The sun gets up earlier every day and that means so does the daughter. Since day light savings time went into effect Genevieve has been waking up a little earlier each day. Some days she wakes up at 6:00 AM. She doesn't always cry. More often than not she just fidgets. She still doesn't really have any locomotion skills so she is forced to amuse herself in other ways. She'll lift her legs as high as she can and then slam them down against the crib mattress. This causes her to bounce and all her toys to shake. She loves this. On the monitor this sounds unbelievably loud. Fortunately she doesn't do this all the time.
What she does do all the time is run her fingers up and down against the bars of her cage...err..crib. Like a convict rattling his cup against the steel bars Genevieve will click her nails against her wooden ones. Over the baby monitor this is just loud enough to keep you from sleeping. Sometimes she'll wake up around 5:00 AM rattle the bars for 30 minutes and then go back to sleep. I expect soon she'll be taking up the harmonica.
To combat the early rising we've put blankets over her windows. It doesn't block out all the light but it does get most of it. So far this hasn't done anything but we'll give it a few days. I would try to keep her up later at night but she's been getting very fussy the closer it gets to bed time and she is starting to go to bed closer to 9:30 PM instead of just starting her feeding then.
If she keeps this up we might have to try some other prison control tactics though she is already in solitary confinement.
I know she is a little young to have a retrospective but so much has changed over the last few months that you might want to take a look back. Compare these pictures:
Genevieve in her car seat less than a week old
Genevieve in her car seat today
Genevieve in her crib when she just got home from the hospital
Whether blowing bubbles, raspberries or trumpeting my daughter loves spitting. She doesn't do it all the time but the times when she does a spitting session can last 20 minutes or more. She is very proud of herself. She grins and giggles as the spittle runs down her chin soaking her collar. Carrie has informed me that we need to wipe it off or she can get a rash due to her chin being wet all the time. Like a good father I pick up my nearest napkin, wash-cloth or cloth diaper and wipe her chin dry. However, being a precocious four-month old she attempts to chew on anything I attempt to wipe her mouth with. As I bring the cloth near her chin she turns towards it already moving her mouth in anticipation of getting her gums on it. A quick wiping motion across the face and her head turns like a little a little racing fan watching the pack move in front of her seat. Well, more like a racing fan that is trying to eat the pack.
She certainly loves putting things in her mouth. Any new texture, color or body part is fair game. This makes dressing her even more of a challenge. She is constantly trying to eat her clothing as I pull it over her head. She also seems to have an uncontrollable desire to put her hands in her mouth while I'm trying to pull them through her sleeves. Without fail, whichever hand is currently in mid sleeve is the one that MUST go into her mouth. She fights and struggles to pull it closer to her mouth as I fight and struggle to finish pulling it through the sleeve. As soon as it breaks free of the cuff she quickly loses interest but now it is on to the next hand which is about to be in mid-sleeve.
While she doesn't quite have the fine motor skills down yet I did watch her pick up her pacifier today and stick it into her mouth. This might be the start of something wonderful or it could just be a brief glimmer of things to come. Since she rolled over 2 months ago she only repeated the trick on one other occasion. I'm sure self-pacification is going to be the same way. I wonder if Gerber makes duct-tape.
It seems that two days ago nature flipped another little switch in Genevieve's head and our daughter has passed a new developmental milestone. I'm not talking about the rolling over or grasping for toys. I'm talking about the ability to wake up for no reason in the middle of the night and cry. In the past she would wake up because there was some basic necessity that was missing either warmth, food or cleanliness. However, this is no longer the case. She is more than happy to wake up for no good reason and cry.
The first night when this occurred she woke up at 5AM in the morning. We assumed that due to the fact that she hadn't eaten too much the night before she was just hungry earlier than usual. Carrie groggily tramped off into the nursery and fed baby G. However, last night she woke up at 1AM, 3AM and again at 4:30 AM. At first Carrie gave her a pacifier and went back to bed. Then for the second event she gave her gripe water and a pacifier. By the third event we had both had it. We decided to pow-wow. Sure it was early, but we weren't sleeping. We discussed our options. We could go in there again and soothe her or we could let her cry it out. We both agreed she wasn't crying out of need. Instead of the wails of an unhappy child she was instead making the whines of a bored baby. These whimpers occasionally erupted in a cry or two but quickly subsided back to whines. We decided to let her cry it out.
