Katherine is 4 months old!

Woo hoo, another month flew by and our wonderful baby is now 4 months old. Where did this time go?

She is such a happy little girl! She literally laughs and babbles all day long, flirts with her daddy every chance she gets, only fusses when she's tired or something is seriously bothering her, and it is usually clear what is wrong. She is a joy to have around and we feel so blessed to have her as a daughter.

Stats:
Weight: 6.6 kilos (14.5 lbs) - 75%
Height: 64 cm (26.1 in) - 90% - she is a tall girl!
Head circumference: 42 cm - 75%
Eyes: BLUE and gorgeous!!

She got her 2nd round of vaccinations at the 4 month appointment and screamed like she was being skinned but after a few minutes of cuddles and some boobie time with mommy all was good. The shots made her a little feverish and tired over the next couple of days but she already returned to her normal happy disposition.

Eating:
We're still loving the 3 hour schedule. It fits perfect with my day activities and she seems to love it, so we're sticking with it. Especially that she is continuing to still only have 5 feedings per day. I don't want to mess with that and get her to start getting up in the middle of the night to eat. Whenever she is ready and her belly gets bigger, she will spread these feedings farther apart. Right now she wants to eat every 3 hours so that's when she eats. Also the way to look at it is - I MYSELF like to eat every 2.5-3 hours, I certainly don't wait 4 hours or more to get a snack, so why would I expect my tiny baby to do that...
At her 4 month well check we talked with the pediatrician about solid foods but I want to wait with that till she is closer to 6 months. We will probably start after we come back from the US in August. She is quite happy and growing nicely on just milk so we don't see a need to start pushing more food. The pedi agrees.

Sleeping:
She is still sleeping from right after her 7pm feeding till 7-7:30 the next morning! Most nights that is. Just to clarify - she does not wake up crying at 7. Sometimes we actually go in to wake her, because she is still asleep but we want to keep the routine going, and sometimes she wakes up around 7 and she'll just lay there and talk and laugh to herself, basically play and entertain herself, until we come in to get her changed and ready for the day. I love to watch her on the monitor when she giggles and "haah haah hooh hoooh" talks to herself like that. She is such a happy girl in the morning.

Also, as I predicted, about 2-3 days after I posted the last update where I praised her for sleeping through the night, she started waking up to eat around 2-3 am. That lasted about a week and a half, and we attribute it to the 3 month growth spurt (the effects can be seen above - she is so big now!). But now over the last week or two she is back to her wonderful full night sleeping. Only waking like once a week. Hopefully I don't jinx it again... And when she wakes it is definitely for food not for playing. We tried just cuddles and just Daddy going in so she couldn't smell milk on me, but she still screams so it is clear that she needs food on those occasions.

As for naps, she still only takes half hour to 40 minute naps after each feed/play segment. I guess I just have to accept that this is her personality and that's how she works. I am not going to try to force her into some made up schedule that would totally clash with her normal rhythm. Again, hopefully some day she will start napping longer on her own and that will be it. For now, since she sleeps so long at night, the short day naps seem to be ok, and she's happy and growing and developing nicely.

Activities:
She still loves her crib mobile and when I put her under it after eating she will kick like a mad woman and laugh out loud and chatter to her toys.

She is starting to grab the toys hanging above her play mat now too, but they have to be within close reach of her hands. She does not reach out high up for them still.

She is REALLY good at tummy time now. After talking to some of my friends about how all their babies were doing tummy time all the time I got worried that she would fall behind and now her neck and back are so strung! She pushes herself so high up.

Here we're combining tummy time and chewing on toys...

She loves visiting with "baby in the mirror"! I started this game a long time ago. After eating I would carry her around the apartment trying to keep her up and entertaining her. We would stop in front of the mirror and I always went "who is that? is that the baby in the mirror? yes that's the baby in the mirror, say hi" etc etc... Now she absolutely LOVES that and totally responds. At first she just looked at ME in the mirror and smiled. But recently she is actually looking at herself and seems soooo happy to see another baby! This is also transferring to how she reacts to real live babies. I met a friend of mine for tea one day and she came with her little girl who is 2 days younger than Katherine, and K totally reacted to Holly the same way she reacts to her image in the mirror. She gave the biggest smiles and reached out with her hand. Soooo cute! She's such a sociable little girl!

Aside from these, anything that involves me watching or entertaining her is the MOST fun. She is such an attention hog. She looooves to perform her little tricks for me and if I leave her alone on her play mat or in the crib for just a little too long, she'll start calling back to after me to come and watch her and play with her.

Randoms:
She is still nor rolling but we think she might be really close to that. We play a "roly polly" game with her where we roll her from back to belly and back again on a blanket so that she can learn the sensation. And if she gets her arms forlded just the right way she will roll back by herself. But it does not count as real rolling yet. She kicks around so hard though and pushes herself off with her feet that she can scoot a pretty good distance and turn herself 90-180 degrees. She does that in the crib all the time too, and sometimes disappears off the monitor completely.

This is how I found her one morning. Need I say that is NOT how she started the night...

And this is her idea of being ON her playmat...

As you saw, she just started blowing bubbles like crazy. She LOVES doing that all day long. I put her in her high chair in the kitchen now whenever I have to cook or clean and we talk to each other. So when I sit in front of her and blow bubbles at her she blows them back and squeals in delight. She is such a happy baby!! It's so much fun to play with her.

She now wants to chew on everything she gets her hands on. We are using cloth diapers as burp cloths and when I take her for a walk i give her one of those to play with and it is typically soaking wet with drool by the time we come back. Too funny! She loves to chew on her bunny lovie and Sophie now. I kind of had to show her what to do with Sophie because she wasn't sure what this squeaky thing was at first. But once I showed her she could grab it and chew on it, she now sticks it in her mouth every time she can.

And here are her official 4 month pictures.

 Little cuddle with the bear...

She is such a fun little girl. We love her so much and we are lucky to be her parents!