy girl. She rubs and rubs her eyes when she is tired, and goes down to sleep by herself quite nicely. She likes to be held facing outward, not a cuddler, and neither was Julie, sad, I hope I get a cuddly baby sometime.
She always has her hands up by her mouth, either slobbering away sucking them or holding your hands while bottle feeding her.

-She poops on average of every 6-7 days, usually for two days straight then just wet diapers for the rest, I think this might have something to do with her medicine she is on. Doesn't seem to bother her, and I can always tell when she is going to be going, because she gases it up for a day before. So funny.

 -We still swaddle her at night, and she seems to be fine with it. No swaddling during naps.

 She also does a lot of this, just the tip of her tongue always hanging out.

Still not able to lift her head off the ground, she has low tone, and we have an evaluation for some physical therapy to help with this. Just to get things going, got to work on those baby abs.

Melanie doesn't get a whole lot of time on the ground because Julie would probably run her over.

 Rob holds her up in the air to help with her neck strength, and then brings her down kisses her forehead.

 We use this donut pillow and I think it has really helped to improve the shape of her head.

-looks around

-She is in some of her 6 month clothes, doesn't fill them out but the length is good.  I have so many onesies that Julie never wore, because the purple and green made her look cold. But Melanie's complexions is different and they look so cute on her.

-Melanie is not a talker, she will coo, she is just content to sit quietly.

-She almost laughs, she gets so close sometimes.
She is starting to grab at things a little and I would put this chew toy in her hands and she would go crazy trying to get it to her mouth to suck on.

 -It seems like ever since she started to look around more, and hold her head up straight that she just looks different. Her eyes are more focused and she is just cute, I just think she has the sweetest face and these next pictures show what I am talking about.

 This picture just makes me smile, I just LOVE it.

 My grandma got to hold Melanie the other night at popcorn and she was just chillin. Last time my grandma held Melanie, she wasn't so happy and she was just so content to sit with her here.

She is starting to arch her back to roll over, hasn't yet, but she sure is getting wiggly.

 Some more trying to get her head off the floor.

"Mom, this head is just so heavy"

My other cute little stinker bug, who is into everything. She is definitely testing my patience, and that patience doesn't last sometimes.

 She likes to swing her legs around, and will sometimes get so close to nailing Melanie, she is definitely TWO.
We are surviving and I think I am doing better and getting the hang of having two kids. Having a routine/schedule definitely helps.
Life seems to be going well, and we love having Melanie in our family.

Melanie's Blessing Day

We blessed Melanie on May 20, 3 months after she was born. I got everything ready at my moms for the dinner the next day. Started working on the slip for under Melanie's dress at 10:00 on Saturday night, and didn't know quite how to do some of it. My mom sent me home and told me she would do it in the  morning. I am a procrastinator and apparently got it from my mom. 

-My mom brought the slip and the dress over in the morning, my mom is awesome and I am so grateful for all she did. When it was time to go, I changed Melanie and put on the slip and took the dress with us to put on at church, since it was crocheted I didn't want it to snag on the clips from the carseat. We got to church fairly early and sat down next to my grandma and grandpa. I pulled the dress out and went to put it on Melanie and the neck hole wouldn't fit over Melanie's head. I tried and tried different ways, and Melanie was not very happy with me. At one point I told Rob we might have to run home and grab Julie's blessing dress. At this point, my mom arrived and I told her I couldn't get it over her head, so we decided we would have to clip part of the back. Bummer, you don't want to have to cut a crocheted dress, but what else do you do. So, we snipped it and it was still a very snug fit, but we got it on, her head was a little red, but she was still in a happy mood, phew. She looked beautiful and the dress was beautiful, which is one reason I was so bummed about snipping it. 

All was well, and one of Robs brothers made it just in the nick of time for the blessing, which we were so grateful for. The blessing was beautiful, Rob always gets a little nervous before the blessing, but he gave her a beautiful blessing. And Melanie did well through the rest of the meeting and Julie loved sitting with her Grandma Taylor during the meeting as well.

After taking some family pictures at the church, we went to my parents house for dinner afterward after stopping at our house to grab a few things and change.

We went to my parents house for dinner afterwards and had baked potatoes, salads, fruit and veggies. And my parents made cream soda, yum. We were outside and it was sunny(which was good), it was just sunny with no shade, but it went well and I am so glad it was a good day. Heather took some blessing pictures before they left and they turned out amazing. I love them. Here are some of them.

I need to scan in the picture of me wearing this dress when I was little.

We did manage to get a few smiles out of her.

Some of her with her grandma's.

Then some with her sister Julie, although we couldn't get Julie to smile(go figure), we never can get her to smile on que, just doesn't happen.

