4 Months Old

I can’t believe our munchkin is four months old. I can’t be sure because I’m not going to go back and read but I’m pretty sure all my monthly posts start out that way. Seriously though, time is flying. She has changed so much from when we brought her home. Zach and I were comparing her four month pictures to her one month picture and cracking up. We don’t go to her four month appointment until Monday so I’ll post her stats then. In the meantime here are some fun things she’s been up to.

• Her hands are in her mouth constantly. We will be relaxing and all the sudden we hear this extremely dramatic sucking noise. Turns out it’s just KMae.

• She talks a ton…she talks and talks and talks. She is so interested in what we have to say and she shows that in her responses.

• She has rolled from her tummy to back. She has started trying to roll from her back to belly. It’s so cute, she puts her feet in the air and then they fall to her side. This puts her almost over the edge. She has technically done it once in the middle of the night...oh it scared me. I heard her crying in her crib so I went in and she was face down. She was swaddled so she couldn’t use her arms to get her back over. Oh, worst feeling ever! We tried to stop swaddling her and that then became the worst night ever. She’s back to swaddled and in her sleep positioner.

• She loves her daddy to sing the peanut butter jelly song to her. If anyone is curious how the song goes call me. It’s seriously so funny! He even does a dance to it.

• She has discovered her toys and loves to play with them...and put them in her mouth.
  

• She loves to stand. She will do it all the time if someone is there to hold her.

• She still loves her swing.

• She is very random in her sleeping. She does great some nights and terrible other nights. There isn’t yet a pattern so we’re not sure what direction we’re heading. I do try to remind myself when I’m up in the middle of the night with her that I’m lucky. I’m lucky I even have the opportunity and I’ll take any extra time I can get with her. Especially now that I’m back at work.

• She is the world’s worst eater. She takes 30+ minutes on a good day to eat 4 ounces. Though, it seems others have better luck with feeding her. I have tried to move up to level two nipples but she’s so dramatic. She chokes so badly and I give in every time. Zach says we need to stick with the level 2 long enough for her to get used to it but I jump ship!

• She’s still tiny. I can’t wait to see what her weight and length are. Everyone that sees her says she is very narrow for her length. That could be due to her terrible eating…not sure. I’m really light and dainty so maybe she gets that from me. OR NOT!

She is just a joy to be around. I think Zach and I say "she's so cute" about 8000 times a day and we find it still doesn't get old. We laugh constantly with her...the smiles never end at the Howarth household. Good times!

Kenleigh's First Christmas

I’m sad to say I didn’t really get any pictures for Kenleigh’s first Christmas. What kind of mom am I? I’ll answer that…I’m the kind of mom that didn’t get any pictures of her daughters first Christmas! I guess we didn’t miss much. It’s not like she was opening presents all day! On Christmas Eve we went to Zach’s parent’s house. That has become tradition and I quite enjoy it! Zach, me, & Kenleigh got some great gifts. It was so much fun to hang out with all the family…Ok the fun part is actually watching all the little kids. They get cuter and cuter. When we got home we got KMae ready for bed and surprised her with one last present. My brother Jarod and his wife Lindsay want all their nieces and nephews (so far only nieces) to open their gift from them on Christmas Eve. Kenleigh was so excited…and by Kenleigh I mean me! Kenleigh made this year so much more exciting. It almost made it harder to wait on St. Nick. We managed. Christmas morning Kenleigh woke us up to see what Santa brought. Or she woke us up to eat…it is all a blur. We got ready and headed to my mom’s house. This was also good times. Again, fun to see the family! By now the girlie was getting tired and was done with all the people. She basically lost it. That was good enough reason for me to agree to hit the road. We got home and just relaxed the rest of the day….relaxed by putting all her entirely too fun toys together. Now that was good times! Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday!

Oh Good Times!

So Zach and I thought it would be fun to get Kenleigh’s pictures taken professionally for Christmas. We had several reasons. She has way cute outfits that she’ll never have any reason to wear. She can wear them once, get the picture taken and never have to see it again. It’s fine. Works for me. She’s the cutest baby ever so why wouldn’t we put it on film every chance we got? And of course, we wanted to do some sort of gift for our parents for Christmas with Kenleigh’s pictures. So a couple weeks before Christmas we made an appointment. We narrowed it down to only two outfits. We napped her, fed her, changed her, and anything else you can think of to make a happy baby. Boy did we succeed. We had about the happiest baby on the planet; and boy was she cute! Well we got to the place and I notice that her eyelids are about as red as you could imagine. Our darling munchkin as you know is a red head. This generally means a bit of fair skin will be involved. Bless her heart – this means if she is tired it will show, whether she knows it or not. The place that was doing her pictures said they did not photo shop. I couldn’t figure out why her eyes were so red. She slept a ton. She was so happy. But it just wasn’t right. What kind of mom would I be to allow these pictures to take place? She just wouldn’t forgive me. So….we rescheduled for the next day. Even better – we napped her, fed her, changed her, and anything else you can think of to make a happy baby. Ha – Success! She was so happy and so darling. We decided to change it up…we used outfit two first this time. We got to the place and we were all ready. The photographer introduced himself and the conversation to follow goes something like this…

Photographer: How does she do on her tummy?

Me: Tummy? Um, ok if you're QUICK. (I really emphasized quick.)

Photographer: Hand her over…….

He puts her on the set ON HER TUMMY, positions her (so cute I’ll add) and then goes and fiddles with his camera for I’m not even kidding what felt like 3 minutes. That’s a long time in infant land. She was ready…and then she wasn’t. It was just too long. She started crying followed by screaming. Nothing calmed her except walking out. Zach walked out, calmed her down and we tried again. The second she saw the photographer she started screaming again. Actually it became pretty funny. She would only cry when she would look at him. Smart little girlie. I told him what makes her mad and he didn’t want to listen. After the second night of trying we gave up. We decided we’ll try again and have her pictures done next month. I posted pictures of her two cute outfits though since now they will likely go to waste! Sorry, the date on my camera is wrong!

Outfit 1 - Darling!

Outfit 2 - Too cute!

KMae Rolls!!!

Kenleigh rolled over today for the first time. I attached a video below. *Disclaimer ~ Please excuse my high pitched voice. I was super excited and I had no idea how I sounded on video. My acting career never took off. Though the dream has never died. Oh, enough about me. Back to the girlie. I was telling Zach last night that I thought she was getting close and low and behold...only a day later. She's such a big girl. I was hoping she would roll over on video and then get so excited with me...instead she rolled over and was done. She finishes off with a yawn. Time for bed! She seriously is the light of our lives. We keep wondering what we ever did before her. Enjoy!