Oh Miss Thea. Dearest third child. I am late with your post. The pictures were taken on time, but I just haven't had a chance to sit down and write it out. I swear I will never miss a month, I won't do it. But that doesn't mean they'll be punctual! I love you just the same, and if you didn't regularly feel the need to use me as a human pacifier, and if I hadn't spent a chunk of time watching baseball (totally worth it), I might be more on top of things. :o)
No doctor's appointment this month, so I did my best to approximate her weight. Based on my scale, minus a tad bit for her clothes, I'd guess she weighs in right at 14 pounds, maybe a touch over. Ryann and Elsie didn't weigh 14 pounds by four months, so I'm still always amazed at how big Thea is. We'll see if this is a sign that she will be the tallest in our family or something! Which no, I didn't even attempt to measure her length. I'm so bad at that. Aside from a few things here and there, she is solidly in 3-6 month clothing, and wearing a size two diaper. I still haven't really put shoes on her, so I have no clue what side she would wear.
Sleep has gotten better to some extent this month. I've given up on anyone else getting her to fall asleep, and have also said screw it and just nurse her to sleep most of the time. So I'm not near as exhausted from the little song and dance jazzercise routine I used to do every time she needed a nap. But she doesn't really stay asleep in her car seat anymore (except sometimes when she does, and it is sitting on the kitchen counter and she still manages to nap for like two hours in the midst of our family chaos), and you never know whether you'll get a cat nap or a three hour nap, so planning a day is just kind of hard. And when she is tired she is pretty much inconsolable, unless it's a boob. A boob does the trick.
At night, for the most part we are getting a solid 6-7 hour stretch at the beginning of the night. Before daylight savings she was sleeping from about 9pm-3:30am. Then she'd sometimes be up for 1-2 hours (ugh) or go right back to sleep for another three hours or so. The last couple of nights she's been in bed by 7:50pm, and woken up between 1-3am, then slept until 6:30am. Thea is still sleeping in the Rock n Play in our room, but my goal is to switch her to her room by the end of the week. We finally got shades on her windows so it should be dark enough in there for naps. For now I'm just going to move the Rock n Play to her room, but if she does well in there for a few days, I'll brave the crib. For some reason I feel like she'll take to it better than Elsie did, but I'm probably just trying to be optimistic or something.
It is nearly impossibly to catch on camera, but Thea is just so dang smilely (unless she is tired of course). Her entire body smiles with her. Chris can get the best smiles out of her, especially right after she wakes up. Sometimes she seems like she smiles so hard that she loses control of her neck muscles and just has to bury her head in my shoulder. Or it is some sort of shy move. I have no idea, but man I love those smiles. Just can't get enough! No giggles or laughs just yet, but sometimes I think she is trying to. She'll do this thing where she sucks in a bunch of air and it makes a noise, and eventually I think it will turn in to a laugh.
Thea has begun to really track sounds and try and figure out where they are coming from. When she hears something loud or strange her eyes get super big and crazy and she whips her head around until she can zero in on the noise. She is also really great and tracking objects and people. She particularly enjoys watching her crazy sisters. She is also stupidly good at tracking down screens. It starts early! I both hate it and love it. If the TV is on she finds it, or if someone has a phone out, she zeros in on the screen. But at the same time, if she is really fussy and nothing else is working, I can sway with her in front of the TV and she usually stops screaming.
She still spits up a ton, we go through like a million burp cloths a day. Elsie has gotten great at spotting it and will yell at me "Baby Fee-uh is leaking!" Haha. I'd love to know what makes my babies so spitty. I mean, I don't know any differently and feel like spit-up is a problem for a lot of people, but I know there are babies who don't really spit up at all. Why?!?! How?!?! I'm so tired of both her and I smelling like sour milk. Inevitably she always pukes in my hair on a day I actually wash it.
Even though she doesn't tolerate it for long, Thea is getting much better at tummy time. She can prop herself up on her forearms and look all around. Occasionally she'll make some sort of an effort to roll over, but it hasn't happened in probably at least a month. She has started rolling to her side from her back, and if I give her a little resistance she can push over to her stomach, but she can't pull her arm out from underneath her once she gets there. As much as I just lay her in random places while taking care of her sisters, I can handle little to no mobility for a while longer. She does manage to pivot her body around on the floor, all the sudden I'll notice her feet are pointing a different direction than when I laid her down. Lastly in the gross motor skills department, Thea has discovered her hands. She regularly has her fists shoved in her mouth, and she'll hold one up in front of her face, staring at it like it is the most amazing thing she has ever seen.
This last month has had more good days than bad. I can see the light at the end of the fussy new baby tunnel. It's dim, and still a ways in the distance, but we're getting there.
Thea, I can barely remember the days that you weren't a part of our life. I'm so glad you're here.
