Mary: 4 Months

I could write for hours about how much we love little miss Mary. This girl never stops smiling! She is just so darn friendly, it's hard not to just spend every waking minute smiling at her! These days she's loving her jumperoo because she can "stand" in it and bounce. I recently got her set-up at the dining room table in a high chair during meals and she just sits at the table and smiles at everyone during meals. The rest of the time she hangs out on her play mat, in the bumbo chair, or in someone's arms (because she's so squishy and we just want to hold her all the time!).

We stopped swaddling her for naps and sleep over the weekend and are hoping that will help with her middle of the night wake ups. Last night it did help (!) so we're hoping to finally say goodbye to middle of the night visits to re-insert her paci (and by we, I mean Kyle...bless). She appears to have buzzed right through the 4 month sleep regression. I had to put her in the swing a few times, but now we seem to be back to normal. Doing the sleep routine with her from day 1 has really helped things. Oh the things you learn by trial and error on your first child...sorry Drew!

Her flat spot appears to no longer be flat, but I'm going to have her ped check it out at her 4 month appointment this week.

She's still nursing well, and I've added in a bottle feeding for her final feeding of the day so that she could get better at taking a bottle. That worked, and is really great because now we have some additional freedom in the evening to trade who puts which kid to bed, or for us to have a date night. I didn't really care for the nursing experience with Drew, but for some reason I'm loving it with Mary. Perhaps it is because our days can seem so chaotic with the two kids, and everything feels like it slows down when I'm nursing Mary. I nursed Drew for 6 months, and I'm hoping to nurse Mary longer than that.

We're doing the cloth diapers with Mary and not having any issues withe diapers. I would say I do cloth about 60% of the time with her. The only real issue I'm having is with her clothes. She is so tall that she's already in 9 month clothing! With the cloth diaper on, the 9 month clothing is tight because the diaper adds a little length in her crotch. But the 9 month clothing is too wide for her, so 12 month clothing would be even more wide and baggy. So sometimes I put her in disposable diapers just so her clothes will fit better and she'll last longer in the 9 month size clothing she has.

Lately I've been daydreaming about all the things I want to teach Mary about as she grows. She has no idea yet how special it is to be a woman, and I am so thankful that I am the one who gets to teach her all about it. Kyle loves the daylights out of her, and watching him love her gives me just a glimpse of what the Father's love must be like for me.

Ok, here are some pics!