Birdie went to see Dr. Cook last week for her 4-month “wellness” check-up. She weighed in at 13 pounds 8 ounces, which put her at 50 percentile in her weight. She was 25 inches long and I can’t remember her head measurement but it fell in the 90 percentile. So I guess that means she is long, skinny and has a big noggin! Sounds like there is definitely some Payne in her.
Poor Birdie had to get four more shots for her vaccinations. They nurse gave them to her super-fast – it was over in about 10 seconds. Of course there is a delayed reaction to the pain since Birdie didn’t know what was going on. Her face turned as red as a tomato, her bottom lip rolled out as far as it could go, her sweet little face got all squished up, her eyes closed and her mouth opened to scream…but nothing came out! OK, I know at this point I am not supposed to laugh at my child’s pain, but the look of indignation on her face was priceless – as if she was wondering what the heck she had done to deserve that! As if she was saying “MOM! How could you let this happen to me!?!” A few seconds later the sound caught up with the face and she screamed at the top of her lungs for about 15 seconds. After that, she stopped and acted like nothing ever happened.
On the home front, Montgomery has now taken to NOT wanting to sit down for extended periods of time. She no longer wants to rock in the glider or sit on the sofa. She’ll tolerate the bouncy chair or the swing for short intervals – a bit longer if she has “her bunny” with her. She wants to be upright and moving at all time – which means “Get on your feet Mom and walk me around”! As you can imagine, this is exhausting to some extent. At least she’s started to take a regular nap around 2:00pm for at least an hour or more. I’m trying to get her to go to bed earlier around 9pm rather than 10:30pm. Our bedtime routine consists of turning off all the lights except one dim one in the living room, then turning on Sarah McLachlan’s Afterglow CD and singing along while walking and rocking her in my arms. On the whole, this works pretty well. She usually falls asleep or is on the way out by the third song. But all my baby books say that I need to stop this soon and start letting her fall asleep on her own without my help. So I’m going to start to wean her off this process around month five.
Birdie has developed a growing interest in the dogs – particular Tank and Max since they tend to be around the house more. Our Border Collies – Abby and Willis – haven’t shown any interested in her but that might change once she starts to walk. I think they figure they can’t “herd” her anywhere so what’s the point? Max (a brindle Catahoula) just licks her face – which makes her giggle and laugh. She loves to grab Tank’s thick white fur (he’s a Great Pyrenees) – she’s even given it a few good tugs and he doesn’t mind at all.
Here are some photos. She’ll probably kill me later for posting half naked pics of her on the Internet!
