As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, these four months have FLOWN by.  And I think this is my favorite stage yet! She is smiling and laughing and so fun these days! Plus she can hold her own head up and doesn’t feel quite as fragile as she did a few months ago! We chose her No Coast Creature Timber King shirt for her 4 Month pictures because we are celebrating the Royal’s winning of the World Series!!

Milestones: she is mostly further developing the ones she has learned from last month.  She laughs ALL THE TIME now, smiles regularly, and even squeals in delight! She loves to blow raspberries for long periods of time and she finds herself VERY entertaining.  She is on a regular schedule now, which makes everything SO much easier… she goes to sleep pretty easily, but we are still working on the whole sleeping through the night thing! She can track objects and has even started reaching for objects out of reach… she can’t get to them, but she stretches out to get them anyway.  She is getting close to rolling over from back to front and still really loves to stand up whenever you will let her.  She is also very close to sitting up and has much more body control than she did last month.

This month she was a travelling fool! She went with me on a roadtrip through Oklahoma to Kansas and Nebraska for my work.  We got to stay at my family’s lakehouse in Kansas and so she got to dip her toes in the VERY cold water that I grew up skiing, tubing and swimming in.

She also added the District of Columbia (one of my favorite places to visit… read here about some of my favorite things to do there!) and Virginia to her states visited list! We got to spend a fun weekend away there!

Likes: singing and music! She loves when you sing to her or put music on, and it frequently makes her calm down.  She likes when you make funny noises like clicking your tongue or smacking your lips.  She likes the Rock Chalk Chant (or maybe its just her Uncle Arthur that she likes!) and going outside.  She likes her friends at school… she regularly gets caught trying to hold hands with some of them! She still really loves her play mat… especially putting things in her mouth. She has gotten good at getting things to her mouth to chew on, but she most especially likes to chew on her hands. She also loves her Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit.  When she wasn’t sleeping at school for naps they suggested this and she LOVES it.  It helps her sleep a lot better and I think it keeps her warmer!

Random: This was her first Halloween, and even though I LOVE Halloween, I didn’t have a lot of time or motivation to work on her costume, but I think she turned out pretty cute as Little Red Riding Hood anyway!!

<sidenote>

My mom wrote a post on facebook about Halloween that I love.  I think it is important because sometimes Halloween gets a bad reputation in the Christian world, but here is why Halloween is important (in my mom’s words):

“I don’t love Halloween…ghosts, goblins and kids asking for treats! However, when my three children were young, I noticed an odd thing happening with them. It would start about 3 days after Halloween. Completely out of the blue one of them would say, “I want to be a _______ for Halloween next year. This odd behavior would continue with random interjections and many changes throughout the year. Maybe it wasn’t important, just a thought from a small and not so small child throughout the year. And then Halloween would come around and they would have to light on what they were really going to “be” that year and we would work to make their costumes (store bought wasn’t my style) with varying degrees of success. Our mummy constantly tripped over falling pieces of cloth one year. But then, it would begin again. I finally began to realize that Halloween gave them a framework for thinking about what they could “be” for a day. Or maybe it gave them permission to have alternate identities for a moment. But I came to realize it was such a great and important holiday, if only and probably only for that purpose. It allowed their imaginations to see themselves different from their normal “self”. To realize that people can change and be different from what they are. Maybe it even gave them skills in putting on Christ for life. I pray for that. But what I know is that they will not become selfish because they ask for treats one night. They will not eschew God because they wear a witch costume as a child. Their imaginations will be enriched by this yearly ritual in their lives. Blessings on you all. Happy Halloween.”

<end side note>

Dislikes… SHOTS! she gets so so angry when she gets shots, she also dislikes having a stuffy nose, and she HATES her vitamin medicine (and seriously… that stuff is nasty! They can make chewy gummies for adults to take their vitamins, but baby vitamins smell and look … and probably taste… disgusting??? Someone should really work on that!)