Elizabeth 4 months old

Today Elizabeth turned 4 months old.
We measured her at home on our bathroom scale and a tape measure on her changing pad and she is roughly 14 pound and ~23 inches.  We will get better measurements at the doctor on Wednesday.

Overall Elizabeth is a pretty laid back little baby. She is really very good most of the time and when she melts down it is probably due to over stimulation (which is completely our fault), but these times are few and far between.

Sleep:
We are extremely (and I can't even express how extreme this is!) happy that she has been sleeping through the night since 7 weeks.  There have been a few times that around 4 or 5 we go up and give her her pacifier. And at 3 months she woke up in the middle of the night, and only because I had been reading that children have growth spurts around that time, I fed her.  I realized I didn't want it to be a habit so if it happened again I'd try to soothe her before nursing, but it hasn't happened again!  We've been lucky that she also goes down really easily.  This also happened around 4 weeks.  We started with a bedtime routine of getting her in her PJ's before her last feeding which is around 10pm and then nursing her, taking her upstairs to her bedroom, laying her on her changing pad and changing her diaper if it is wet, while playing a song that her Grandpa Kevin wrote her.  Then we zip her up in her sleep sack and read her a story.  We've been going through all her books and all three of us love: All of baby nose to toes.  After reading we turn on her sound machine to ocean waves which is on an hour timer.  We lay her down in her bed and then swaddle her in the cool swaddler that is attached to her sleep sack.  (however they only make it in newborn, and she is about to grow out of the sack it attaches too, oh no what to do then?), spin her mobile, kiss her goodnight, and close the door.  For the most part she puts herself to sleep.  About 50% of the time we have to go upstairs and put her paci back in if it falls out before she is in deep sleep. Otherwise we just watch her drift off to sleep on our video monitor... the lifesaver for having a downstairs master and an upstairs nursery.  She wakes up around 7:30 every morning. Nathan goes up stairs to get her when she starts stirring and I get ready to nurse her.  As I'm nursing Nathan either gets ready or sleeps in for a little while longer.  When we are done, we all have our morning cuddle and then Nathan gets up to get ready for work and I stay in bed with Elizabeth a little while longer as she drifts off to sleep for a while longer.  She may sleep until 11 during which I eat breakfast, search the internet and clean up the dishes.

Our daytime schedule

Play:
She is becoming more and more interactive every day.  Just today she would not stop giggling when we lift her up and down above our heads.  She also seems ticklish under her arms and neck and giggles when we tickle her.  However, she is stingy with her giggles and once she has done it a few times she stops.  She is not stingy with her smiles though and smiles a lot.  She is especially smiley in the mornings.

She just started using her Johnny Jumper (or as we call it Lizzy Leaper).  She doesn't jump in it yet, but she just looks around and sucks on the front of it.  She plays a lot on her playmat both tummy time (try to get her to roll over more consistently) and on her back grabbing at the toys dangling in front of her and putting them in her mouth. She puts everything in her mouth.  She doesn't much care for her bouncy seat very much anymore, but I sitll put her in it when I need to take a shower and she is awake or I need to do something else and I don't want her "getting into to trouble".  She loves her bumbo chair, but I can't leave her in that without watching her at all times.  She has started to arch her back and I'm afraid she is just going to pop out of it.  She also likes to lay on our bed and gaze and talk to our ceiling fan.  She does this on the changing pad in our bedroom too. She was really interested in the ceiling fan from early on and we used to put her on the "changing pad of solace" when she was a new born because it would snap her out of any funk that she was in.

She loves watching Pancake, but he does not want anything to do with her.  I am kinda glad it is like that right now.  They coexist in the same house, but he would prefer his own space.

Nicknames:
We call her Elizabeth, baby, and chublet - because she is pretty chubby :) and you just want to eat her up! (sometimes we call her Pancake too by accident)
Nathan's parents call her Liz (for the record, I'm not a huge fan of this)
My parents call her Elizaberry... a combination of Elizabeth and Strawberry (her name we gave her while she was in the womb since we did not share her name)
Elese calls her Eliza

Baths:
She gets a bath every other day or so and she loves them!  We put the bathtub on the kitchen counter that is beside the sink so one of us can stand on each side of her.  It makes it really easy since we aren't breaking out backs and knees leaning over into a tub.  We will probably keep doing this until she starts moving more and sitting up on her own - which will be too soon!

Eating:
She eats about 6 times a day around every 3 hours from when she wakes up and goes to sleep.  She is a pretty good nurser, but can get distracted.  When we were on the plane taking our first trip we were glad we had brought a bottle because she did not want to nurse - she just wanted to look around.  She still eats on both sides.  I use the my brest friend and I love it, but I can nurse without it.