Mama Montage

My little girl is now over 4 months old. It's hard to believe how fast time is passing and how much she is growing. On Monday, she had her 4 month check up and weighed in at 12 lbs 10 oz (19th percentile). She was 21st percentile for height and 27th percentile for head circumference. Sprout received an oral vaccine and two shots. The shots are always worse for the parent than the baby--because who likes to see their child hurt, even though it is for their own good? Two nurses came in and were very well coordinated in giving her the two shots simultaneously. Sprout screamed indignantly for a minute and had two huge tears roll down her cheeks, but a little cuddling calmed her. She nursed when we got home and, although she felt a little warm that night, she slept just fine and I didn't need to give her any painkillers. I was very happy about that, since the hubby was on-call that night.



I love how Sprout now smiles and giggles when she sees me (although it's a mixed blessing when she does it after I've tried to put her down to sleep at night in her pack n' play, smiling and kicking her legs when I come in to check on Miss Fusspot). She reaches out and grabs anything that comes near her face or body--including my hair (ow! no more dangle earrings for a while...), and she's snagged the hubby's glasses more than a few times. She still hasn't quite mastered rolling onto her tummy; she's close, but can't quite get the shoulder tucked yet. Instead, she rotates like the hand on a clock, and I often find her bunched in weird S-shaped positions in the morning (head back, sleeping on her side).

She has started to become a little ticklish too, since I can sometimes get open-mouthed smiles and giggles by kissing her neck. As for vocalizing, she's moved from French "r"'s to occasional happy squeals, which are very cute right now but I know will be lovingly headache-inducing in a few months :P. Finally, she's just now starting to become interested in grabbing her toes. She often tries to go for them when she's on the changing table. Her increasing mobility sure makes getting a cloth prefold diaper and cover onto her a challenge at times, but I don't regret going the cloth diapering route!



Breastfeeding still continues to go well. I know I've been lucky to still be exclusively breastfeeding. I pump at work around three times during my 10-hour day, usually getting 11 to 14 oz total. When I get home with Sprout, I nurse her for long stretches at night until Sprout goes to bed around 9 or 9:30. She then sleeps through the night until I get her up at 5AM (I know, I have a charmed baby). I nurse her a little in the morning before I then get all my bags packed and drop her off at her daycare at 6:30. While the pediatrician said she could start some solids at anytime now if I saw the need, I'm probably going to wait a bit longer--if only because breastmilk poops are so much easier to deal with (water soluble) than solid food poops!

Here's an unposed (if you can believe it!) photo of my whole little family. As others have commented upon seeing the photo, we're going to need a bigger bed, heh.




I want to end this post with an ode to my crockpot. The only way that I have been able to get any real food on the table in the past few weeks has been because I discovered the wonderful crockpot. I think the one we have at our house originally belonged to my MIL, and I've been using the heck out of it. So far, I've made many batches of steel cut oats (which I eat rewarmed with milk, almonds, raisins, and honey in the morning while nursing--trying not to drip on Sprout); a curried apple-zucchini-bean soup (I thought it was pretty good, but the hubby didn't like it); BBQ tofu (that the hubby liked); veggie soup with cabbage, chickpeas, celery, carrots, and tomatos; vegetarian 3-bean chilli (dinner tonight!); Jamaican red bean soup (quite good, with coconut milk); and sweet n' sour tofu with broccoli (I think cabbage does better in the crockpot than broccoli, but it still came out OK).

I'm on the look-out for more vegetarian crockpot recipes (preferrably ones that can cook for 8-10 hours while I'm at work or for 3 hours when I'm home on the weekend). Send any recipe recommendations my way!