Monday was Chiara's four-month birthday! She's a beautiful, happy baby, and her parents are crazy... about her!
Since we haven't published a FAQ since July and Chiara was a month old, it's probably time to catch everyone up.
Q: So how big is she now?
A: At her 8-week wellbaby visit, she was 23 1/2". At her four-month appointment last Wednesday, she was 25 3/4." Growing like a weed, our girl!
Due to her height, she was exclusively in 3-month onesies from her two-month birthday to her three-month, and is primarily in 6-month clothes now! Of course, since she's already outgrowing some of those, we'll be on to 9-month clothes in no time.
Weight-wise, she isn't growing nearly so fast. She's dropped from the 50th percentile down to 35th -- she was 12 pounds, 12 ounces on Wednesday. She's swimming in a lot of her clothes, whether 3-month or 6-month. Fortunately, her pediatrician is not concerned, and we'll just keep feeding her as much as she'll eat.
Q: Has she hit any milestones?
A: Lots, actually. Noted chronologically, here are some of the happenings in her life:
* Chiara got her first set of inoculations on her 8-week birthday. Four shots and an oral rotavirus dose is a lot for such a small person (for any size person, for that matter), and she made her displeasure known. And we'll be doing it again at 4 months, which doesn't fill any of us with glee.
* The Apple Store Del Monte in Monterey opened on August 9th, and Apple's smallest fan (dressed in an Apple onesie) pretty much slept through the entire thing. This is notable because it's so hard to do -- Apple Store openings are LOUD. She also came to lunch with the Apple team, in a restaurant overlooking Monterey Bay (which, incidentally, was her first look at the Pacific Ocean). She dozed through much of that, too.
* Just hours before she was officially 2 months old, Chiara held her bottle by herself. Her stunned parents are backed up in this claim by the dinner guests, Katie and Brien, who witnessed and are prepared to submit sworn statements. We also have photographic evidence of that time, and since.
* As of her 2-month birthday, there were only a couple of newborn/0-3month clothing items she could still wear. None of them were onesies -- she was just too tall.
* On August 20th, Chiara made her first cross-country trip, to her grandparents' new home north of Atlanta. My grandfather died in early April, and his memorial service was Friday 8/23. Our little family managed to survive the trip and came out of it with some good insight for future travel, though we're not very anxious to do a lot of it. It was nice to introduce Chiara to her Grampa Skip, Aunt Kelly, Great-Aunts Joan and Lauri, and a host of other family members, however, and our little one was a sweet star despite the somewhat sad occasion. We were also the first houseguests for Mom and Skip in their newly-built home on the family lot -- their home is gorgeous.
* While in Georgia, Chiara seems to have realized that she has toes, because she was grabbing at them during dinner.
* Chiara slept through the night for the first time the night we returned from Georgia. The second time was a week later, and until she outgrew her swaddle, she was sleeping through the night pretty consistently. When it worked, she slept from about 9-10pm, all the way until 7:30-9am.
* We made our first "sick baby" visit the Wednesday after the trip. Facing steady escalation of the "crying in misery after every feeding" situation, we brought her in to be seen. It seems that the reason that 75% of the instances of "colic" have diminished recently has to do, in part, with the fact that babies are beginning to be prescribed medication to counteract acid reflux. Chiara has been on this for about two months now, and though she will probably hate peppermint for life, she is a different baby. Hurray for Zantac!
* I returned to work the day after Labor Day, and sometime that week she slept so late that I actually didn't get to see her until I got home that evening. I don't know if that's really a milestone for her, but it is for me, and I've decided that not getting to see my daughter before I go to work is not something I want to experience regularly. :(
* Chiara has a nanny! Malia (the nanny) started work the second week of September. Malia is a grad student in her early twenties, and she's helping Michael maintain his sanity by giving him about 4 hours a day where he's not solely responsible for his daughter. She's been put in charge of ensuring that Chiara gets her daily Tummy Time, in addition to general baby care.
* As of her 3-month birthday, there are many 3-month onesies she can no longer wear. I went to Carter's that Saturday to buy her some six-month clothes, which, for the moment, fit. Incidentally, Mom, I hate to tell you that we may have missed the window for her "First Norwegian Shirt" onesie, sized at 12months. She's wearing it... but only as a shirt.
* By month 3, she had both hands in her mouth. At month four, she is regularly playing with her toes, although she does not have them in her mouth yet.
* Nearing month 4, she is regularly reaching for and grasping objects, whether it is the bear tethered to the canopy of her swing, or the ball-thing that she can't quite get in her mouth. The bear is especially comical as it's attached to a springy cord -- she *almost* gets it to her mouth before it flies back out of her hands.
