Happy 4 Month Birthday Georgia!

Today Georgia is 4 months old. Every month on the 25th, my grandma calls to tell Georgia Happy Month Birthday! It's very sweet that she keeps track of these milestones and celebrates with us all the way in Missouri!

I can hardly believe four months has passed. At her 4 month check up this week we realized just how much she has grown and developed. Weighing in at 14 lb. 12 oz, 25" long, and a 16 1/2" head, that's a 5 lb. gain in weight, 3 1/4" gain in length, and 2" gain in head size. She is at the 75th percentile on all counts.

While waiting for the doctor to come in, I reviewed with her the 4 month milestones. As she kicked and tore the paper underneath her to shreds, we were able to check off all but two. Rolling over and understanding that just because something isn't visible doesn't mean it's gone.

She was really into trying to roll over for a couple of weeks, but she has since learned to scoot and that satisfies her. I often purposefully set her down where she is looking at me upside down to encourage her to roll over and see me right side up; but she's clever and just scoots herself around to see me right side up. Gotta give her snaps for figuring that out!

Whether she understands that people and things come and go OR understands it and simply doesn't like it is up for debate, but she is definitely experiencing a little separation anxiety when we leave her to nap (her prefered solution is to hold our fingers until she gets drowsy) or other people are around and she loses track of me. It's ironic that people want to hold her and interact with her, but when they take her, she just stares at me and ignores them. I try to convince them to let me hold her until she relaxes and becomes very social before pass-the-baby begins.

A little side story...my mom teases me how many people hold Georgia because I have often accused her of letting everyone in the world hold me when I was a baby. I drew this deduction from the many many many people who have told me in my lifetime that they held me when I was a baby. The strangest of these interactions was when I was maybe ten and went with my dad and brother to the Chouteau Theater north of the river, sat down in a dark theater, and had a woman lean over to me and say, "Oh...I held you when you were a baby!" She was one of my mom's co-workers and I still can't quite figure out how she knew me in a dark theater...

We have loved Georgia from the start and fell in love with her at 8 weeks when we saw her heart beat flickering and arms and legs forming, but nothing could prepare us for the overwhelming, overtaking emotions of bonding with her in these few short months. Everyone kept telling us it gets better and better, and they are right!

Noah loves to come home to her smiling face. I love to watch her wake up and smile. She's started laughing (which greatly validates our feelings that we are funny people) and has added strange animalistic squealing noises to her talking. There really is a difference! She talks to people (and loves other babies) but squeals to herself. She touches our faces and when we all snuggle together in bed, she likes to lay between us, one hand on each of us.

I'm afraid I've taken too many pictures and videos of her because she completely understands when we have the camera and gets rather serious and stares into the lens. She is absolutely her father's daughter...they enjoy making faces in the mirror together...and trust me, she loves that little girl she sees!