Months 3, 4 (and a bit of 5) 2010

Well little bobble-head,

Looking after you is something of a long-distance, endurance-type sport, hence the creation of your latest nickname, 'The Lexathon'. You are a very busy little girl, kicking, grabbing your knees or feet and rolling onto your side, pulling your playmat down over your head and generally throwing your little pudgy body around like nobody's business.



You chew on whatever you can lay your little baby mouth on - toys, carpet, shoes, bags but ideally, if you can get it, human bodyparts, particularly my thumb (it must be very tasty indeed).

Teething

You appear to have been teething since January - you drool, your little cheeks go bright red and you grind your toothless little gums together as if all your teeth are set to spring forth in a scary, shiny, miniature set (God,wouldn't that be creepy? Especially if they were all gleaming and pointy....shudder...)

Discovering your hands

You spent the majority of February engrossed in an exhaustive study of your hands - up close, far away, from the front, from the back, fingers, nails and skin. All were poked, squinted at and generally admired from all angles.

Toys



You are also more and more interested in play mat dangley toys and toys in general. You took rather a shine to Georgie's Spencer Bears (1 - 3) - I'm surprised she lets you anywhere near them but she actually gives one to you on a regular basis, even though you chew his paw.



You have a favourite toy that you sleep with, a rabbit called Kalloo (thanks Emma), and you stroke and/or hold his ears as you fall asleep. Aaah.



There's also a rattle that Claire gave you, which looks like a King and has therefore been named Elvis. Will try to find a pic of him too...

And lets not forget Doggie, whom you kindly share with Georgie from time to time...



Lexi's NCT Babies

We meet up with the other NCT refresher ladies and babies whenever we can, and we even managed to get a shot of all the babies together at Jo's house:



I'm going to try to name them all left to right (sorry if I get any wrong!)

Gabriella, Lexi, Lily, Lucas, Annabelle and Eleanor. Lovely little people they are too x

Gained Weight

Your scary weight loss appears to be of the past, although your acid reflux did keep getting worse for short periods, because as your weight goes up, your doses need to go up too, but that was fairly obvious and caused little or no confusion (to us anyway).

Grandad's 70th Birthday



Grandad's 70th birthday came and went and probably passed you by but just so you know, it did happen :-D

Packing to move



We moved out of our house in March and in with Nanny and Grandad. No one was happy about that but it was necessary in order to allow the central heating of the new house to be entirely replaced. You certainly bonded with Nanny during that period, in fact I think at one point you started to think SHE was your Mummy - your sister did not take to the upheaval and managed to soak up quite a lot of my time...



I'm sure you'll be just as challenging when you reach her age, so don't go thinking you're the 'good' one just because you're currently a generally agreeable baby - although if you fancy staying agreeable, that would be great :-D

Immunisations



You've had all the usual immunisations, which you don't like and you had no problem letting everyone in a fifty mile radius know it. Good for you! Where does being stalwart get you these days anyway!

'Talking'

You are pretty easy going for the most part (except when hungry) but despite this you feel it necessary to shout and squawk as though you are the most discontented soul ever born. One look at your baby face, all screwed up with mirth, leaves me to conclude that you are not cross, just fond of the sound of your own voice (where did she get that from, I hear you all wonder...)

Laughing

Your silent laugh has been cracking me up for some time - most babies do it, but of coures when your own babies do it, it's so much cuter (sorry, other babies.) We have had a few giggles out of you but more recently you have been attempting proper belly laughs when tickled under the arms and on the thighs, although you laugh most when this tickling is administered with high pitched 'tickle tickle' noises and so I am beginning to suspect its the noise that makes you laugh. You also laugh if some jumps out at you and exclaims: "Boo!"

Holding your head up



Your bobble-headedness is pretty much a thing of the past and you hold your head up like a champ. You have been sitting in your bumbo since you were just shy of 4 months and when held up, you take some weight on your legs - it's all good practice I guess.

You rarely lie back on your bouncy chair but rather struggle upright, hold it as long as you can and then flop in which ever direction seems best to you.



Your big sister



You love your Georgie and I frequently despatch her to distract and delight you, which she does with aplomb, but not always as willingly as I would like.





She likes to try to pick you up, which is a bit of a worry, and she likes to try to feed you - yes, as soon as you were four months I decided to ignore contemporary advice (like almost everyone else I know) and start weaning you.



Weaning

You took to food in such a way as to confirm (as if I ever had any doubts) that you are indeed the child of Steve and Ali Harris. Well done.



Now you yell for food like an angry Millwall fan, and once it hits your tongue you smile and flirt like a young coquette, bless you.



Sleep



Yes, you do that - we've gone from a three hour routine to a four hour routine, which wont mean much to anyone who either has no children or who has blocked out the painful routines of babyhood, but you have, so there. So yes, not going through the night yet but Steve and I take it in turns to be on kid duty and so far so good.







You are a small, soft, adorable little person whose irrepressible gaiety and curiosity rarely fail to cheer me up, even when I feel like I'm at the end of my tether! You complete our family, to the point that it's hard to remember that you are a pretty recent addition. I love you, cuddlesome naughty pants.

