Your Fourth Month - March 2014

Height: Still 22 inches :)

Weight: 12 pounds, 2 ounces

    [height & weight from February 24th]

Sleeping Pattern: You are quite the little sleeper! During the month of March you gradually started sleeping even longer. By the end of the month you were sleeping 12 hours at night consistently. Yay! I usually feed you around 8:00 and put you to bed by 8:30 and you typically wake up around 8:30 or 9:00 the next morning.

You don’t take very long naps during the day anymore since you get so much sleep at night. You take 3-4 cat naps each day, always less than an hour each and sometimes as short as 20 minutes.

Eating Habits: You are a great nurser. You LOVE mealtimes and eat very well. You eat five times a day, typically around 3-4 hours between each feeding. Now that you are sleeping longer at night, it’s usually closer to 3 hours.

Personality, etc.: You are still what I would call a “medium maintenance” baby. I wouldn’t go as far as to call you “high maintenance,” but you aren’t super easy either. When you’re awake you want attention and you really like to be held. But you are so particular about how you want to be held. Your favorite thing is for me to hold you facing out on my hip so that you’re upright, your legs are hanging down, you have a little pressure on you tummy from my arm, and you can see everything.

This month you were pretty fussy in the nursery at church. They had to page me to come calm you down several times. I don’t mind coming for you though! I like being with you!

Accomplishments: You rolled over - tummy to back - for the “real” first time on March 1st, at exactly 3 months old. You have done it several times since then, but still don’t do it very frequently. You have yet to roll from your back to your tummy.

This month you started enjoying tummy time (finally)! You can usually spend about 10 minutes on your tummy playing with toys (but usually your burp cloth) before you get fussy and/or roll over. That’s progress considering last month you cried instantly every time I put you down on your tummy to play.

On March 15th, at 3 ½ months old, you laughed your first laugh! You haven’t done it again since then, that I know if, but you are pretty hard to impress. :)

Anything else: During the middle of this month I discovered that you do not tolerate caffeine well . . . at all. You had been extremely fussy for a couple of weeks and I realized that your extreme fussiness coincided with my return to regular coffee. (I had been having headaches and the coffee was really helping!) As soon as I switched back to decaf you were fine! I’m glad I figured it out as soon as I did. I felt so terrible when I realized why you were so unhappy!

Photos:

March 1 - 3 months old

March 3

March 7 - You usually have this "surprised" face when I point the camera at you!

March 10 - Your first trip to the zoo!

March 11

March13

March 20

March 20 - You have now outgrown my favorite nightgown - I miss it already!

Your Third Month - February 2014

Height: 22 inches (25th percentile)

Weight: 11.4 pounds (55th percentile)

       [height & weight from February 3rd]

Sleeping Pattern: You sleep 10-11 hours every night from around 9:00 in the evening until about 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning. Way to go!

Eating Habits: You eat five times a day, usually about three and a half hours apart. You are a great nurser!

Personality, etc.: You have become quite the smiley girl - at home anyway. You don’t smile for strangers very often. And Sundays are such an interruption to your routine that you’re not usually a super happy girl on Sunday at church. But at home, and especially when your tummy is full, you love to smile!

You are also happier in general. You’re much better in the car seat and you play on the floor and in your baby seat now.

You are looking more and more like your daddy every day. Lots of people comment about it. I love it!

Accomplishments: You are trying so hard to stick your hand in your mouth. Every once in a while you get it in there, but not for long. You have started batting at the toys that hang from your activity center and even grabbing them towards the end of the month. You like to smile at your toys too.

Anything else: You started taking Propranalol for your nasal tip hemangioma near the beginning of the month and by the end of the month when we went back to the doctor for a recheck, it had already improved! You also saw an ENT and he said the hemangioma does not appear to be causing any other problems with your nose, so that was good news.

Photos:

Here are some videos of you learning to do new things!

Your Second Month - January 2014

Height: 21 inches (45th percentile)

Weight: 10 pounds, 5 ounces (75th percentile)

[height & weight from January 3rd]

Sleeping Pattern: You always sleep on your tummy. You just won’t have it any other way. At the beginning of the month you were sleeping 7 hours at night consistently and a total of around 16 hours each day (including your night time sleeping). By the end of the month you were sleeping 10 hours every night, from 9:30 p.m. until 7:30 the next morning! Good girl! You have a fussy time each evening, but that has improved greatly from the beginning of the month until the end.

