::4 Months::

On July 24th, Lola Kate turned 4 months old! Could time be flying any faster?? Absolutely not. Let me just go ahead and sum up this past month for you in 2 words: growth. spurt. Lola has been growing like a weed lately, and if you don't believe me, let me just prove it to you. We went to the doc on Monday for our 4 month appointment, and between 2 months (our last appointment) and 4 months, Lola went from 15% in weight to 75%!! Here are her newest stats:

Weight: 14 lbs, 10 oz-- 75%

Length: 24 1/2"-- 75%

Head: 16 1/4 -- 60%

Not the itty bitty peanut she once was! What has made the difference? Giving up nursing to pump and bottle feed exclusively, which I am still doing by the way. Not an easy task, but I just keep telling myself to go a little bit longer, and so I do. If I make it to 6 months I will give myself one large pat on the back. We shall see...

So as you can imagine, that big of a growth spurt has not made this past month so easy. Her hunger was almost insatiable at times, and that meant lots of getting up in the middle of the night, which I was not used to. She had been sleeping so well for so long that it was a big shock to me. But after seeing her growth progress in percentages on Monday, I totally get why she needed to eat in the middle of the night! But thankfully, she has started sleeping through the night again, and that makes for one happy and rested mama. She has been going down between 8-9pm and sleeping til 8-9am. A miracle for any mother to experience!

She eats 5-6oz every 2 1/2-3 hours, except in the middle of the night of course. I wake her up to dream feed her around 10pm, put her right back down and she is out!

This month Lola has begun to laugh BIG TIME! It is the absolute best noise in the world. She is still smiling like crazy, and is seriously one of the happiest babies. She makes life so much fun. I can't imagine life without her, now that I know life with her. Here is a video of her laughing. I have been trying to upload videos lately, but they never work. Hoping it does this time! (And if you have any pointers for me on how to do this, please pass them along:))

Rolling over has become a FREQUENT occurrence. She can roll over over both ways, but has a harder time remembering that she knows how to roll from stomach to back. So it usually goes down like this: lay her on her back, immediately roll to stomach, cry and fuss because she hates being on her stomach, roll her back onto her back, and repeat the whole process again. It cracks me up b/c she CAN roll the other way, but she just forgets to try! The other day she rolled to her tummy, had some tummy time, and then FELL ASLEEP and took a nap on her tummy!! That was a definite first and hasn't happened again since. Too cute!

Talking has also been a frequent occurrence lately. Hearing her talk to herself is such a precious sound and one of my favorite things she does. She is very vocal!

Lola started wearing size 1 diapers this month, but then QUICKLY moved on to size 2. What a bummer! I'll be saving all the extra size 1 diapers for the next one, I suppose. She is definitely out of all of her newborn clothes, and even the 0-3 month clothes are snug. She is mainly wearing 3-6 month clothes, and those are perfect because they have a little extra room for her.

Lola went swimming for the first time this month! My mom bought her a floaty with a cover on it to block out the sun. She definitely didn't complain about the water, but she didn't seem that into it either. I am sure next summer will be a BIG difference, and we will be using Fancy & Paco's (my parents') pool everyday.

So in summary, this month has been another exceptionally happy one with lots to be thankful for. Lola seems to be getting busier and busier by the day, so even though we got the one decent picture above, most of the pictures looked more like this:

Gotta love her!!