4 Months Old! (With Pictures)

Today my dear sweet baby girl turned 4 months old. I am really amazed at how fast time has gone while at the same time being saddened by it. I love to watch her grab her feet and stuff her fingers and toes in her mouth - at the same time - thus leaving her face, clothes and hands soaking wet majority of the time. She smiles and laughs constantly, only crying when she's tired or to let me know that I'm not pulling my boob out fast enough for her. She loves eating her rice cereal and being around people. She has started to giggle when I make noises at her or nuzzle my nose into her neck, cheek or belly. I love her so much! Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking all those years when I said I didn't wanna have kids, the past 4 months have been truly amazing. She truly enriches my life and I cannot imagine our life without her. I previously thought I had a pretty perfect life (well as perfect as perfect could be) with Brandon but she has added so much more than I ever could have guessed or imagined...and we can be together for eternity! Anyway, here are some pictures that we took today.

Oh, before I forget (again) I failed to update you all on Y's Torticollis. She had her final physical therapy visit on December 23rd and she is doing great. She still has a tendency to tilt her head when she is upset or tired but according to her therapist that is normal and to be expected. When that happens we'll just do her stretches and she'll be fine. Sorry I failed to mention it before now but with the holidays I feel like I am just getting my head back on straight.

100

This is post number 100, woohoo!!! Hard to believe that I've posted that many times in less than a year. I guess with the pregnancy I had quite a lot to say, not to mention I actually had time to say it all. Sometimes I miss having all that free time, or at least being able to dictate my own schedule. One day that will happen again, it'll probably just be many years down the road when we've had all of our kids and they've all started school. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, lets get down to the nitty gritty.

Y had therapy today and she is doing exceptionally well!!! Her therapist is pretty amazed at the progress she has made and kept talking to Y telling her that it is all due to mommy's hard work. As I thought about that tonight, I thought about how wrong that therapist really was. I mean, sure B and I do her stretches and exercises with her but we honestly can't take credit for her quick progression. There has been a higher power at work in all this. Before she started her physical therapy she was given a priesthood blessing by her dad, granddad and uncle. Many prays have been offered up, diligently, on her behalf. So as much as I would like to, I know that I can't really take the credit for this. Even in a minor case of torticollis it would take a minimum of 3 months to correct and we're looking at just one month of therapy when all is said and done. We've been at this for a couple weeks now and her therapist said today that she can't see Y showing any preference any more. She is able to move and support her neck on both sides pretty evenly. We're extremely grateful for this blessing.

As for other news...Y LOVES television, much to my dismay. I dunno, maybe I'm just weird, but I really don't want her to watch TV. I hadn't really noticed her watching it really until sometime late last week. I had her sitting on my lap facing forward and I picked her up to turn her around so that I could play with her and she kept her head turned toward the television. Whenever I would turn her so far around that she couldn't see it, she would get very upset. This gave us a good laugh for a little while I must admit. But we've noticed her watching it a lot since then. She also likes to look at this chime that I have hanging in the house, she also likes it when we make it move so she can hear the noise. She is talking and smiling all the time now and brings more joy to our lives than I ever thought possible. She's up to 6 pairs of shoes now (like mother like daughter). She has officially worn every piece of 0-3 month clothing that she owns, which for those of you who haven't seen her closet, is no small feat. I take her home to NC for the first time in 2½ weeks, and I am extremely nervous about traveling with her. I have a 1 hour 15 minute flight (30 minutes in the air) from Detroit to Chicago, then a 1 hour layover, a 1 hour 45 minute flight from Chicago to Raleigh and then a 1 to 1½ hour drive home from the airport. Hopefully she's a good traveler because I don't wanna deal with a screaming 3 month old. I am really looking forward to her meeting her PopPop as well as her uncle, aunt and cousins. In talking to my mom, I mentioned how different it would be for Y. She's really not accustomed to being surrounded by so many people, typically it's just me, her and B. Another huge difference will be the noise level. With only 3 people in our house, you can imagine that it's pretty quiet...well back home it's is completely the opposite. Always loud and something is always going on. Babies are resilient so I am sure she will adjust fairly quickly but it will still be very interesting nonetheless.

Well it's my bedtime so I will say goodnight and leave you with only one picture for now! Goodnight!

This is what they mean by, "Sleeping like a baby."

