4 month pictures... Finally!

Here are some pictures that I took a few days after Simon turned 4 months.

And one of my favorites:

First cold and sleep regression?

Simon and I have both been battling colds since last Thursday.  This is Simon's first cold and I'm pretty sure he got it from one of the people at work when we visited on Monday.  Other than incessant sneezing and a bit of a cough, he has been pretty good overall.  His nose isn't overly stuffed up and he has been eating just as much as ever.  

He has been a bit more fussy than normal and it's led to some pretty rough nights this past week.  I don't know if it is cold related or just the 4 month sleep regression that I've been reading about, but we have now transitioned him to his crib from the bassinet and stopped swaddling all in an effort to reduce the tears at bedtime.  It's almost like he knows it's time to sleep and if I'm not there rocking him or laying down with him, he screams bloody murder.  

It could also be over-tiredness since I took him to my women's group meeting on Wednesday and he was awake that whole time (from 7-10) when he is normally winding down/sleeping.   That same night he got up at 1:30 and was awake until 3:00 screaming.  Nothing helped, not even nursing which is usually my cure-all.  We thought it was his ears bugging him from the cold but I went to the doctor today and he is fine, so we can rule that out.  Teething can cause ear issues and general night time pain so we gave him tylenol last night but he still needed to be rocked to sleep.   Who knows?  All I know is that our good sleeper is no longer and it's kept me on my toes trying to figure out tricks to keep him calm and get him to sleep.

That being said, I thought that not swaddling was going to be a challenge to keep him from waking himself up either from the startle relex or just scratching his face, but to our surprise, our first night not swaddling, he did a 6 hour stretch and a 4 hour stretch.  It can be done.  Last night wasn't too bad either.  He was rocked to sleep, put down at 8:30 and slept until 2, nursed, put back down at 3 and slept until 7.  Can't ask for much better at this point.

Rolled over for the first time!

On Sunday (Nov. 16), Simon rolled over from tummy to back for the first time.  PP missed it even though he was sitting right there.  We were playing on the floor and I had put Simon on his tummy just to see what he would do.  Usually he starts to whimper and then cry but this time he looked over at me and just rolled over.

Then today, I had put him on his back on his playmat and then was checking email and watching him play and all of a sudden I hear him whimpering and I look over and realize that he was now on his tummy.  I missed him rolling from back to tummy for the first time :( I've been watching, with my camera at the ready hoping he'll do it again, but no luck so far.  Hopefully we'll get lucky soon.

4 months old today!

Simon turned 4 months old today and to celebrate we took him to get his second round of shots.  We're evil parents aren't we?  When we got there, we weighed and measured him.  He's up to 15 lbs 3 oz (with clothes on) and 24.5 inches long.  About the 50th percentile for a breast fed baby.  They asked us a bunch of questions about his hearing, vision, tummy time etc. and then moved on to the shots.  Since we opted out of the Hep B shot, he only had to have 2 pokes, both on his right leg.  He did really well this time, though, compared to when he was 2 months.  He cried for all of 30 seconds and then looked over at me (PP was holding him) and smiled.  

We then waited the requisite 15 minutes in the lobby with another set of parents and their 4 month old named Lyric (very interesting name, IMO).  Then a lady came in asking the receptionist to call 911 since there was a guy on the ground down the street from the clinic saying he was having a heart attack.  The receptionist hesitated to call 911 (I know, WTF) but eventually did and as we were driving away we saw the ambulance coming.  Hope the guy was ok.  

Simon slept on the drive home, had his bath at the usual time and fell asleep without any major issues.  Hopefully he'll sleep like he normally does and not fuss too much because of the shots, but we've got the Tylenol at the ready in case he does.  

I forgot to post this a couple of days ago but we had probably the best sleep/night since Simon's been born on Sunday.  He went down at around 8:30 with no fuss and didn't wake up until 5.  He fed for about 15 minutes and then went back down until 7.  We've been getting nights like this periodically but always with either fussiness and tears to get him to sleep or he'll go down quietly and then be up in 30-60 minutes crying and we'll have to rock him to sleep again.  All in all, we've been pretty fortunate to have him sleeping these long stretches so early on.  I chalk it up to swaddling which is keeping his hands free of his face and his startle reflex in check.

I'll post 4 month pics as soon as I get a chance to take some LOL.  

Our little Ralphie

We took this picture today because Simon seems to love grabbing and pulling on PP's glasses while they play. He took them off and then realized it might be cute to see what Simon looks like with them on. We can't decide if he looks like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" or that kid from Jerry Maguire. I'm going with Ralphie. Too cute :)

My favorite pics over the past few weeks

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of Simon taken over the last few weeks....