At 4:45 we had another discussion. Should we go in or wait some more. Waiting was the order of the day and we both tried unsuccessfully to resume our slumber. At 5:00 AM something had to be done. We reviewed all of the things that could be bothering her and came up with only one possibility. Since she hadn't had a poop since last Wednesday perhaps she was dirty. She doesn't always give a full cry for a dirty diaper. I volunteered to go and inspect.
If Genevieve was truly crying out of boredom I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of being taken out of her crib. This would only reinforce the fact that whimpering gets you results. So instead of taking her to the changing table and inspecting her diaper I decided to play Russian roulette. I unzipped her sleeper and rolled her onto her side. I gave a sniff as best I could. Inconclusively there was no odor. After some hesitation, I decided to tempt fate and plunged my finger between the diaper and her bottom. Hoping to feel nothing but a dry diaper but fearing the toxic sludge I might encounter I wiggled my finger. Nothing but a slightly Vaselined cotton weave. Whew. I dodged a bullet on that one. I zipped her back up, gave her a pacifier and went back to bed.
The crying continued until about 5:15. At 5:15 AM she stopped crying. The hiss of the baby monitor seemed like music to my ears. It was over or was it. Unfortunately, it wasn't. At 5:18 she resumed her whimpering. Carrie could take it no longer. She was going to go in there and feed her. "Be strong," I said. "Don't encourage her," I cautioned. Carrie waited. By 5:20 the whines were now about 20 seconds apart and by 5:30 she had cried herself to sleep.
I was warned by some parents that letting your kid cry themselves to sleep is one of the most difficult things to do but I had no idea. For some parents it is probably the anguish over letting your kid suffer. For us it was more the anguish of not getting any rest. Let's hope tonight is better.
I can't say how many times I've heard someone comment, "What a beautiful boy you have." Usually I don't want to cause a fuss and I just say thank you. Odds are I will never see this person again and what difference does it make if they haven't correctly identified the gender of my child. Sometimes, however, I end up in a situation where I keep seeing this person and they will continue under that assumption. This puts me in an awkward situation. Do I correct them now or just play along? It bothers me as a parent to have my child misidentified but not necessarily enough to correct strangers.
For example, Carrie and I were in a restaurant when the hostess commented on how lovely our boy was. My initial thought was to not say anything since we would probably only see this woman again on the way out. Due to some incredible crankiness I spent most of the meal in the lobby where the hostess continued to comment to me and others how cute my boy was. Every time the word boy came out of her mouth it grated on my nerves. Clearly, I had chosen poorly.
I think that some people assume Genevieve must be a boy due to her short hair. They look at her size and assume that she is about 12 months old but with hair that short she must be a boy. I'm not certain why the pink outfit doesn't clue them in. Sure, babies are androdgenous and when she is dressed in blue there is no obvious way to know the facts. But come on people!! If a baby is dressed in pink with little ribbons and flowers the safe bet isn't going to be 'boy.'
I, myself, have probably been culpable in similar situations but no longer. I will no longer assume the gender of someone's child. I'll either use gender neutral terms like baby or child or I'll just ask. Don't ever assume. I think the rule of thumb for children is much like the rule of thumb for women, don't ask a woman if she is pregnant unless you can see the baby coming out. Anything else and you're just asking for trouble.
The doctor said that Genevieve is "thriving" nicely, and he still doesn't believe that we should be overly concerned about her weight. He said that she has great muscle tone and is very strong (must be those farmer genes coming out in her). He's pretty sure that her length will eventually catch up with her width, which is good since when she is dressed all in one color she looks very similar to a peanut M&M.
He also said that we will be starting solids at 5 months, unless she feels she needs to start earlier. How will I know if she feels she should start solids sooner? If she eats her current volume and still isn't satisfied, it is time for the big leagues.
As you can see above, Genevieve is already very interested in reading.
Unfortunately, she is also very interested in shoving as many fingers as possible down her throat until she gags and spits up. And then repeats. No picture of that as of yet.
