Dear Charlie,

You’re 4 months old now! Considering I just wrote you a couple weeks ago, I don’t have as much to update you on today. However, we did have your 4 month checkup with the pediatrician yesterday and you clocked in at 18lb12oz and 26in — you’re quite the chunky monkey! The doctor said that everything looks great, and she as well as all the nurses kept calling you a “Gerber Baby” because you are just so perfectly cute! And who can blame them….

My only real concern that I brought up while we were there is the fact that you’re not rolling consistently yet. I’ve seen you do it several times, but it’s very rare. Given that Alex was rolling all over the place by this point, I couldn’t help but worry a bit. (And of course I know you’re not supposed to compare your kids, that each baby is different…. But honestly it’s really hard not to do this.) The pediatrician said that since we’ve seen you roll it’s clear that you CAN do it, and it’s most likely a personal preference that you choose not to. She told us to keep giving you plenty of tummy time & you’ll get there. Most of the time you like to squirm around in circles on your tummy, and still don’t really like to be there for more than 5 minutes at a time. We’ll keep trying!

You do at least have pretty good head control now, so you get to enjoy more things like this:

(And Alex has been enjoying it too, as you can see! Haha)

You get more social every day, much more so than Alex was at this age actually. You’re happiest when one of us is tickling you or helping you “dance” with your arms and legs. You’ve even started to giggle a bit! 🙂

This past weekend you got to be extra social on your first long road trip to WV for Nana’s family reunion. I think everyone enjoyed getting to meet you, and vice versa. All things considered, you did pretty well in the car (although I unfortunately can’t say the same for your big brother :-/). The real disaster was actually the hotel room– having all four of us try to sleep in the same room was a hot mess! Everyone kept waking each other up, so no one got a wink of sleep. It was so rough that we decided to cut the trip short and come home Sunday night instead of Monday morning… and boy were we all glad to sleep in our own beds/cribs and have that last day to catch up on our rest! Dad and I have agreed that we won’t be doing any more long trips, particularly with overnight hotel stays, for quite awhile. It is just too much for us, with two kids so young. Oy. Haha

Uncle Robbie enjoyed playing with you… until you pooped on him. LMAO!

So the next big thing for you will be starting to eat a little bit of food, as the doctor gave us the OK to do so whenever we think you’re ready. You do have a bit of reflux and I think some “solid” food might help with that, so we’ll probably start you on some oatmeal or pureed fruit/veggies for dinner sometime in the next few weeks. I’ll be sure to take some pictures & videos of that when the time comes! Until then, here’s a few other peeks at what you’ve been up to the last couple weeks:

You actually don’t sleep in this very often anymore as (1) you’re almost too big for it and (2) you do really well sleeping in your crib, but I still use it around the house as a convenient/portable place to put you out of harm’s way when I’m busy with Alex or other tasks. On this particular day you were hanging out in there while I took a shower… I was planning to put you down for a nap in the crib when I got out, but you had other ideas. You love this little crinkle elephant as well as your loveys and rattles. In general I think you’re just really into trying to grab and hold onto things, not just toys but people’s hands/fingers as well. Whenever you drop a toy or I extract my fingers from your grip, you get sad and cry until give you something else to hold!

You & Alex doing some puzzling before dinner one night. Alex always wants to sit next to you at the table, shows you all of his toys and tries to get you to hold them. You stare, coo and smile at Alex constantly. In fact, it was really hard to get your 4 month picture with Alex in the room (which is pretty much always, he sticks to me like glue) because you kept wanting to look over at him instead of the camera. Much to his dismay, I had to kick him out of the room for a few minutes and managed to get these:

DUCK FACE! Haha. This was hands-down my favorite outtake. 😉

Towards the end of the session, you discovered your feet & that was that– you had eyes for nothing else!

Sadly the Caps did not make it to the Stanley Cup this year, but you enjoyed rooting for them in the playoffs! Every time I did this you’d break out into a grin and even giggled a little bit. Super cute! Please excuse my annoying “baby voice.” LOL

I think that’s all for now… Until next time, Charlie bean! 🙂

All my love,
Mom

All my love,
Mom