Naomi VI

Naomi Janelle turned 4 months old over a week ago... but funny enough, delaying her "birthday blog entry" turned out to be a good thing. Had I written this on time, I would not have had a whole lot to write about since she wasn't doing a whole lot of particularly noteworthy things. Her day was pretty much eat, sleep, smile, cry, repeat cycle. And then... Bam. In ten days, she found her toes, started laughing, became ticklish, tripled her hand-eye coordination (whatever that means) and started rolling over consistently from tummy to back. It's like she got a tutor or something.

Just like her two siblings had at this age, given a couple of fingers to grab a hold of, Naomi has the same propensity to pull up and stand on her feet every chance she gets. It's as if sitting or laying down is suddenly taboo. I'm guessing that she'll be on their same advanced crawl and walk schedule, too (which means it's time to install the baby gates). She is also continuing to transition from being driven by needs (eat, sleep, eat again) to being driven by will and desire. Now that she can independently touch, grab, play, etc.; it's clear that she knows what she does and doesn't want to do at times... and the frustration couldn't be more obvious when she can't reach something in her line of sight. Her sounds also changed. Seemingly overnight, her cooing turned into yelps and yells as she tries to make words and express her excitement. For some reason, that transition was really weird; maybe because it was so sudden. You'd think that I'd have this baby development thing down by now, but I swear it seems totally different every time. It's also obvious from the intent her eyes that she gets the whole communication thing now and, in her mind, the "words" that come out of her mouth are something that we should certainly understand. She'll coo and yelp at you for about 20 seconds, and then give you this look like, "you know what I mean?"

As for stats, she stacks up at 24 inches and 13 pounds (22nd, 31st, and 64th percentiles in length/weight/head; for those keeping score at home). She's still sleeping well. And she's abundantly responsive to stimuli (sounds, lights, etc.). With the way she spins around to meet your voice, you'd think that her head is on a swivel. One thing about being child #3 is that she gets wayyy more stimulus than either of them did. But she seems to be handling it all pretty well (i.e., it's not affecting her sleep or willingness to go to sleep). In all, if I had to summarize her world in just a few words, I'd simply say that she continues to be one super happy baby.