4 Month Birthday!

These 'birthday' posts are becoming tradition and I like how it makes me take the time to reflect on how much she changes every month. So, here we go for the re-cap of her 4th month.

Here she is at 4 months old:


I think this video captures so many things that she is doing this month:
She has her hands in her mouth about 80% of the time, she loves to smile, she is 'talking' a bunch and has started squealing when she gets excited, she has taken a great interest in her toys and reaches out for them, she is making eye contact with everyone including her toys...the list goes on, so see for yourself!


She has really started to enjoy her jumperoo and you can see that Cooper likes to lick her toes, which are almost touching the ground now!


She's gotten very good at entertaining herself on the floor, is scooting some and rolls around like crazy!


She's adjusted very well to daycare and loves being around all the other babies.


We've all survived the return of mommy's travels! In November I had a total of 6 nights away, giving Brian and Madeline some good father/daughter bonding time. I've survived going through airport security 3 times with a cooler full of milk with no hassles. I do wish I could have captured the expression on the TSA's face when they opened the cooler and realized it was full of breast milk!

She had her 4 month check-up yesterday and did so well with the shots. She got three shots and didn't cry at all for the first two and then whimpered a bit for the 3rd one. Pulling the band-aide off was more painful (for both of us!) than the shots. For some reason her skin was super sensitive to the band-aide! Ouch :(

In other news regarding her check-up, the pediatrician says she is doing great and was impressed that she is rolling over so well! She weighed in at 11lbs 9 oz, was 24.5 in long and her head circumference was 16. She's in the 10th percentile for weight, but has been tracking fine, so the pedi didn't seem concerned. She's right around the 50th percentile for height and head circumference.

We're off to the airport tomorrow morning to head to MT for Thanksgiving. Madeline is getting prepared by sporting her special onesie!

First week of school and weekend with Daddy

Madeline had her first week of daycare last week. We had a nanny coming into the house for the first few weeks that I was back in work, and with Grandma James in town for a few days the past week, it meant that Madeline didn't have to start daycare right away. I felt kinda cheesy taking these pics, but here are her first day of "school" pictures. She seems to be adjusting really well and likes being around all the other babies.




This weekend I had my first business trip after being back to work, so Madeline got to spend the whole weekend alone with Daddy! I think they did pretty well together and occupied their time with 2 trips to the tool store, a trip to the grocery store for queso and chorizzo and multiple walks. She did great eating out of the bottle for two days and Brian even taught her to "hold" the bottle, as she is demonstrating below!


I survived the trip as well but was very excited to get back home. I'm glad they did well, as I'm off to NYC tomorrow for 4 days. Luckily I should be able to spend a bit of time with Madeline in the morning before I need to leave.

Since its been awhile since I posted some pictures, here are a few others from the past week:

It was a bit chilly the day after Halloween and we were able to dress Madeline in her sock monkey outfit--a cute hand-me-down from her big friend Sophie. She looked so cute!


Our neighbors, Mike and Irma invited us over for a delicious dinner and Irma had a wonderful toy that Madeline loved:



And, here is one last smile from today, going out to Grandpa Handl--Happy Birthday!

3 month portraits

I commented a few posts ago about how we took Madeline in JC Penney to have some 3 month photos taken. I was able to pick them up today, so here they are. I think they turned out pretty well considering we had 20 min with the photographer--luckily she was in a good mood! I like how the photos capture her different expressions and you can see what a chore it was to try and keep her fist out of her mouth. Enjoy!