Monica had her four month wellness visit today. She is happy, healthy, and the little grub spent most of the visit giggling and wiggling all over the table. Naturally, the pediatrician was completely enchanted by her cuteness, and loathe to move on to the crying baby down the hall. I mean, look how cute she is!
Weight: 14 lbs, 7 oz, 65th percentile
Height: 24 and 3/4" long, 92nd percentile
Milestone updates: We have a somewhat mobile grub now! Monica is able to roll both front to back and back to front, and she can pivot a full 360 degrees on her tummy. She's starting to use a combination of these three techniques to move herself into grabbing range of out of reach toys as well as out of reach parents. Full baby push-ups - no problem! She can also stand and support her own weight (with mommy or daddy help for balance) for a couple of minutes at a time without tiring. She's not yet able to get up onto hands and knees in the crawling position, but she's definitely working in that direction.
Additionally, the pediatrician has said that we can start Monica on solid foods (rice/cereal) now, or we can wait. I had read that the general recommendation was 6 months to start solids, but the pediatrician said closer to 4 months is not uncommon, especially in babies that are big for their ages. Her recent nighttime wakings to eat may be an indication that she is ready for some solids in her daily diet. While always excited at moving on to a new chapter in this baby's life, I'm not sure I'm quite feelin' the mess involved with actual "food," such as even MORE frequent bathing and laundry. Maybe we'll see how I feel about this next week....
:)
Daily Grub Life: Monica is extremely interested in her toys. We spend our days moving between her playmat downstairs, to the high chair in the kitchen, to the play area in her bedroom. She is able to grab items, move things from one hand to the other, and she's an absolute expert at getting toys into her mouth.
The Sleeping Grub: Monica is sleeping through the night (8-10 hours), but ONLY in her swing in our bedroom. Earlier attempts around the three month mark to utilize her crib were met with failure :( However, now that the holidays are over, JK and I are going to fully revisit two dreaded words: SLEEP TRAINING.
Stay tuned for updates!!
Check out who's on the move! Monica is not actually crawling yet, but being able to get up onto her hands and knees is really helping her to pivot and move in all directions now. I'm calling it creeping because she can now creep up on me when I'm clear across the room. I did try to interrupt and let her know that it looked like she was setting herself up for head butt against the crib, and that this probably wasn't a good way to start out a creeping adventure. 
She totally looks like a little grub crawling out of a grub hidey-hole right here :) Guess I should probably throw that dust ruffle in the wash, just in case
she's planning on spending a lot of time under there in the future. 
