Vivian - 4 Months

Queen V is 4 months old today. She is growing up so fast! Every day I tell her that she needs to slow down and to not be in such a rush. Of course she doesn’t listen to me (like mother like daughter). This past month has been quite busy. We celebrated our first Christmas and New Years as a family of 3, had our first two trips to the walk in clinic, and about what seems to be 100 explosive poop diapers.

Vivian’s first Christmas was a busy one. You can read a bit about it and see all the photos for it here. For New Year’s we stayed in. Vivian was in bed by 9:30, and slept through the ball drop. Oh well, maybe we will try for it next year? That might be a mistake though ;). We really loved the holidays, and it was amazing to celebrate them all with Vivian. I can’t wait to establish our own traditions!!!!

Over Christmas we were asked a couple of times when we were going to Baptize Vivi. Our answer: we aren’t sure yet. Here is why. We haven’t found/ had the time to find a church and become members here in Oshkosh, and now we have a newborn whose moods are unpredictable, so there needs to be a cry room. She also is a cat napper, her naps are about 20 minutes tops. We do have a church near our house: Most Blessed Sacrament and we would like to go and give it a try to see how we like it. I want to find a great fit. So Oshkosh people… here is my question to you: What church do you go to? (Ben and I are Catholic.) Once we find a church we will decide on a date. Not to mention we haven’t decided on Godparents yet, there are just too many great options at this point and we can’t agree. *bad catholic mom right here.

Over the past few months Vivian has been developing her digestive system. She used to have a BM every day for the first two months. But starting right around the 3 month mark she started having maybe 2 a week (which is normal). But these 2 a week are crazy. They are so stinky now, and most of the time blow out of her diaper. She has gotten several mid-day baths because of this, which maybe is her plan all along. Ugh, the joys of parenthood.

The night of January 2^nd Vivian had a low fever. She had a temp of 100° and was super cranky, after a lot of google-ing we weren’t too concerned at that point, we gave her some acetaminophen and about 15 minutes later she was back to her normal self. Our first thought was that she is teething (we have discovered two little teeth buds). Saturday during the day she was perfectly fine, just a little cranky. Around 4:30pm she felt super warm so we took her temperature again and it was 102.5°. We called the pediatrician that was on call and she said that this was a significant fever, but it was probably her fighting off a bug. She wasn’t vomiting and she didn’t have any diarrhea, and she was eating fine. The doctor said that if we were really concerned we could go to the ER right then, or we could give it a few hours with some acetaminophen and if her fever went down we could wait it out and go to the walk in the next morning. We decided to wait. We took her temp and she was down to 99.8°. Just to be safe we went in any way to make sure her lungs were clear and there were no other issues. The nurse and the doctor just loved her. She was so smiley and cooey. The Doctor said she was congested but her lungs were clear which ruled out influenza and pneumonia (phew), and what she had was probably viral, but if her fever came back we should follow up with our pediatrician. I am really glad we went in, even though we had to sit with the influenza people, and I got to wear a sexy mask because I don’t need the flu. There was a point in there that I was super scared, but thank God for the doctors at Aurora, they are amazing, and really put me at ease.

And this past week Vivi has gotten another cold (her and I are just passing them back and forth I guess). She has a cough and is pretty congested. So we purchased the NoseFrida – The Snot Sucker. Oh my goodness that thing is just amazing. Last night got pretty bad where it sounded like she was haivng trouble breathing, so we brought her in again today, and like we thought it is just a cold. I’m just paranoid because this flu season is so bad, and other things like pneumonia etc.

In my 3 month blog post I mentioned that Vivian was only waking up once during the night for a feeding and was sleeping well. Well… I spoke too soon. We are back to 2-3 nighttime feedings. We are still keeping to the routine of putting her to bed by 10pm at the very latest. This can be from either 1 or two things. She isn’t getting enough to eat from me anymore, or she is going through a growth spurt / developmental leap. I’ll tell you one thing for sure, this momma is tired.

We have started putting her in her room to start the night off. Once she wakes up for her first feeding I go and get her and then she spends the rest of the night in her bassinet in our room, because I am lazy. It’s a start though.

For Christmas Santa got her a jumparoo. And she loves it. There is a frog on one of the sides and she just sits there and “talks” to it. Every now and then she gets really excited, and will squeal and jump. That frog must tell really good stories.

She loves to sit up right (with our help or with the help of the bumbo). She still loves her some tummy time. She rolled over for us one morning while we were relaxing in bed. It was super exciting. Once we put her on the floor for tummy time to see if she would do it again, it was a no go. She is getting there, though! Soon, I think!

For the past few weeks we have been putting Nick JR. on for her. She really likes to eat her hands and watch the bright colors.

4 Months of nursing down. 2 to go! And we are now starting to introduce textures and smells of our food to Vivian. So far she seemed very interested in our Chinese take-out and spaghetti noodles (she grabbed one of the noodles and took a taste even). I’m thinking she will be moving on to normal foods soon, if not then at 6 months. Ben and I have decided that we are going to give Baby Led Weaning (BLW) a try. Baby Led Weaning, quite simply, means letting your child feed themselves from the very start of weaning. You just hand them the food in a suitably-sized piece and if they like it they eat it and if they don’t they won’t. No purees, no ice cube trays, no food processor, no potato masher, no baby rice, no weird fruit and veg combos… just you and your child, eating food that you enjoy with you and your family. She will still get breast milk along with this, until my stock pile is gone.

Other than that the month has been low key. At the beginning of the month Grandma Kathy came by for a visit, and dinner. Vivi had lots of things to tell her. And then Grammy and Grandpy Greenwood and Uncle Jay Jay came to visit for the Packers game last week.

Lets hope the next month will be filled with less visits to the walk in clinic and more sleep!