Updates and Photos

On Thursday Y officially started her physical therapy and well, so far so good! We learned that she has great rotation and range of motion, however, we do need to work on stretching and strengthening the muscles on her left side. To do this they taught us an exercise to perform to stretch and another to strengthen. We do it each time that we change her diaper simply as a reminder to do the exercises. Luckily for us she doesn't mind doing them at all and even though we've only been doing it for a few days now it seems as if she is making some progress. We are supposed to go in for an appointment twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, until the problem is corrected and since she's not that severe of a case, hopefully that won't be for too long. She is now 10 weeks old and growing so fast. Sometimes I think back to the day she was born and I'm in awe by how fast it has all gone by and then I think ahead 18 years and think that at that point I'll still be sitting and thinking about how it all went by so fast. But for now I'm holding on to each day and just cherishing it for what it is. Babies change your entire perspective on life. Everything that I do now is done in consideration of how it could potentially affect her life and I am so much more cautious now than I used to be. I've even slowed down my driving speed, both when I'm driving with her and without her in the car, because I don't wanna increase the chance of something happening to me and thus causing me not to be able to be there for her like a mother should be. Granted that I can't control everything that happens, but I certainly can try to change the things that are within my control - so no more practicing for the Autobahn for me! I love that little girl sooooo much and it only increases with each smile that she gives me. It's also helped by the fact that she is sleeping through the night now. I mean, a couple weeks ago she started sleeping until 5am and that was great! Then she moved it to 5:30-5:45am and that was even better! But now, she lets mommy sleep until 7am, I'm in heaven!!! It allows for nights like this when I know I should go to bed but then I think to myself, "Hey, she'll sleep in until 7." I'm lovin' this and to top it all off, on Saturday she woke up at 7am, I fed her, she went back to sleep and I put her back in her crib anticipating that she would only sleep another hour of two (if that) but to my pleasant surprise she slept until about 11:15am. I actually had to go in and check on her to make sure she was alright. So things are going great and I finally feel like I am settling in to motherhood. It is such a drastic change, more so than I could have ever imagined and I realize now that this is nothing that I could have planned for. Yes we planned to have a baby, but I never ever could have planned or predicted the way it would change our lives and the things that you want out of life. I want to be better than what I am because I want to be better for her. Now I only need to remember all these feelings in the future when she begins to talk back to me and I begin to lose my temper, haha. So when that time comes, please send me back and tell me to read this post, I'll need the refresher I'm sure. But long story short - I LOVE being Y's mommy!

Anyway, enjoy the pictures:

I hate snow, even in small amounts!

After we finished her stretching exercises.

Look at how thick those thighs are getting! Breast milk...it does a body good! But then again with the amount that she kicks those legs they probably won't stay that way for too long!

Brandon was gone grocery shopping so Yanna & I started snapping pictures, as best we could with only one hand.

In one word...BREATHTAKING!! My baby's gorgeous and even she knows it!

Read the bib, not the face!

My two favorite people in the whole wide world, I really couldn't ask for a better life!

A Little News & A Lotta Pictures

Y starts physical therapy on Thursday and she will go twice a week "from here on out." What does "from here on out" mean, I have no clue but it sounds like a pretty long time! I am just happy that I was finally able to get her an appointment quickly. I called two other hospitals and they both said it would be at least a few weeks before they could get her in so I finally called the children's hospital again and was transferred from person to person until I could find the one that I needed. The same one that I've been waiting for to call me for the past week. Her reply to me was, "You were on my list to call today," (uh huh, sure I was)! Anyway, here are some pictures and even a video or two.

Hiding in the Rain forest

Gangsta Baby!

Posing with Uncle L

Can you tell how much she loves her daddy?

A couple more before bed.

Saying goodbye to Uncle L before he leaves for his mission. (She'll be 2 the next time he sees her and #2 will probably be on the way).

Random videos of her happy times.

Doctor's Visit & Shots

Well if you haven't guessed from the title of the post, Y had a visit with her pediatrician and received shots today. I took her to the county health department to get her immunizations because our health insurance doesn't cover them (who's ever heard of such a thing) so it ended up being way cheaper for us than had we done it at the doctor's office. Anyway, she did really well, I was honestly surprised at how well she did as was the lady who gave her the shots. She did cry but only while getting the shots. After the needle was in and out she'd quit crying. She also hasn't been very cranky or upset for the remainder of the day. She has slept quite a bit (which I've enjoyed) and while she was awake she was her usual smiling and happy self.

As for the doctor's visit, there was good and bad. The good: she's now 12lbs, 23¾ inches long with a head circumference of 15½ inches. For those of you who have asked about her color (pigmentation) there is still hope for her getting darker, Keep hope alive!!! But really she is a healthy, happy baby! The bad: apparently she has what is called torticollis, which is fancy doctor language for a head tilt. Her doctor said that it's congenital torticollis so she either developed it while still in the uterus or during the whole birthing process. The good news is that it is totally treatable. I am taking her to get xrays on Monday to make sure that there's not some type of tissue mass causing it and we also have to start taking her to physical therapy. There we will learn the techniques we need to know in order to stretch the muscle and teach her proper balance and all that stuff. From what I've read online this may take up to a year or she may even have to have surgery to correct it, but that is pretty drastic and from what I understand doesn't happen all that often, so we're remaining optimistic. If you look at the pictures to the right you can see what I mean by the way she tilts her head to her left side. This weekend B's family is going to visit so while they're here we're gonna make sure she gets a Priesthood Blessing. Also add her name to your prayers and we're sure this will pass without any problems or complications. One of the websites that I visited said that first time parents often mistake it for just the floppy neck of a newborn. And that website was completely right because that is definitely what I attributed it to being. However, now that the doctor has pointed it out I have been able to pinpoint things that I should have noticed before. Like the way she likes to hold her head when in certain positions or how she hates some when he head is in another position. But anyway, like I said before, it is totally treatable and not something that we think she will have to live with for the rest of her life. It's just sad knowing that she has a problem like this and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it and I always tend to expect the worse out of every situation. It's something I'm working on but, hey, it takes time!

If you are curious and wanna read up on it yourself, here are some of the websites that I visited: Torticollis Kids, Baby Center and Wikipedia. They're in the order that I found them most helpful!