Eating Habits: You ate every three and a half hours during the day. By the end of the month, when you started waking up at the same time every day, your mealtimes were 7:30, 11:00, 2:30, 6:00, and 9:00 and then it’s off to bed.

Personality, etc.: You HATE the car seat! Almost every time we go anywhere you scream for 5-10 minutes before calming down. It’s so frustrating and I feel so terrible for you! I try not to go anywhere during the day if I don’t have to because it’s so bad.

Also, at the beginning of this month you did not like to be put in a baby seat of any kind. But towards the end of the month you started enjoying some time in your little reclining seat. It has two toys that hang down for you to look at - an iguana and a bee - and it’s so fun to watch you smile at them sometimes!

You like being sung to. Sometimes when you’re fussy, if I sing, or if Penny sings, you calm right down. And Penny loves to sing to you. Most of the time it’s Jesus Loves Me but sometimes it’s a song she makes up herself that doesn’t really make sense.

You like your pacifier when you are fussy or tired, but you are still terrible at keeping it in for very long.

Friends: You spend most of your time at home, but outside of that, your best friends are your cousins right now. :)

Anything else: You now have three hemangiomas. Hemangiomas are a type of vascular birthmark. Usually they are bright red and are raised a bit. One of them is on your left bun (hehe!) and was there when you were born. But since your diapers rub on it so much, it actually was irritated and bleeding so much that the raised part is gone and it’s just more of a dark purple mark that seems more like a scar. Another one showed up on your face when you were about two and a half weeks old. It has gradually gotten brighter and is raised now (it wasn’t right away) but hasn’t gotten any bigger… yet. The third one showed up when you were about five weeks old. It is a deep nasal tip hemangioma - meaning it’s on the tip of your nose and is deeper underneath the surface of your skin. It makes the tip of your nose bluish and is just slightly swollen. I am hoping it won’t get any worse and plan to talk to your doctor about it at your next appointment to see what she recommends. But even with your little blue nose, you are beautiful! And I have started to really love the little red one on your cheek. It’s so cute and special!

Photos:

Sister love...

I love this sweet sleepy face and the way your mouth falls open when you sleep!

She really loves you!

Toothless grin in your sleep. :)

Look how long your hair is in the back! I love it!

One Month Old

Matching pajamas

I thought it was so funny that you fell asleep like this!

Your First Month - December 2014

Height: At your two-week check-up you had grown by one inch to 20 ½ inches in length.

Weight: At your two-week check-up you were back up to your birth weight and then some. You weighed 8 pounds, 11 ounces.

Sleeping Pattern: It took three or four days at home for you to figure out that night time is for sleeping (or at least staying quietly in bed.) But after that you have done a great job of letting me rest! I usually put you in bed while you are drowsy but still awake after you nurse. You wake up once every night to nurse, but not at a consistent time. Sometimes you sleep four hours before waking me up, sometimes as much as seven hours. You are usually wide awake after your middle-of-the-night feeding but you always let me put you right back in bed anyway without any fussing. You are such a good girl!

Eating Habits: I have been keeping you on a somewhat flexible schedule. For this first month you nurse every 3 hours or so. You got the hang of nursing so quickly - yay! I did have a rough time the first ten days. I got very sore and even started bleeding a few days in, so for two or three days I pumped and bottle-fed you until I was healed and ready to nurse again. But once I got past that, nursing has gone very well! For the first two weeks or so you were a little slow - taking almost an hour to eat each time. But by the end of the month you were consistently finishing in about thirty minutes.

Accomplishments: You rolled over the first week you were home (December 8th), but that must have been some kind of accident! (It’s way too early for that, and you haven’t done it since.) You have also already been smiling on purpose. You save most of your smiles for your daddy, which is so cute! You’re not smiling all the time, just once or twice a day, but those smiles melt my heart!

