2 month & 4 month stats

Madelene Kate is already 4 months old. We had her well-baby check up today. I was glad to note that she is doing everything she should be by now, except rolling over.

She is a chunky monkey. She vocalizes way more than James ever did at this age. Her hands entertain her for a good long time - just holding them together in front of her, looking at them as she turns them this way & that. She holds her head up high when she's on her belly. And she's been putting weight on her legs since birth. I actually pulled out the Exersaucer for her yesterday, because I can't hold her upright long enough for her preferences!

She has done a pretty good job with sleeping - falling asleep on her own without much fuss at all. In fact, when she's tired and wants to sleep, she will fuss until I put her on her back. Then she just turns her head, closes her eyes and off she goes to dreamland! On occasion, she will need to cry for a minute or two before sleep overcomes her. But that is actually rare.

Although she falls asleep on her own pretty well, she doesn't nap super well during the day. Sometimes she only sleeps for 45 minutes at a stretch. But nighttime sleep has been pretty good for awhile now. She goes at least 6 hours between eating. And we've had a couple of nights where she's gone 7 or 9 hours!

For awhile, she would start her long sleep stretch at 6 or 6:30 p.m. and then awaken every three hours for the rest of the night. If I woke her up at 9:30 or 10 to eat, she'd still only go three hours after that. So I got in the habit of letting her sleep. But sometime in the past couple of weeks, she started stirring when I'd go to bed, so I tried feeding her. Wonder of wonders, she'd sleep 6 hours after that!

I have not been as good with giving her a bottle as I was with James. But eventually she has taken one when offered. It just seems to take time. I want to get better about giving her one a day since I could be hitting the point of no return!

She recently decided to put herself on 4-hour eating routine. And she is efficient. She usually only eats for 8 to 10 minutes now. James ate for 20 minutes total no matter what. So I couldn't figure out what was up when, after 3 hours, I'd try to feed her, and she'd start to cry after less than a minute. If I'd wait an hour, she'd eat for 3 to 4 minutes on one side then seem to be done. So I'd burp her and trade sides only to have her eat a max of 6 or 7 minutes (if that, sometimes). Finally someone suggested that she was just efficient and only needed to eat every 4 hours. Oh - right!

It hasn't hampered her growth at all... "little miss-miss" as James calls her, has gained weight just fine.

So without further ado, here are Madelene Kate's stats for 2- and 4-months:

Jan 22, 2010

weight - 11 lbs 5 oz (50-75th percentile)

height - 22 3/4 inches (50-75th percentile)

head circumference: 39 cm (50th percentile)

Mar 19, 2010

weight - 14 lbs, 5 oz (75th percentile)

height - 24 1/2 inches (50-75th percentile)

head circumference: 41 cm (50th percentile)

She is a darling little chub, if I do say so! She has a ready smile, and has begun to laugh. She's so easy going, only really crying when she needs to be changed. Otherwise, she fusses when tired, and squeals when she wants someone to talk to her.

I can hardly believe she is my girlie. What a wonderful gift from our gracious God's hand.

"He's Handsome!"

Each day last week, a different one of my friends had James over to her home so that I could get things done as we prepared to list our townhouse on Thursday evening.

Today, I received this e-mail from one of those kind friends. Her daughter is just a month older than James.

I was just talking with my daughter and I was telling her that two children were coming over, and she says to me "how about that handsome boy?" I was wondering who she was talking about and then I said James' name and she says "yeah, him he handsome!"

Play Date

One of these days I will post about what in the world is going on at our house. But for the moment, I have this link to a friend's blog. Shauna kept both James and Madelene Kate yesterday while Ben and I worked at our house, getting things finalized for the painters.

Enjoy the pictures and videos!

Look What She Found!

Madelene Kate loves to suck. She typically has a pacifier in her mouth when she's not eating. But today, while we were running errands, she lost her pacifier, and after crying for a very short time, I heard her sucking profusely. Looking in the rearview mirror, I discovered to my delight that she had found her two middle fingers and was happily engaged with them instead!

I am a slacker...

Time flies these days. I can hardly believe that our Madelene Kate is already a day past her 8 week birthday. I have thought numerous times throughout most days that I needed to post something. And sadly now I don't know what I was going to post or when.

With James, I was so good about recording every detail of his first year on a calendar. I haven't noted anything about his sister anywhere - except her birth story and that she smiled before she was four weeks old. Poor girl!

If anyone is still reading this blog, I know you're not really interested in reading anything from me - what you want are pictures. Sad to say, I don't have any available at the moment. What's worse is that I haven't taken many of Madelene Kate at all... mostly what pictures I have taken are of James in the three snows we've enjoyed so far this winter. Oh - and some at Christmas - although not many.

So I will get busy (one of these days) and post some pictures. And I'll try to do a better job of posting milestones from our children's lives... for their sakes and yours!

Such A Kind Friend

I have a friend who really knows how to serve a mommy with a newborn second child.

When Madelene Kate was just 2 weeks old, we had a warm day in between wet and cold ones. Gretchen called to ask if she could come over to our neighborhood and take James to the tot lot with her 3 year old and 1 year old. She kept James outside for more than an hour, playing hard and getting him good and tired for his nap.

Today, we had a Mommy's Group scheduled. I wanted to go, but really need to run some errands and get some Christmas stuff done. Gretchen e-mailed and then called to see if it would serve me for her to pick up James on her way by.

James was quite excited to go with her. He kept asking, "Where's Gretchen?" while waiting rather impatiently. And then when she arrived, he ran out to her car very happily.

Gretchen, THANK YOU for serving me so generously! I am off to Costco with just one instead of two. What an enormous blessing.

Happy Girl

Madelene Kate smiled today.

True - she's not even four weeks old.

But there was no mistaking it - she grinned up at me while I was holding her. And when I smiled back, hers widened. Then while James held her a bit later, she broke into a bright happy grin. This evening, she smiled at me again, and this time, Ben was there to see.

Our girlie has been so pleasant since her birth, with a sweet countenance that certainly looked like smiles even from her first day. Here she is with each of her Grammys...

with Ben's mom, six days old

with my mom, twelve days old