4 Months

Yeah - I know what they say - time flies. Wow though, it really does. I can't believe Aurora is 4 months old already!!!!

Her 4 month check up went well. We got an official weigh in and I have to say that I was surprised - she was smaller than I thought. She's still a chunker :) at 15lbs 4 oz, but I was expecting 16lbs or more. That puts her in the 83 percentile on the NORMAL scale - not the premie scale. So she is all caught up. She is also long - in the 78 percentile at 25 inches. That means she has grown half a foot since she was born!

Aurora had a good check-up. She's healthy and developmentally she is on track. The doctor confirmed that she is teething (yeah, the sudden fits of screaming told me that started a few weeks ago), but unfortuntely those teeth aren't anywhere near breaking through the gums. The few places that I thought I saw teeth coming in are actually cysts. Weird, but apparently that is totally normal and they aren't painful for her. Apparently we shouldn't be expecting to see any teeth for about another month, but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel them...

I was a little disappointed that the doctor said no to swimming and sunscreen - he said not until 6 months which kind of puts a damper on our summer plans, but I guess there will be lots of time for all that stuff in the future.

Aurora also got her second round of shots and that was no fun. It was a little funny though - she screamed just as loudly when the doctor checked her ears as she did when she got the shots. It's like she has two levels of emotion - happy and screaming. She doesn't get kind of unhappy, she gets pissed. She is a very opinionated baby. So honestly I didn't feel as bad for her with the shots (not that I didn't feel bad at all - it just didn't make me cry this time), because her scream level didn't change between something that didn't cause her pain and something that did. She did look extremely shocked about the shots though - she got this look on her face like, "holy cow what is happening to me?????" She calmed down really fast once I picked her up and didn't seem to have issues the rest of the day - no extra fussing or fever, so that was nice.

On the up side the doctor did say yes to solids! We started rice cereal today and Aurora loved it. She was very eager to eat and even though she ended up getting more of it on her bib than in her mouth she loved chewing on the spoon and was very excited to try. I had so much fun feeding her. It is definitely more work, more messy, and more time consuming than breast feeding, but it is so FUN to do something new. And as she tries more and more foods it will be so cool to see what she likes and doesn't like.