Hellobee

My goodness, it feels like the last month passed in the blink of an eye. Things have been very busy in the Starfish family, and the girls continue to develop and grow in ways big and small!

Lilly on the left, Audrey on the right. Trying for their best “Blue Steel” looks…

Physical

Younger baby Audrey continues to be bigger than her older sister. At four months old, she already fits in some nine months clothing. I was so worried about her weight, but at her recent pediatrician appointment we learned that her weight is exactly in-line with her height and her head size – all above the 95^th percentile! Baby Audrey has always had more jerky movements than her sister and this continues today; my favorite is when she feels happy and smiles with her head flipping joyously to the side or to the back. Just this week she started to roll over regularly and she is doing a great job with tummy time. I am regularly amazed by her strength and perseverance as I watch Audrey move her big body.

A month ago, we started working with a physical therapist for older baby Lilly who had started to develop a flat head. She has made such great progress with her prescribed exercises that her appointments are now farther apart. Lilly now regularly rolls and is loving tummy time so much now that she is even starting to sleep at night on her tummy sometimes (although we do always place her to sleep on her back, our physical therapist says it is okay for her to sleep on her tummy if she turns that way herself). The only area that Lilly was still behind on was finding and playing with her toes and feet; the physical therapist recommended leaving her sock-less so she could find those body parts and it has worked perfectly and she recently started playing a great deal with her feet.

My current area of physical concern (I have a new one each month!) is with baby Audrey. She started developing a rash or baby acne about 4-6 weeks ago on her face. The pediatrician thought it was bad enough that she recommended using Cortaid ointment a couple of times a day. A week using Cortaid has now passed and it doesn’t seem to be clearing up, leading me to now think this could be baby acne rather than a rash or allergy. I hope that whatever hormones are raging through my little pumpkin and wreaking havoc on her poor face will calm down soon!

Lilly found her foot! Poor Audrey has developed quite a rash or baby acne on her face.

In other physical news, Lilly can sit up on her own sometimes. Baby Audrey is not quite there and frequently tumbles to the side when we place her in a sitting position. Still, within the past month we installed the girls’ high chairs to our kitchen island and I like to sit them there and sing songs to them while I’m working on things in the kitchen. Lilly’s current favorite activity is to listen to a musical toy and watch mommy dance to the various songs; her whole face lights up and she giggles with delight each and every time.

This pic shows Lilly’s (left) better sitting ability than Audrey’s (right) right now.

Both girls love their jumperoo, and standing and jumping in mommy and daddy’s laps. Both tend to place a lot of weight toward the front of their bodies and aren’t anywhere close to standing on their own, but they do enjoy the practice and fun.

Audrey loving the jumperoo!

It has also been fun to watch the girls interact more with toys. Their favorites are their ring-a-links, their oballs, and anything crinkly that makes noise when they grab them.

Baby Lilly and her ring-a-links and silver rattle and Baby Audrey and her oball.

The last notable development on the physical side has been thumb sucking. We used to depend so much on our stash of Wubbanubs, but these have gradually fallen out of favor in light of the girls’ discovery of their own thumbs.

Thumbs, fingers, EVERYTHING in the mouth!

Social

On the social aspect, the best development has been that the babies are starting to realize that each other is there. They have been staring at each other more and more, and babble at each other. It’s also very funny when they try to touch each other, which ends up being pretty entertaining as their coordination hasn’t caught up to their intentions and they end up hitting each other or shoving their feet in each other’s faces!

The girls getting to know one another.

They also both are regularly laughing now. Older baby Lilly laughs much more than younger baby Audrey. As I mentioned before, Lilly gets a big kick out of her mommy’s dance moves. She also goes wild giggling when her daddy gives her a shower of kisses.

We have been bracing ourselves for Audrey to hit the four-month regression as her older sister did a month ago. For whatever reason, it hasn’t come on full force. Audrey has always been more relaxed and chill than her older sister so maybe she’s simply taking things in stride. Or maybe we’ve got a storm coming any day now – only time will tell!

Audrey much more relaxed at four months than her sister was.

Baby Lilly seems to have emerged from her four-month regression with very clear stranger anxiety. Our nanny tells us that she regularly gets upset when strangers get too close to her stroller. For our part, we have noticed that she has a hard time when we get a sitter that she doesn’t know, or even when her grandmothers get too close too quickly.

The girls have continued on their daily adventures with their nanny. They regularly socialize with a group of babies in the neighborhood, and attend story and music events. They also go to the park although with fall taking hold here in Chicago, their days are likely limited there! As a family, we had a great time with a group of friends going apple picking in late September. Apple picking has always been a tradition for Mr. Starfish and his mom so it felt good to keep this tradition going.

Mommy and Audrey apple picking.

Sleep

Since my last update, I purchased a Zipadee-Zip for Baby Audrey and also eliminated the Zipadee-zip for her. I had initially thought that it would be a great sleep aid for her because she frequently startles herself awake. However, after Audrey’s 4-month pediatrician appointment we were instructed to stop using the Zipadee-Zip because it was stopping her from self-soothing with her hands. Indeed, since eliminating the suit, she has gone four nights in a row sleeping 11-12 hours! She seems to sleep best when we dress her in fleece footie pajamas. We are obviously grateful that her sleep has improved so much, but it’s interesting how we also worry about it. Now that she is sleeping so well, I wake up and wonder if she’s still breathing or if something is wrong with her! It’s almost as though mommy needs some sleep training herself to stop this worrying…

Baby Lilly is still waking once a night, these days between 1 and 3 in the morning. She doesn’t eat as much as her sister during the day so we are hesitant to eliminate this additional feeding.

One thing that I am starting to wonder about is the girls’ nap schedules. They currently take four naps a day, for about 45 minutes to 90 minutes each. My sense is that other babies have fewer naps but they are longer. I am not interested in changing their schedule at the moment because it works for the girls, our nanny, and us. But I am hopeful that they start to gravitate to longer naps in the near future…

Yoga stretches at the park!

Eating

We have started solids! Both girls got the go-ahead from the pediatrician at their respective 4-month check-ups to experiment with food. We went old school and started the girls off with rice cereal, and have introduced some pureed veggies as well, including sweet potatoes, peas and carrots. Our nanny is a believer in baby led weaning so we are excited to learn from her about that as I just haven’t found the time to put any research into that approach on my own.

So far, watching the girls taste different foods has been really fun. Watching their hilarious facial expressions as they taste new flavors, shrugging as they make a complete mess of their outfits and bibs, and cracking up as they figure out a spoon in their mouths – these are memories that I won’t soon be forgetting.

Lilly and Audrey enjoy some carrots

On to a new month, new laughs, new foods and new memories!