Personality: You seem to be a bit particular. We quickly figured out what kinds of things you like and what you don’t. For instance, you are a tummy sleeper. During this first month, if we tried to put you down on your back (even for just a couple of minutes) you would get very upset and scream! So you sleep on your tummy even though it’s recommended that little babies sleep on their backs. You haven’t liked being swaddled either because you like to try to get your hands in your mouth. When you are being held you prefer to be upright, not reclining. And until the end of the month you cried every single time that I changed your diaper or your clothes. I think you are finally getting used to those things now though. You do have a fussy time each evening. You get fussy and are hard to please for an hour or so - usually sometime between 7:00 and 9:00. Daddy usually holds you during that time because he is able to keep you calm better than I can. Whenever he holds you while you’re awake you usually just stare at him. It’s the cutest thing to watch you hold his gaze for the longest time.

Friends: There have been five other babies born this month at church, so you will have a lot of friends to choose from when you get older. They are your cousin Ralee, Wesley Lathum, Alivia Gasper, and Andrew & Abigail Justice.

Photos:

Snuggling on Daddy

First bath at home. You did not like it! - December 7, 2013

Your big sister adores you!

Paci love

Penny loves to share her stories with you.

Grandpa took this gorgeous photo of you...

...and this one.

I love the sweet sleepy faces you make.

Santa came to visit!

Getting some Grams snuggles on Christmas Day!

The cousins on Christmas Day

Our first family snapshot

Spending some time with your cousin Ralee.

Your Name

When we found out we were pregnant we did one of our favorite things. We started talking about baby names. When we look at names we like to find names that are pretty (or cool - if it’s a boy name), names that are unique (nothing in the top 100 if we can help it), and names that are meaningful. I don’t care how pretty the name is, if it doesn’t have a strong, important meaning, it’s not for us. We eventually had our two names picked out - Ariani Celeste if you were a girl, Milon David if you were a boy.

I was so excited when I found out you were a girl. (Of course I was a little bummed that your daddy wouldn’t get a boy to play with, but I had secretly hoped you were a girl all along.) But I just couldn’t quite settle on your name for sure yet. It’s kind of a funny story, but there is a UFC “ring girl” named Ariany and I didn’t want people to think that’s where your name came from. I decided to look her up on the internet and then found out that her middle name was Celeste! I was so bummed because I really didn’t like the idea of you sharing your name with a girl who was so worldly and was famous for showing off her body. So your daddy and I decided to change your first name just a little bit - Ariana. The meaning was the same - “holy.” We talked about alternative middle names and decided we liked Celine, which had the same meaning as Celeste - “from heaven” or Noelle since you would be born in December. We never really settled on your middle name, although we did agree that if you came in November we would not use Noelle.

Finally it was time for you to come! We had loaded up the car with our bags, Penny was at her cousins’ house for the night, and we were driving to the hospital. As we neared the entrance I looked at your daddy and told him that for a few weeks now I had wanted to put the middle name Celeste back on the table. I thought he would think that was weird or tell me that he had already decided on Noelle, but instead he just said, “Okay. I really like that name.” I couldn’t believe he was fine with a last minute change like that! I asked him if he was sure and he said that he liked all three choices and was fine with any of them. After another moment I said, “I have been thinking about the name Ariani again too.” Again, he said he loved the name Ariani and would be fine with naming you that instead of Ariana. It should have felt like a rash decision - changing your name at the last moment like that - but it didn’t. It just felt right. I just knew that your name was Ariani Celeste - in a way, it had been all along.

Once we checked in at the hospital, I looked up the names Ariana and Ariani on my favorite baby website while we waited in the waiting area. I was surprised to see that Ariana was #74 on the list of most popular names in the US. Ariani, however, was around #400. And somehow, that confirmed our decision. Your name was Ariani.

We waited until our family came to meet you to tell them about the change. It was fun to introduce you to your grandparents and aunts and uncles, who were certain that your name was Ariana Noelle. (In fact, Grandpa had told Pastor that was your name and that’s what they announced at church the night you were born!) They were so surprised that we would change our minds so late! But they all loved the name and were smitten with you from the moment they saw you.

Your name is very important to us. We hope and pray that you will live up to its meaning. We want you to know the Lord from a very early age and to live a holy life that is dedicated to Him! And we will always see you as a very special gift from heaven, an answer to a prayer that we prayed for over two years before seeing it answered with a “yes” from God. I can’t wait to tell you the whole story some day when you are old enough to understand it!