Charlie at 4 Months

Little man is just cruising through his first year!  He turned 4 months old on Monday and has met lots of big milestones this month.  Most exciting: he rolled over Sunday!  We were at Grandma and Grandpa Clayton's house with Cyndi, Todd, Mia, Lily and neighbor Lorrie, so he chose quite an audience.  He rolled back to front (I actually missed it the first time - just saw the end result: him on his tummy).  Then we rolled him back over and he did it again within a few minutes.  We all cheered, including Jack and Lily, who were kneeling right next to his blanket cheering him on.  Fun!  He rolled again a few times Monday night too.  I looked back at when Jack first rolled and it was January 7 (compared to Charlie's January 8) - funny!  Of course he was a few weeks older at that point, but still so close!

As I mentioned in my Christmas post, Charlie started laughing this month.  He's always smiling and giggling at us.  He's also becoming quite vocal, especially when he's lying on the floor.  He just discovered a squeal in the last week or two and loves to see just how loudly he can do it.  Just in the last couple days he started blowing bubbles (Jack tells him "No spitting Charlie!" - how do you explain to a 2 year-old that it's OK if his baby brother does it, but not if he does it??), and he's mastered gurgling and cooing, but those are old news by now.  He's also started chewing on the index and middle finger on his right hand.  Always those two and always that hand.  Do we have a finger sucker in the making??  We shall see.  Here he demonstrates while we tried out the ducky bathtub.  Result: not quite ready yet (he kept leaning to the side, making it difficult to bathe him), so it's back to the baby tub for now.

Unfortunately, Charlie's 4th month also brought his first cold.  He started with a croupy-sounding cough on Sunday and that night didn't sleep well at all - I ended up holding him on my chest all night to keep him more upright.  I loved the extra snuggles; I did not love going to work the next day after very spotty sleep all night.  Day care said he seemed fine, but by the time I picked him up, he seemed more congested and hoarse-sounding.  That night he slept in his swing in our room, which seemed to be better than flat on his back in his crib.  Tuesday it was clear he was still not feeling well - just not his smiley, happy self.  Hopefully we can kick this thing in the next day or two - I hate seeing my little guy uncomfortable!

I started getting out the next box of clothes for the little man (size 6-9 months) because the 6 month clothes in certain brands are starting to get a little short for him.  Cruising through those sizes just like Big Brother!  He's still wearing size 2 diapers, but I think we may be upgrading those soon as well.  He's sporting more and more of a mohawk a la Jack, complete with circular bald patch on the back of his head, and the back part of the top likes to stick up in little spikeys.

We took Charlie to his 4 month check-up yesterday.  The little big guy weighs 17 pounds, 9 ounces, which is in the 92nd percentile.  Compare that to his big brother, who weighed 20 pounds, 13 ounces at his 4 month check-up, and it doesn't seem so big!  Charlie is 26.5" long, which is in the 93rd percentile and his head circumference is 17.76" or 90th percentile.  The doctor said everything looks great and luckily no ear infection to go along with this cold - we don't want to start heading down that path!!  Charlie got 3 immunizations (one oral and two shots) and of course didn't enjoy them but settled down pretty quickly afterwards.  After his 2-month shots, Charlie was pretty irritable for the rest of the evening.  Last night he cried more than I've ever heard him cry.  I guess the combination of shots + a cold made him mad.  I was counting the minutes until I could give him his next dose of Tylenol since I couldn't get him to calm down.  He slept in his swing again and seems to feel better this morning.

Baby boy is still a pretty good sleeper - he goes down at about 8:30pm and sleeps until about 6:30am.  We do still have nights where he wakes up during the 4:00 and 5:00 hours (sometimes up to 4 times!!) and I have to go in and put his pacifier in his mouth, after which he goes right back to sleep.  I'm planning to turn the monitor down a bit so I don't hear him as quickly in hopes that he will soothe himself back to sleep without the pacifier.  We'll see how that goes.  I'm also experimenting with ditching the swaddle.  I started mid-last week and the first night ended up breaking the swaddle back out after he struggled to fall asleep.  The next couple nights he did fine with just a Sleep Sack, and then as I mentioned these last several nights have been abnormal because of the cold (no need to swaddle when he's sleeping on my chest or in his swing!).

His eating habits haven't changed yet - still nursing in the morning at at bedtime with three 6.5 ounce bottles in between.  He's still a spit-up king, but we're used to carrying around extra outfits and a plethora of burp cloths, so no problem there!  We'll start him on cereal sometime soon, but that will be worthy of its very own post, of course!

Charlie also did his first art project at school last week.  Isn't this the cutest??

OK, so maybe he didn't do a lot with the stamp covered in paint, but it's still cute that he tried!

That's our boy at 4 months!  Growing like a weed and learning new tricks and skills every day!