Kind of a smile!

I just love this picture, she found this doll of my sisters and just loves to play with it when we go to my parents house, even though it looks like it has a bloody nose and bleeding from the mouth, and a bandaid under the arm. She loves it.

It was such a great day and we are grateful to everyone who came.

My little Rag Doll

Julie seemed to go through the newborn phase pretty quick, and Melanie seems to just want to stay in the newborn phase for forever. She is so floppy still, she has a little bit of neck strength(still can't lift head off the ground)but she can hold it pretty steady somewhat, she is just floppy. And she still sleeps like a newborn, waking every 2 hours at night right now, so ready to have her grow out of this one. She never sleeps for more than an hour during the day unless I let her cry and then she will fall back asleep. Waking every two hours at night is just killing me though, this weekend we are going to let her cry it out, because I really NEED my sleep. When I read to Julie during the day, I fall asleep in between page changes. I am really feeling the lack of sleep, or the lack of continuous sleep, hour blips are not my idea of a good nights sleep.
-I think the no sleep thing is making me mean, and I hate it. I really hate it, I snap at things and get mad all the time and I really HATE that I do this. Oh, how I need my sleep. For the last couple days I have been re-reading Baby Wise and really she should be sleeping through the night by now or at least sleeping more than two hours at a time. She has a good routine during the day and she should be dropping feedings at night rather than picking them up. This weekend, I am going to let her cry for a bit before offering her a bottle, and I really hope it works! Wish me luck!
-Melanie is starting to really grab at things, but can't quite hold them in her hand yet!

-She drinks about 3.5oz. every 3 hours.
-She is also crooked, I think we must hold her too much because her head is tilted to the left, and she has a funny shaped head, we have been using a donut pillow which seems to help a bit, but I don't know if it will totally make it better. I guess we will see at her 4 month appointment what the doctor says.

 I guess we should switch sides when holding her, we try to stretch her head the other way and she refuses to move it. We have to force it and hold it to the right.

Sure hope this weekend goes well:)

Life right now!

Kind of in a routine, but it is not helping Melanie to sleep longer at night. I find myself nodding off during the day or seriously wanting to. I am not a napper, and so napping during the day is hard. Melanie still gets up on average of about like 4 times during the night. Once at 12 after we put her down at 10, another around 4 and then it seems like every hour after that until we get up. I think I just need to let her cry it out, and let her get herself back to sleep. I think she gets through one sleep cycle and then wakes up and she just needs to learn to put herself back to sleep after that. So, I have been trying to let her cry a little more during her naps during the day. She only ever sleeps for like an hour stretch, so then I will let her cry and so far she has fallen back asleep. If I go in and get her, she usually is rubbing her eyes within 10 minutes. I hope this helps her night time sleep. It is hard having her in our room to cry it out, since it is so much louder when she is right there and you just want to sleep. Today I let her cry after waking up from her nap and she fell back asleep and is still asleep. And it is kind of nice, since Julie is asleep to, I have a few hours to myself.

Melanie still can't get her head off the ground, but she is getting better at holding her head up by herself. I keep looking back at where Julie was at this point, and think Melanie isn't doing that yet! I really shouldn't do this, because they are all different and develop at different rates, but I still do. It also helps me know what clothes I need to be getting out so Melanie gets the most use out of them. She is not as chunky as Julie was, but her length is pretty much the same, so I need to pull out some bigger clothes already. They are just not as snug as they were on Julie. 

-Julie is back taking naps again, sometimes she will go down rather quickly, sometimes it takes a little reading first, and other times she reads the whole time and never manages to fall asleep. But, for the most part, she is doing pretty good. And she doesn't wake us up at night as frequent anymore, which is a good thing too. This kid loves to be outside and any chance she gets she will escape into the garage. She loves to swing, ride her bike, push her purple stroller around, or wander up and down the sidewalk, and she likes to check the mail, and sit on the porch steps. 

Right now she is into banking things on the wall, or it seems like just anything that she can do to make noise. She is into kicking and hitting also, which is not cool. 

-Rob is a 4-wheeling maniac during the summer, any and pretty much every weekend he can he is 4 wheeling.  He loves it and is trying to get me to come along. I am not a fan of getting dusty dirty, but I do need to go with him more often.

-And myself, I am just surviving, well I am doing better than surviving, but sometimes that is how it feels. Never seeming to accomplish anything, trying to get enough calories in me so that I can exercise while breastfeeding. Attending to all the needs of my family is hard work, my one wish right now is to be able to someday get a full nights sleep, or at least a stretch of sleep longer than 4 hours. But life is still good and I am grateful for my two girls and Robert.