4 months old! Woa!

Backtracking... just realized that I started to blog several weeks ago but never posted it.

I got through my 5 weeks back at work full time.  It was great having my mom here to watch Emma the first two weeks while I was at work. It gave me great peace of mind to know Emma was at home getting attention from my mom. My mom sent me at least one photo every day. Suds spoiled us by making us lots of yummy food too.

Emma started to do a bunch of new things around the time I went back to work. She sucks on her hand/sometimes her fingers too. A few days before Suds came to Atlanta she started to drop her night feeding. She is actually a good solid sleeper and barely makes a peep at night. I feel pretty lucky since this started before she was 3months old. Not bad. She can hold onto things if you put them in her hand. She seems to prefer her left hand over her right hand. Will be interesting if she ends up being a leftie. She loves practicing standing. She hasn't eaten any food yet. We have let her lick a number of foods. Strawberries was first. She really loved to seem the clementine, banana and canned pineapple. She didn't seem interested in a crouton (didn't like) or carrots (neutral). She likes sweets like her mama. She's starting to kick more. She loves watching people eat. She also loves watching TV. She especially liked watching the Masters golf tournament. Our only guess is that she liked the greenery, but who really knows? She's still fussy/colicky for a short period every night between 6ish and 8ish. It usually only lasts for 15 minutes or so, but it's a long 15 minutes.

After my mom left, my mother in law came to town for a couple of weeks to watch Emma. We were so appreciative of her time here. Just like when my mom was in town, I felt so comfortable leaving Emma when I went to work because I knew she wass getting lots of love and attention. And because I got daily photos of her! I'm already upset about having to take her to mother's day out (MDO) when we go back to Memphis. I'm sure this is the reaction of most moms when they drop their child off at daycare, right? I'm only planning on her going to MDO twice a week for 5hrs per day. I try to justify me working by telling myself that it's good for Emma to go to MDO. But if I really think about it, I'm not convinced, especially when she's so young. I like the idea of child care when she can interact with other kids, but we're not to that point yet. I guess I should just focus on what an amazing opportunity this is for me to work part time from home with my current job for the next year. I couldn't be happier.

Steve finished his last day of classes on May3rd. Woohoo! We celebrated by going to a Braves game with Ravi, which was super fun! It also meant that Emma was in daddy daycare for my last week of work. It was great having Steve home with her. I really appreciated that he was able to stay home with her. I think it made me feel better when he told me that he could only get an hour's worth of work done in a day. Not that he ever gave me a hard time about not getting stuff done, but now I know that he knows how hard it is to get anything done when you're home with a kid. It does seem to get a little easier as Emma is getting older, but she likes attention most of time. I guess what baby wouldn't like that? :-)

She's changing all the time. About a week ago, Emma found her feet. She loves grabbing her feet and toes. It's amazing how flexible little babies are. I'm less convinced that she'll be a leftie. She's using both her hands to grab at toys. She's still working on her hand-eye coordination but seems to improve significantly every day. It also seems like teething is coming next. She's had her hands in her mouth frequently even when she's not hungry. She seems to like her teething toys. I'm hoping her teeth don't come in too soon. I'm not sure I'm ready for that! She still nurses on occasion. For the past week, she has started waking up in the middle of the night to eat. I breastfeed her for these night feedings and early in the morning. She prefers a bottle the rest of the day. I'm still pumping but not as frequently as I once was- typically about 4x per day now. It's a pain but it's so much cheaper than formula! We're still not bathing her on a super regular basis. 1-2x per week. I look forward to her being able to sit up well on her own so we can have baths more frequently, especially once she likes to play in the water!

I'm going to work on putting photos on Picasa for everybody to see.