4 Months

Baby Girl was four months old yesterday!  

Her 4 month picture is pretty cute!  I wish I could share it with you guys.  

What is Baby Girl doing at 4 months.....

She really wants to sit up.  She can hold herself up pretty good.  I predict it will not be much longer.

She still adores bath time!  I think she likes it even more now that she has discovered her feet!  The baby bath tub that we have has a sling in it.  It puts her at just the right angel to almost get her feet in her mouth.  She might have a chubby belly which might make getting her feet in her mouth a little difficult.  Ha!

Speaking of that chubby belly, last Monday when we were at the doctor she weighed 16 pounds. We just call her healthy.  :)

And, she is pretty short.  We go to the doctor for her official 4 month appointment next Tuesday, so I'll report her stats then.  (And she will get her 4 month shots.  Shhh, don't tell her.  I'm pretty sure she still remembers her 2 month shots.  I'm already dreading it.)

She adores her pacie.  Oh my.  I don't even want to think about taking that thing away from her one day.  She is getting better at holding it in her mouth while coughing, smiling, sneezing,crying, etc. without it falling out.  ha.  She doesn't have to have it if she is happy.  Just if she is hungry, sleepy, cranky, etc.  I cannot wait for the day she learns her hand can put that pacie in her mouth.  She has totally figured out that my hand can put it in her mouth.  If I hold her pacie in my hand where she can see it, she opens her mouth, grabs my hand, and crams the pacie in her mouth.  Ha!

And speaking of open mouth....she gives the cutest mouth wide open slobbery kisses I've ever seen!  So, just a hint...if she comes at your face with her mouth wide open she is giving you a kiss.  :)

She adores my hair.  Good thing I usually wear it pulled back anyway, but she has mastered the art of reaching around my neck and grabbing my pony tail.  Silly girl!

She is grabbing everything!!  It is very obvious now that she grabs things on purpose.  It's pretty funny.  She gets excited when she gets a hold of something, especially her feet.  Oh my does she love those feet.

She is wearing mostly 3-6 month clothes, except pants.  I think we discussed earlier that she is just a little short.  :)  6 month dresses, onesies, and shorts really fit her best but she is still wearing her 0-3 month PJs because her feet don't come close to the feet part of the 3-6 month PJs.  It's okay though.  I keep telling her her legs will catch up one day.  :)  

She loves to talk.  She is making all different kinds of sounds and noises!  She gets loud sometimes and talks very quiet sometimes.  It's pretty cute.  But really, what does she do that isn't cute?!?

She definitely notices when I walk through a room.  And she knows my voice.  If Joe is feeding her and I'm walking around the apartment cleaning up or chasing her brother I'm not aloud to talk because she will follow my voice every where I go making feeding her very difficult!  Ha!  

Speaking of feeding, her bottles are now thickened to a nectar consistency.  She has had a nasty cough that we haven't been able to get rid of for a while so we will be going for a swallow study soon.  She has also started acid reflux medicine in case that is causing her cough.  We have been doing both for a week now and notice no difference in her cough.  :(  But burping her is super easy now!  :)

She loves the stroller!  She and her brother both do.  They love going on walks!  Or any where we take the stroller.

She has discovered that she has bows on the top of her head, but we are working on leaving them there.  :)

Her favorite game to play is eat daddy's nose.  I'm not kidding.  It cracks me up!  If he holds her up in the air and then brings her close to his face while saying AHHH with his mouth open then she comes at him with her mouth wide open and bites his nose!  lol.  Over and over and over.  And if he stops playing before she is ready to stop she keeps leaning towards him with her mouth wide open!  Love it.

We still swaddle her at night.  She sleeps all night, so we won't be unswaddling (is that a word?) for a while.  :)  She has only broken out twice the whole time she has lived with us.  So, I say it is still working for now. 

I could go on and on, but I think that is most of the important stuff.  

I can't believe that this baby girl who came to live with us when she was barely 2 months old is now 4 months old.  Sigh.  Where does the time go??

Rae

Quick Update

Our house is very quiet right now so I decided to do a quick update while I have time.  :)  There are so many things I don't want to forget!

We have had a great quiet weekend at home.  I am beginning to enjoy those more and more.  I went to Little Rock for a meeting for work last Thursday and Friday.  Mama had a meeting there the same days and a hotel room at the Embassy Suites!  How could I pass up a night at Embassy Suites and not having to drive back and forth to LR for 2 days!?!  So, I didn't!  :)  It was my first night away from Joe and the kiddos since they came to live with us.  I knew Joe would do great, but I called in Nanny and Poppy for back up.  I'm so glad they came.  I think everyone had a great time!  It was great to have a night away, but I missed them like crazy!

I have to share a few of Mister Mess' new words.  My favorite is bomb, which means boom but it comes out bomb.  It is funny to me that I don't realize how often I say a word until I hear him say it.  Apparently I say boom a lot.  And Joe does, too.  Like every time Little Man knocks over the block tower I just built or making toys splash in the bath tub or when I go over bumps (or run into things) in the stroller.  Ha!  So now a lot of things go "bomb"!  He loves to make things go bomb.  (And sometimes he gets in trouble for making things go bomb.  Such a boy.  Ha!)

