Hellobee

Olive turned 4 months old yesterday! She’s a poor second child who hardly gets any pictures taken of her. But she’s still a smiley, happy baby, and definitely one of my favoritest people in the whole wide world!

Olive at top and Charlie at bottom. They have a resemblance, but I still think they look different!

Olive weighed in at 12 lbs 10 oz today. She zoomed through preemie, newborn, and 0-3 sizes, but her rapid growth is starting to slow down, which means that she’ll be able to wear her current clothes just a little bit longer. I’ve already given away a big bag of her preemie and newborn clothes, and I can’t believe that she was ever that small!

Olive’s pink preemie onesie on top of her 3 month onesie. The pink onesie could easily fit a doll!

This is her weight gain to date:

4 months – 12 lbs 10 oz (+1 lb)
3 months – 11 lbs 10 oz (+1 lb 8oz)
2 month – 10 lbs 2 oz (+2 lbs 14oz)
1 month – 7 lbs 4 oz (+2 lbs 5 oz)
Birth – 4lbs 15oz

Milestones

Olive’s big milestone for the month is that she started rolling on to her side from her back. She can’t quite roll over all the way yet. But I was surprised she was even able to roll onto her side because I’m horrible about doing tummy time, and I’ve been expecting her to hit milestones a lot slower than Charlie did (he rolled over from stomach to back at 4 months of age). Her neck strength has been very strong for awhile — how quickly she went from a floppy necked newborn to one that can control her head with ease! She’s also been putting her fists and thumb into her mouth for over a month now, but doesn’t seem to have the manual dexterity to grasp a toy and put it in her mouth yet. The milestone I’m most looking forward to right now is hearing her let out a true laugh!

Umbilical Hernia

Another big change over the past month – Olive’s umbilical hernia is pretty much gone! You can see how big it looked on the left when she was 1 1/2 months old. It wasn’t as big when she was born, but it got bigger as she got bigger. At 1 month it was about the size of a walnut. At 4 months, you can see that the hernia is pretty much gone. There is still a little bit of loose skin, but hopefully that’ll go away with time. I’m so relieved because I thought that she might have to get surgery when she was older to get it fixed.

Worries

In Olive’s 3 month update, I was worried that her right eye was crossing inward. Newborns’ eyes are supposed to stop crossing inward around the first 2 months or so. It happened for a couple of days, but it hasn’t happened since. Phew!

I don’t know if it’s a result of my anxiety or if all parents worry about things like this, but for the first 3 months of Olive’s life I was constantly worried that something was wrong with her because she was born a month early. Did she suffer brain damage? Were some things underdeveloped? I did worry with Charlie too, but not as much (although his headbanging stage when he was around 1 was a little troubling at the time). I’d google things like “early signs of autism” and scrutinize Olive to see if she exhibited any of the signs. Of course I’d love her the same no matter what, but why do I obsess over things that 1) probably aren’t going to happen, and 2) that I have no control over? Do you find yourself doing this too?

Olive disapproves of worrying.

Sleep

Olive’s sleep has been getting a little bit better each week over the past month. It still takes me 2 hours to get her down at night, but that’s actually a big improvement — it used to take up to 5 hours! Going down at night without a fuss will be life changing because I’ll get to spend more time with Charlie, and I won’t be as tired from our nightly battles. Once she’s down for the night she usually does a 4-5 hour stretch followed by another 4 hour stretch, which is manageable. She’s also taking 3-4 naps a day depending on the length of her naps. This is a typical schedule:

8:00am – Wake up
9:00am – 10:00am – Nap #1
11:15am – 12:15pm – Nap #2
1:30pm – 2:30pm – Nap #3
3:45pm – 4:45pm – Nap #4
5:45pm – Bath
6:15pm – In crib (but not asleep ever!)
8:30pm – Asleep
12:00am – Wake up for quick feeding
4:00am – Wake up for quick feeding

We went over to a friend’s house with Charlie and Olive for a playdate yesterday, and Olive fell asleep in my arms twice while there was a ton of hubbub going on. That made me think about how wonderful it would be to have her be a flexible sleeper. After we sleep trained Charlie, he couldn’t really sleep anywhere other than his crib or stroller. Since Olive is a second child and needs to be more flexible, I’d love for her to be able to fall asleep anywhere. One can dream!

Olive loves watching her big brother. I’m honestly shocked at how good Charlie is with her. I thought that he’d try to hit her, or show more jealousy towards her. But he loves to entertain Olive, talk to her, try to feed her his food, put toys in her hands, kiss her, and give her pounds.

I’m having so much fun with my little family. When I think about the hardest part of parenting, the actual parenting part isn’t what’s hard… it’s not having enough time for everything else – work, chores, your spouse, and personal time. The funny thing is even though it’s harder with two kids, I’m enjoying being a mom much more now. Maybe I’ve finally settled into the role, maybe having a second child enabled me to appreciate the newborn months in a way I didn’t with Charlie. Whatever it is, I might even consider saying that… it’s not that hard (some days).