Woo hoo! Charlie is sleeping soundly right now, and I don't have to wake her up to feed her in time to get to
Stroller Strides for another 20 minutes. Typing with two hands isn't something I do often any more, so this is a real treat.
Little Charlie Jo is growing up so fast! She has discovered her feet, but she doesn't quite have the abdominal strength to get those puppies up into her mouth yet. Her hands are another story. She shoves them in her mouth all the time now. She is smiling lots and lots, but still hates riding in the car. She hasn't been rolling over as much any more. I'm chalking that up to her body growing and her arm strength not keeping up with her weight gain. Looks like I need to be getting her even more tummy time!
I weighed myself both holding Charlie and not holding Charlie, and it appears (based on our super crappy scale) that she weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 pounds. Pacey the cat still outweighs her by at least a pound or two, but he still acts like she's some big scary monster. Wait 'til she's old enough to grab onto that tail, buddy.
Charlie is sleeping nine hours in a row at night on a regular basis now. That's without waking up to nurse at all! (I love hearing people say that their kid sleeps through the night, waking up only for a "brief feeding". That's not sleeping through the night in my book.) She's nursing like a champ during the day except for a brief "nursing strike" -- that's what the books call a baby refusing to eat for no explicable reason for a short period of time -- earlier this week. Apparently, even non-union babies can sometimes go on strike, but it looks like Charlie has resolved whatever issues she was having and concessions have been made (or some other labor union terminology that would be appropriate to use in this situation). She has refused to drink from a bottle for the past 6 weeks (either formula or breast milk) but I'm not too stressed out about that. Even during the strike, she wouldn't bottle feed. What a goofy kid.
She loves sleeping in her swing while I take a shower and get ready in the morning, and she is getting pretty good at entertaining herself in the bouncy seat while I make dinner in the evening. She still would rather be held most of the time, but she will spend brief periods of time lying in her play yard (the modern term for "play pen") or on her play mat swatting away at dangling toys and doing what Corey calls her "soft shoe" routine (wiggling and kicking up a storm while flailing her arms in time to music only she can hear). She's grabbing toys more and more, and I caught her pulling one into her mouth yesterday evening. Charlie's favorite thing to do is to lie on her changing table and talk and talk and talk to you. "A-goo" and gurgling are the major "words" of her vocabulary, but they're still pretty funny to hear.
She has big spit-up days but then goes for a day or two without blurping at all. We both sometimes change clothes several times in one day, but not quite so often as before. Corey and I still rock her to sleep at night (which "attachment parenting" method advocates support, but most other parenting experts frown upon) and put her down in a swaddle, but we plan to wean her off of both over the next month or so. She almost never sleeps on her own (without being held) during the day for more than a half an hour, but she gets several of those "power naps" each morning and afternoon and I think they add up to a decent amount of sleep. She seems to be thriving and gaining weight just fine, so I'm not going to worry about the length of her naps just quite yet. She's holding her head very steady when we sit her in the
Bumbo, and can keep her head steady when I pull her up from lying on her back into a seated position using her arms. We call those "baby sit-ups".
We're looking forward to her next pediatrician visit on July 11th, when we just might get the go-ahead to start slowly introducing solids like rice cereal. We'll see what Dr. Hood says and try to be patient, but it sounds like so much fun to spoon feed her.
Whoops - looks like Booger is waking up right on time for me to get her fed. After Stroller Strides, we're heading into Nashville to have lunch with Charlie's Vandy Aunties (Kathryn, Angela and Lillian). Fun fun fun!
