Eleanor at 4 Months

As of this morning, Eleanor now weighs 15lbs, has a head circumference of 16.25" and is 26 1/4" long. Shes wearing size 3 diapers now and is in size 6-9 month clothes!  Compare her to Will at this age.
 

At 14 weeks she started sleeping through the night every night. Then after the week was up, she stopped, unfortunately. I got all excited and it was such a tease! At 15 weeks she started her 3 month growth spurt and she really ramped up her eating during the day. Instead of taking long, 4 hour naps, she would wake up every 1-2 hours to eat, and in the evening, that time shrunk to 30-60 minutes. She was super cranky (cranky for her means some small amount of crying and a lot of grumbling noises) and just wanted to nurse all the time. However, I was still able to pump 20 ounces of milk a day for Will on top of it all. Then at 16 weeks she started her 4 month sleep regression. Needless to say all of those things totally disrupted her sleep schedule in a bad way. Her naps started to be chaotic and super short, and she started getting up once a night again. Finally, near the end of the month, that part settled down again and naps became more regular (albeit shorter. Instead of 2 hours, 3 hours and 1 hour, they changed to 2 hours, 1 hour and 1 hour) and she started going to sleep earlier in the evening. She now goes to bed between 8pm and 9pm, which is a far cry from the 11pm that she started out with when she was first born. She doesn't go to sleep on her own though anymore. She requires being nursed and rocked and usually takes up to an hour with me going back in there several times. I have been giving her a bottle each night in addition to breastfeeding her, in the hope it will help her sleep through the night more. She adamantly refuses to take a drop more than 2 ounces each night, but the fact that she will take the bottle at all is a big win! Sometimes Michael takes shifts putting her to sleep too. Hopefully we can get eventually her to start sleeping through the night again, as well as going down easily for the night at 7pm. Baby steps.

She continues to have excellent grasping skills (she has always been way ahead of where Will was at this age in that category) and has started to be able to grasp more complex and heavy toys and can manipulate them in new ways. Of course nearly everything ends up in her mouth. So far though I have not seen any signs of teething thank goodness. I am in no hurry for those!

Her personality is really starting to shine through. She has got a great sense of humor and laughs and smiles all the time. She and Will are starting to interact more and Will also gets a kick out of making her laugh. He is starting to learn the concept of sharing with her. For whatever reason, he has no trouble sharing with kids his own age, but really struggles with her. He takes toys away from her just about as often as he offers them too her. I find myself alternately exasperated by his thievery and awed by his generosity. She doesn't seem to care either way of course, as she thinks the sun shines out of his ass. She just loves to watch him. I have recently started putting the two of them in the bath together, with her in her bath seat. That is literally a bucket of laughs as the two of them giggle and splash away. I just love watching them interact in a genuine way for the first time since she was born. I hope they end up getting along as time goes on!



I just truly enjoy her personality though. I can already tell that on top of being mellow and unflappable, she is sweet and funny and just a joy to be around. Since Will still requires so much hands on interaction, I don't hold her as often as I would like. So I feel like our only one-on-one bonding time happens when I am nursing her. Its clear that she really enjoys nursing and I am loving it the second time around. When she nurses she has started to explore with her free hand. She plays with my hair, she palms my chest and buries her hand into my neck, she honks my nose and sticks her fingers in my mouth. It cracks me up! Unlike Will, she doesn't have a side preference. My right side has always been the best producer, with the left significantly weaker in production. Will pretty much refused to nurse on the left side, but Nora shows no preference thank goodness. She will take any and all boobs haha!

Finally, the big development of this month happened the day before Thanksgiving, when she rolled over for the first time. Once she figured out that she could do that, she became an unstoppable rolling machine. So far she has only rolled from her back to her front. The main problem with this is that she actually doesn't really love being on her stomach for very long, and since she hasn't figured out how to roll from her belly to her back yet, I have to go rescue her every 5 minutes all day long. Even putting her in her vibrating seat or swing is not enough to stop her from rolling. I have to really watch her all the time! The one saving grace is that so far she has not done it in the middle of the night. I remember having to go into Will's room and rescue him from his stomach several times a night for a week or so before he learned to roll back on his own. One smaller development is that now I have finally lost all of the baby weight and then some. Needless to say I am pretty pleased with that development. No doubt being sick for a solid month has contributed to that success :)




Eleanor is a beautiful, healthy and thriving little girl. As usual I continue to be amazed at how fast time flies. I feel like she was just born yesterday and here she is, 4 months old already. Gah! Slow down time! I feel so blessed to have her as part of our family, and am enjoying getting to know her as time goes on and her personality continues to develop.