Sleep well, love from your Mummy xxx

If you'd like to know what your sister was like at this age - 3 months, 4 months

Months 2 and 3

Smiley Baby Lex

Dear Bobble-Head-Baby,

I haven't written about you lately and I haven't written much about you at all, which is a shame because you are a beautiful little baby, with all sorts of record-worthy, developmental milestones that I hope to get down in this post and many others. I thought that having a second baby would make it twice as hard to meet my blogging obligations but the fact of the matter is that it seems to have made it fifty times harder, but I will do my best to improve, I promise.


The Lex - My Baby Bear xxx

Although I will always do my best to capture every month for you, it is likely that when you are old enough to read you are going to look at your blog and realise that your baby days have not been written about with the regular devotion to your developmental minutiae that was lavished on your sister. Before you feel too aggrieved about that I would like you to consider seomthing: think, if you will, about all the things you are getting that we could not give your sister i.e. the benefits of experience with babies.


Lexi The Blue-Eyed Reindeer
NCT Xmas Party 2009

Retrospectively I can see that poor little baby Georgie had to go through a lot so that you might have an inordinately more comfortable time of it - this is the lot of the elder child - and I am one myself, so I know this to be true.


Lexi & Nanny

She suffered through acid reflux without the benefit of a diagnosis for her crying and feeding problems, and without medicines to manage the problem and there are a host of other trials, some larger than others, that we have learned from and that you do and will benefit from.


Playmat Fun (Thanks Gran & Gramps!)

What I'm saying is that Georgie is your personal ground-breaker and smoothe-ride-maker. People often say that a second baby has an easier temperament because he or she has to just 'fit in' with activities that are based around the older, more active first-born. I think there is something to that but I know that in our case, your good nature also has a lot to do with what we learned while looking after your sister.



But don't misunderstand me, little Lex - you are an entirely adorable baby - the last couple of weeks we started getting great big smiles, and those silent baby laughs, where you open up your mouth in a vast, jolly, toothless grin to express your mirth. Two nights ago you rewarded Daddy with your first laugh (Elizabeth got Georgie's first laugh - I was gutted that it wasn't me). This time I was just glad to hear you laugh - until we had your reflux diagnosed and sufficiently medicated you were becoming a sad little soul, losing weight, hardly eating and crying in pain and hunger. Now we have the right formula and medicines in place, we can deal with your digestive ills until you outgrow them (it should be all better by the time you are about six months old, if not sooner). I'm taking you to be weighed in a few days and now that you are drinking more than twice what you were the last time I took you (when you had lost over 2lbs), I am hoping that you will have regained those pounds and maybe a few ounces extra.


Lexi & Spencer

You are sleeping and eating pretty much on a good routine. Steve and I take it in turns to be on baby night duty. We put you down at 7, wake you to feed you for a 'dream feed' at 10 or 11, and then you tend to wake somewhere between 3 and 5 for another feed and then we start the day at 7. Now that you are back on track feeding-wise I could go back to Gina Ford and see if we can get you sleeping through the night but to be honest I can deal with the early morning feed as long as I know it's coming and as long as it's only once. Also we should be moving house soon and the last thing we need is more upheaval, so if you want to wake for a night feed, that's ok by us x

You can be quite hard to put down sometimes - I bought you a little device that clips onto your cot and it plays music and projects moving pitcures onto your ceiling. You seem to love it - you smile and gurgle at it, and tap on it, following the winking lights with your little baby fingers. You still spend most of the night in the moses basket downstairs, where we don't have the music and light show, and you still go off to sleep ok (for the most part) so I don't think it's becoming too much of a sleep crutch. It does mean I don't have to stand in your room for hours, trying to get you to go to sleep, which with Georgie "the Devestation" Harris left all alone downstairs, is probably a good thing!

You like to sleep in the Baby Bjorn sling - this was very popular with you when your reflux hadn't settled down yet, as it meant you could sleep upright. It did lead to 'I eant to sleep on mummy' syndrome, however, and so it was nipped in the bud pretty sharpish. Hence the aforementioned music and light box.

I spend a lot more time holding you than I spent holding Georgie. I think this is because it's not a hot, sticky summer, as it was when Georgie was born. Instead it is a pretty cold winter, and so it's more comfortable to cuddle. I'm also much more adept at holding you with one arm - and so I can carry on doing stuff while I hold you, something I didn't get right away with your sister.

Your are a pretty relaxed, happy little girl. You have no problem being passed around and you are happy to share your smiles and gurgles with whoever happens in your direction. Of course like most babies, you have your preferences and you're not afraid to voice your discontent (I wonder where you get that from!)

You hate hats, snowsuits and carseats, and so at the moment, almost every time we go out, you get very cross, as I wrestle you into a snow suit with either a hood and/or a hat and then into a car seat! You're not overly fond of the pushchair either, but at least now you can see where we're going, as I decided you are big enough to sit in the doubles kit rather than ride in the dark in the cocoon. You still like to sleep in the cocoon (in the moses basket).

You like your playmat and the hoopy loopy monkey, which belonged to Georgie and probably technically still does. Luckily she's pretty generous with her toys (so far, and only with you). Long may it last...

So don't feel sad if your early blog entries are only half as many as Georgie's because it doesn't mean we love you half as much, but rather than we have less than half the time to write about love for children we love a hundred times more than we love ourselves, and a million times more than anyone could ever record.

Love from Mummy xxx