4 months

yikes, i am quite behind in updating with the 4 month update! it's almost 5 months soon. my excuse is the holidays and going back to work, sniff. so on 12/23/08 the baby had his 4 month checkup and shots. he weighed 16lbs 11.5oz (85 percentile), 25.75 inches (81 percentile), and head circumference is 17 inches (77 percentile). So at least everything is proportional, everything is big...hehe. this time it didn't seem like he had any adverse reactions to the shots so that was good because the next day we drove down to LA to visit grandma and grandpa! he handled the drive pretty well...he slept or was quiet in his car seat. we stopped once to change and feed him. when we got into LA, the last half hour he started getting fussy and there was a looot of traffic, but we got there eventually. we just had to keep on trying to distract him from his crying. we stayed in LA for a week but every day we were always out doing something, so ry didn't get to nap much and he was a pretty unhappy baby the whole trip. he wasn't sleeping well at night either so i was not very happy either...i was definitely missing home the last few days. the trip was good though, he met his grand-aunt and another baby that is 3 weeks older. it was fun talking to the mommy and commiserating about similar issues. on the drive back home he was pretty good as well. so far he still hasn't really been doing anything new?? he laughs and smiles a lot more. he is kind of grabbing stuff but only if you put it in his hand. if you hold stuff in front of him, he doesn't seem to know to use his hands to grab it?? it's kind of weird.

the few weeks prior to going to LA, the baby's sleep became really HORRIBLE. he would only nap 30-45 minutes at a time and when we put him down at night he would wake up after 30-45 minutes and we would have to try to get him back to sleep which sometimes could take several tries. needless to say, it SUCKED. it was driving me nuts and i couldn't really figure out how to make him sleep longer! i researched online and i found out that babies sleep cycles go from deep to light every 30-45 minutes, so i figured he was being woken up during his light sleep cycle. it seemed like there wasn't much i could do other than hope that he would eventually learn to stay asleep during the light sleep cycle. we even tried a white noise machine, but that didn't help keep him asleep either. the bad part was that he would wake up, his eyes would be wide open, but he was still tired and wouldn't go back to sleep. so he would cry, be unhappy, not really want to do anything, and finally after about an hour later, i could try putting him down to sleep again. it was soo frustrating and after dealing with that for a few weeks i was soo happy when j started his 3 week vacation and i wouldn't have to deal with him alone! i literally dreaded every day and would count down the hours j would get home so i could hand him off. ry was always in a good mood in the mornings because he was rested, but once the afternoon came along, he became cranky baby. i felt like such a bad mama and was worried that all this crying/unhappiness/not sleeping would affect him in the long run somehow either developmentally or physically. ugh. it was a really rough period but since coming back from LA the sleeping has improved a lot, thank goodness. i'll have to update in the 5 month post since technically that is when his improvements occurred, but i am actually enjoying spending time with him again hehe. just in time because j will be heading back to work soon and i'll be alone with him again =)