I’m officially mama-razzi and have way too many photos to share each month, so I apologize for the overload, but here we go…! 

Happy day Sweet Love! You’re 4 months old!

Colt developments: What a joy it is to watch you grow.

The greatest development this month was hearing your laugh for the first time! You laughed for your dad and me the other night and we went berserk. You’ve only done it that once, but you give funny hiccup-type sounds all the time when you want to laugh. We are eagerly awaiting this becoming a more regular thing.

Baby boy, you have also started sitting unattended this month! OK so “sitting” and “unattended” may be a bit of an overstatement but you can stay upright on your own if you lean forward and keep yourself propped up with with your hands on the floor in front of you (photos in the monthly photo-dump coming). At least it’s a step in the right direction.

You have the sweetest little personality and make your dad and I laugh and smile all day long. You “talk” and coo constantly, but especially when you’re very happy or starting to get upset. You love to practice standing or sitting up like a big boy in your bumbo, and you also started to enjoy your Johnny Jump-Up and your toys!

Health: You are a healthy, growing little guy! At your appointment today you weighed in at 14 lbs 14 oz and were over 25″ long. Your hair is starting to fall out more but don’t worry, you’re still a very handsome little man. Your skin is so smooth, soft, snuggly and kissable. I wonder if there has ever been a baby kissed as much as you.

Eating: Still all Mama’s milk. We are currently feeding 5 times/day and lately (within the last week) you will be perfect for 4 of those feeds but randomly go crazy during the last one (sometimes half-way through) and we have to end up feeding you with a bottle. If you do this during the day I usually just let it go, but at night when I know that it will be 12 hours before I feed you again, I like to be sure you get a good feed in, so we have done a few bottles lately. It wouldn’t bother me so much except that it means I have to pump before going to bed because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to wait 12 hours to feed you again either!

You usually eat for about 6 minutes on each side and I think you get 4-5 oz per feeding, but at night you seem to eat more (6-7 oz).

Sleeping: We have made major progress in the sleep department this past month Sweet Pea! Generally you are sleeping from 10:00pm-8:00am every night which makes Mom & Dad verrrrrry happy.

We don’t have it totally figured out though — normally we put you down between 9:45 and 10pm and about 50% of the time you will just fall asleep and stay asleep but the other 50% of the time you will fall asleep only to wake up 20-30 minutes later crying. When this happens it can be anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes before you go to sleep again, and you always need our help and your paci. One night we tried to let you figure it out on your own and “cry-it-out” and you cried for an hour! You struggled so much that you moved yourself from one end of the crib to the other. After an hour you still weren’t asleep and I was wanting to throw myself out of a window so I finally went in and held you and gave you your paci and you went to sleep immediately. After that I decided that you are not a cry-yourself-to-sleep-er (at least not yet) so we just help you out when you need it. It takes very little time and effort on our part, so I don’t think it’s worth trying to change at this point.

Thankfully you never wake up in the middle of the night. About once a week you will wake up around 6am but generally you just cry a little for 10 minutes and fall back asleep until 8am. I watch you on the monitor but don’t get out of bed for those.

Naps are a little less like clock-work. You nap in between each feed and I can always tell when you’re getting tired (usually about an hour and a half after you last woke up to eat), but you nap for different amounts of time and in different places each time. You nap like a champ in your stroller (seriously that thing is magic) and I was using it even in the apartment, but lately I’ve tried to stick with the crib in the hopes that it will help with your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep at night… Anyway, some days you seem to nap for long periods of time in between each feeding and some days it’s more like drifting for 15 minutes, but I mostly follow your lead. When you’re acting tired and fussy, I put you down and try to help you sleep, but I don’t worry about it too much.

Schedule: We start the day between 8:00 and 8:30am and coming to get you from your crib for the first feed is such a treat! Little One, you’re so sweet and smily during this time that sometimes your dad and I will come get you together. You’re just such a little treasure! Anyway, you eat, get changed, and then we play for another hour or so before going down for a nap. Then you generally feed again around 11:30am, 2:30pm, 5:45pm and we always do your last feed at 8:30pm. We hang out with you for a little while and then put you down by 10:00pm.

I’m really enjoying this schedule and it’s been working well for us for the past couple of weeks. It allows for you (and me!) to get good rest at night but still gives your dad good time with you as well which is huge in my opinion. That being said, your dad and I value our social lives 🙂 so we aren’t afraid get you off-schedule a little bit if it means us getting to go on a date or out with friends. I think we have a good balance of a pretty regular routine and some flexibility.

Mama: What a joy it is to be your mom. Earlier in the month my mama-hormones were really kicking in and I would sometimes tear-up just from looking at you. Then I decided to just really torture myself so I got out the book “Love You Forever” and tried reading it to you. I say “tried” because I couldn’t finish before I was aggressively sobbing! You were staring at me like I was a little crazy, but I just couldn’t help it!

I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.

Thoughts: Sweet love, I cannot tell you how fun it is getting to know you. I love learning your little details – the way you smile after you sneeze, how you smell after a bath, the beautiful colors in your eyes… all of the small things that are really the big things.

There are a few things I try to tell you every day Culhane. I tell you that you are good, brave and kind. Strong, smart and important. Loved, cherished and treasured. I tell you that we are so happy to have you in this family. I tell you that you are loved by God and have a rescuer in His Son, Jesus.

It is so important to me that you know these things and have a strong, solid sense of self. It is important to me that you know that you were created by a good, personal and loving God, created detail by detail, in His image, to reflect His glory. It is important that you know that every person on earth was also created in His image and is valuable, worthy of love and deserving respect. I pray that you will grow to be a man who knows who he is in the truest sense, and as a result, sees others as precious too. I pray that you will assign dignity to all human life and that you will fight for those in need. I pray that your dad and I are and will model these truths for you.We love you so much Little Bit!