Four Months

Behold the four month cuteness!  Goodness, I love his silly expressions and perfectly round head.

We got a few real laughs this month!  The very first one was when he was sitting on my stomach while I got my eyebrows waxed.  There's one for the baby book!  He also chuckles when I tickle his ribs.  

His hair is coming in super blonde and his eyes are very blue.  Still no teeth despite endless rivers of drool.

He is super mellow when he's being carried or just sitting on our laps.  People even comment on how cool he is.  But when it's bedtime, he hits the wall hard and there's no consoling him.   Likewise, if he's in bed and wakes up, there are zero seconds before he is pissed off and screaming.  We've tried letting him work it out and it just ain't happening.  He might be insanely stubborn like Ingrid.

He normally has the most beautiful, pearly skin but then had a vicious bout of eczema this month.  His cheeks were inflamed and his legs and back were scaly.  Poor guy looked like a Game of Thrones stone man got acne.  It must have been terribly itchy for him.  Per doctor's orders, I've been shellacking him with prescription cortisone ointment and Vanicream, and he's getting back to his luminous self.  

Tummy time is less terrible than it used to be.  Maybe one or two whole minutes before he gets enraged!  He also has no idea that he's supposed to roll over.  He spends plenty of time on the floor and it just hasn't clicked.  I even tried nudging him over to give him the basic idea, and he was completely uninspired.  This is the sort of thing I might have worried about, two or three kids ago.

Ingrid and Heidi both pay him a lot of attention and he rewards them with giant smiles (Henry's sweet, but he's usually busy being big).

My parents asked if there are as many pictures of Fritz as the older kids.  Yes, actually.  They just mostly look like this:

I'm slowly transitioning him out of the rock-n-play into the crib.  Initial attempts were a complete failure so I ordered this ridiculous suit that Amazon claims is magic.  Perhaps not magic, but at least moderately helpful.  He sleeps in the crib at night and for the morning nap now.  Later naps are hit-or-miss and I still fall back on the rock-n-play or leaving him in the car seat if he falls asleep driving around.

Hover-hand

His sleep patterns are all over the place, which is frustrating.  Some nights he goes down easy at 8:00 and we don't hear a peep from him until 7:00 a.m.  Some mornings he's up so early that he completes his first morning nap before the other kids get up for the day.  Some nights he fights bedtime on and off for two hours and/or wakes up twice in the night.  I cope poorly with both fatigue and unpredictability.

But look how cute he is!  It's hard for me to be cross with him.