thighs!

Yep, she's still got 'em! At 4 months and two days, Daphne weighed in at 17 lbs., 10.4 oz., and about 26 inches long at her check-up yesterday. Here she is sleeping off her four-month shots:

She's a "healthy" girl, to be sure. Fortunately for my back, those 17+ pounds are now napping in her crib, falling asleep on her own! It's a miracle, I tell you. The highlight of her fourth month has got to be sleep training. At around 13 weeks we began some gradual, no cry measures, first to get her out of her swaddle, then in her crib in her room. Getting her out of the swaddle was fairly successful for nighttime sleep, with just a couple of particularly rough nights. We didn't go about it too gradually, although there were a couple of nights of swaddling her around her torso, arms free, and a very non-SIDS approved fluffing up of her co-sleeper bedding, putting a folded quilt over the wedge we were still using. But she's not really rolling over on her own and between the video monitor and the fact that she was sleeping right next to my side of the bed, I wasn't too worried. So the problem was not that she was rolling over while swaddled, she was fighting it and/or eventually working her way out of it and then waking herself up with her arms, startling or rubbing her face. She was in a gray zone between fighting the swaddle and still sort of needing her arms confined...or needing to learn to sleep with more freedom, I'm not sure which.

At any rate, I was hesitant to do anything more than that until the 16 week/4 month mark. We put it off for about a week after she returned to conking out after a long nursing session following her bedtime routine. If I could transfer her to her co-sleeper we were all set. But when she again remained awake post-nursing and fought sleep (not to mention the almost total disappearance of daytime naps), I felt it was time to take action. So on Saturday night we let her cry. She cried pretty intensely for about 20 minutes and that has, knock on wood, been the worst of it so far. The last couple of nights she's conked out nursing again so I don't know if that's sort of cheating. I do know I'm certainly not going to wake her up before I put her in her crib, so I guess we'll see what happens if and when we can get her through her bedtime routine before she's exhausted. She generally only wakes once or twice to eat, so middle-of-the-night feedings are not bad at all. That second wake-up tends to happen pretty early, though, so she's either up for the day with a crazy early morning nap, complicating preschool drop-off, or falls back asleep and sort of sleeps in, complicating the morning in other ways. Naps so far this week have been a total 180 from this time last week, with a little bit of whiny protest fussing but never more than a few minutes and a few naps that were shockingly effortless, falling asleep before I could even get to and turn on the monitor. Naps are short but that seems normal at this stage. I don't want to jinx it but it's pretty incredible, so far at least.

Other than that, the next thing I look forward to turning a corner on is the spit-up which continues to be pretty impressive most days. She's usually completely unphased by it and obviously growing well so her doctor is completely unconcerned.

Me, on the other hand, I'm getting pretty tired of the several episodes between each feeding, changing her and me (tricky since I have exactly one pair of jeans that fits at the moment) multiple times a day, and feeling a little limited in where I can go and what I can do during her 90 minutes to 2 hours of wakeful time between needing a nap. I'm really hoping she peaks this month as big brother did and we start to notice a decrease in spit up over the next couple of months. I'm also still avoiding obvious dairy (relaxing the diet a bit lately as she seems a little less sensitive to what I eat in terms of gassy or spicy foods) but a pretty wretched day following consumption of the smallest piece of cheese pizza a couple of weeks ago has prompted me to stick with it, for now at least. It's not bad, especially when you get used to it (and indeed I'm pretty paranoid about the idea of a true dairy challenge), but I don't really want to do it for eight more months, either. So we'll see...

Otherwise, Daphne is developing a very sweet, silly personality and continues to adore Elias. I'm pretty sure he's her favorite person.

She started blowing raspberries a couple of weeks ago, which gets a big response from all of us, especially big brother. Here's a little video we took when she first started doing it:





Just like I remember Elias, she has vocal days and less vocal days when she's more interested in gross motor skills. During floor time she's pretty content to stay flat on her back (we reserve tummy time for as long after her feeding but before she gets fussy to avoid puddles of spit up); if I give her a little head start she'll quickly roll from back to tummy on one side, but she has yet to initiate it.

She does this little crunch move, though, and generally seems really intent on sitting up as quickly as possible (which works for me since that's usually when spit up decreases!).

She also loves putting weight on her legs when supported. I don't remember Elias doing that until much later and while he didn't roll on his own until after the five-month mark, he was definitely rolling side to side a bit more at this point. It's fascinating to watch a second baby develop according to an entirely different internal schedule (although at some point I suppose I should stop constantly comparing my kids).

Elias continues to push a few extra buttons, mostly at home, but in general I'd say things have been a little better over the past month. We've been keeping him pretty busy, between preschool, after school activities, and weekend shenanigans. As we've emerged from the newborn fog I feel like our world very much revolves around him again, with the rest of us along for the ride. I suspect that will change a bit as Daphne settles into a nap routine and won't necessarily nap on the go (and of course when she gets older and expresses an opinion about what we do on the weekends!), but for now it's nice to feel like things have leveled out a little bit in that respect. That kid continues to have an insane amount of energy that is a challenge to direct every morning, evening, and all weekend long. Here he is after riding his scooter around the lake, 3 miles, at least:

Right now he's doing martial arts on Monday afternoons, gymnastics on Wednesdays, and a very informal preschool soccer practice on Thursdays! Fortunately that overlap is temporary. This summer we're going to again tackle swimming, resume gymnastics on the weekends, and likely stick with the one afternoon of martial arts through August. He'll stay at his preschool for about a month after "graduation" and then we plan to give a couple of week-long summer camps a try in August before Kindergarten starts. I'm still wrapping my brain around the fact that my first baby is ready for "real school"!