He is also really bonding with his sister.  He loves sissy!  He does not like it when she cries.  Yesterday Joe stepped out for a minute and sissy was asleep, so I took LM in his room to rock him to sleep for his nap.  Well, sissy woke up and started crying.  She doesn't cry often, but when she does you might want to find some ear plugs.  lol  So, LM sat up, looked at me and said "sissy?"  I told him daddy would be back in a second and he would get sissy.  Not good enough....he pointed at the door looked at me and said "GET SISSY, MAMA!"  Ha!  So, we went and gave sissy her pacie back that had fallen out of her mouth which made her happy, and then he went to sleep.  So sweet!  He is also  really good at answering yes and no questions pretty accurately.  99% of the time if he says no, he means no, and if he says yes, he means yes.  We were on our way home from school one day last week and he was looking at sissy in her car seat and saying "sissy" very sweet over and over.  I asked him if he missed sissy when he was at school today and he shakes his head no and says "uh uh uh uh uh!"  And then smiles and giggles.  There is definitely still some jealously there!  Ha!  Then I asked him if he had fun at school and he said yes and nodded his head yes.  Ha!  Such a mess!

These kiddos have slept a ton this weekend!  I think they were just worn out.  I hope they are all rested and have a great week!

Rae

First Easter

We have had a lot of firsts in the Hooker House recently.  Not only was this Miss Priss's first Easter ever, this was our first Easter with children which meant our first experience with having Easter bunny pictures made.  Miss Priss smiled big and did not mind the Easter bunny at all.  Mister Mess, on the other hand, wasn't too sure about that bunny.  Joe did manage to get him to sit on the bench with the bunny while the bunny held sissy.  (Really wish I could share the picture.  Hilarious!)

This was also our first Easter to take kiddos to an Easter egg hunt.  We went to one at ASU Beebe.  It was a blast!  Mister Mess knew exactly what to do.  They had a Easter egg hunt at school on Thursday, so I'm sure they taught him.  We also went to the Easter egg hunt at Daniel Park that our church sponsors.  He enjoyed picking up a few eggs while sissy took a nap in the stroller.  They had hot dogs and Cheetos which he loved!  I am pretty sure his favorite part was the praise band from our church playing.  He LOVED it!  You couldn't get him close enough to the loud band and he clapped and cheered for them.

It was also our first Easter to have children who have Easter parties at school.  I had really looked forward to coming up with cute ideas for teacher gifts and gifts for their friends.  Well, the busyness of having a 3 month-old and a 21 month-old got the best of me and it dawned on me at about 4 on Wednesday afternoon that the kids had their Easter parties at school the next day.  Thankfully Fred's in Beebe came through for me.  Ha!  The top picture is what I put together for Miss Priss' friends...rubber duckies and a teething ring.  The bottom picture shows the teacher gifts.  Mama (aka Grandmama) had picked up the buckets at Target for me.  I filled them with hand sanitizer and candy for the teachers.  And I found carrot shaped Easter eggs at Fred's, filled them with M&Ms, added a few Easter eggs and a sucker and we had a happy 1 year-old.  Ha!  Not hard to please.  And, they turned out pretty cute for so last minute.

It was also the first time for the Easter Bunny to visit our house.  The Easter bunny did not go over board this year by any means.  He just made sure to pick up a few things that he knew they would love!  Mister Mess loved his new truck!  He really enjoyed everything in his basket.  Funniest moment all weekend (and believe me, there are many of them with him around!  Ha!) was after he opened his basket and noticed all of the eggs the Easter bunny had hidden for him.  42 of them to be exact.  He picked up the first egg.  Shook it.  Looked at me.  Then looked at Joe.  Got a sly grin on his face.  Opened the egg as fast as he could.  Stuffed the chocolate Easter egg in his mouth with the foil still on it!  Ha!  I have never laughed so hard.  Of course, I got it out of his mouth as fast as I could and unwrapped it for him.  The boy loves chocolate!  He was pretty much done with hunting eggs.  I mean he had his piece of chocolate, what more did he need?!?  With a little encouragement he did find all of the eggs.  And one more piece of chocolate.  Ha!  I snuck off with his basket and emptied all of the eggs and then gave it back to him.  He never knew all of the eggs had something in them.  I should have taken a picture of the bowl full of candy he gathered from all of his egg hunting.  Oh my.  I'm pretty sure it will be going to the lobby for the college kids very soon!

Another first was taking children to church on Easter Sunday.  This was very special.  (They had the cutest Easter outfits, by the way.)  I took Mister Mess to the nursery.  He has MUCH more fun in there.  Miss Priss went to big church with us.  She did very good except for fussing because she didn't want to go to sleep.  I only had to step out for a few minutes and she was OUT and slept the rest of the service.  It was an awesome service and I'm so glad we got to be there.  After church we went to Grandmama's house for lunch.  She fixed ham, macaroni and cheese, green beans, rolls, and key lime pie.  I fed Mister Mess a few bites of my key lime pie and he LOVED it.  A lot of Mmmmms and Nom Nom Noms followed those bites.  Ha!  He is so funny.  

  Another first for the weekend is that Miss Priss slept in her big girl bed for the first time!  She is still in our room because Mister Mess is such a light sleeper.  Miss Priss sleeps all night, but sometimes loses her pacie and I have to help her out and put it back in.....oh, probably 3 times a night.  Ha!  I'll be so glad when she figures out that her hands can put that pacie in her mouth.  :)  She LOVES her crib!  She did great the first night.  

Another kind of funny first is that I found out I have a laundry buddy!  Mister Mess loves to go to the laundry room with me.  He likes to put stuff in the washers and dryers for me. He also loves closing the doors.  He really likes to push the buttons that make them start and watch them spin!  He dances and claps.  Cracks me up!  Now if I could just teach him to fold them and put them away!  Ha!

Mister Mess' vocabulary is also expanding.  My favorite of his new words is 'mon.  The means come on, by the way.  Ha!  Joe says "Come on , buddy" to him quite often and he picked up on it pretty quick.  He says, "Mon, Daddy.  Nom Nom Nom." while rubbing his belly.  This definitely means he wants to eat.   

We had a great Easter weekend filled with tons of firsts!

Rae