* The week before her 4-month well baby appointment, she rolled over - front to back and back to front. She regularly rolls to her right side these days, preferring her side to her back or front when she's on her own.
Q: What does a Day in the Life of Chiara look like?
A: Generally, she's up for the day between 7:30 and 9am (although she's been known to sleep much later). She gets fed, changed, dosed, and dressed, not necessarily in that order. Throughout the day, she generally hangs out with someone (Michael, Melia, or me if I'm home).
She likes being held. She'll enjoy the Bjorn bouncer for sometimes 30 minutes at a stretch, but that's about it for that. The swings are a good place for her to be if she's about ready for a nap (or already on her way out), but if she's awake there's about a half-hour limit on those, as well. Part of Malia's planned routine is to give Chiara tummy time, which appears to be working as she's much less unhappy about it these days.
Food and nap time are still unscripted -- whenever she wants to be fed or to sleep. Although we are watching more diligently for signs of tiredness these days, to encourage her to nap. We think that there will be a standard nap around 11am, and others when she starts looking sleepy.
At the end of the day, depending on whether mom is home, Chiara may hang out with one or both parents (as we eat dinner, hang out together or in Second Life, or watch TV). If mom is still at work, the ChiaraCam may become active (more about this later).
As bedtime nears, our routine has gone something like this: She gets a "night diaper" (double-density cloth) and is swaddled, then fed until she stops, while I sing to her whatever I can think of during that time. Recent songs include "Who can ask for anything more?" "Baby's Boat," "Skylark," "The Nearness of You," "Baby Mine," "Desafinado," and "The Wave." We also have our own versions of "Brahms' Lullabye" (inspired by Ernie singing to Bert on Sesame Street when I was little), "Are you sleeping?" "(If They Asked Me) I Could Write a Book," and, actually, "Ragtime Gal."
Lately, though, given her inability to go for more than a couple of hours without eating, we've been skipping the swaddle. Now that her feedings have once more evened out to three times a night (bedtime, then roughly midnight, 3, and 7), we may try that again.
We've also gone back and forth a bit about her bedtime (books say early; we find that she goes down easily at about 9pm), but for the moment have decided to follow our own instincts and just try moving bedtime up by a half-hour or so.
Here's a passage from a Michael missive on 9/16, when he was updating Aunt Mari on All Things Chiara:
"Her talking/babbling, when she's in the mood for it, has become more copious, voluble, and assertive. When I start reading to her, she'll frequently begin talking back to me almost immediately, and in no uncertain tones. She makes a face while she's doing it that suggests she is mockingly imitating someone being excessively stuffy and dull. I do my best to interpret this as an artifact of intense concentration and not personal criticism.
"Another part of our daily routine is the Chiara-cam: with Chiara on my lap I pull up Kristiana's spare laptop, which has a webcam, and open a videoconference to her at work so she can wave hello to her daughter. She has two screens at work, so often she'll just leave the Chiara-cam open for a while while she's working, sneaking peeks at her little girl now and then. This is not just us being nerds; it really is a very nice way to have a little togetherness time when she's working an extra-long day as she has been recently."
"Another part of our daily routine is the Chiara-cam: with Chiara on my lap I pull up Kristiana's spare laptop, which has a webcam, and open a videoconference to her at work so she can wave hello to her daughter. She has two screens at work, so often she'll just leave the Chiara-cam open for a while while she's working, sneaking peeks at her little girl now and then. This is not just us being nerds; it really is a very nice way to have a little togetherness time when she's working an extra-long day as she has been recently."
Q: So what's your biggest challenge with Chiara-care these days?
A; Her needing to be fed overnight (has been as many as six or seven times, although that seems to be tapering off)! It's hard, but we're managing, and we hope to be past this particular hurdle, and back to sleeping through the night soon.
Q: How are you doing on those Thank You letters?
A: OK, so no one has asked this. They're too polite. It's just something we think about. Unfortunately, I have no idea where we are on letters (besides BEHIND), telling everyone how grateful we are for the many lovely things our beautiful daughter has been given! Just know that we've probably received it, definitely appreciated it, and certainly want to thank you properly for it. We're just still in the sleep-deprived haze that new parents so often are in - trying to do the same thing multiple times, getting lost in the middle of sentences, etc... multi-tasking just doesn't work quite so well as it once did! Case in point -- I've been trying to write this update letter since September 9th -- before Chiara was three months old!
Q: Are there any other challenges on the horizon?
A: A rather big one... but we'll talk about that in another letter. It's a bit too big an announcement to leave as a final Q&A to the Chiara Update!
Two recent pix below, taken from the Smugmug site. Regular updates are available!
m-and-k.smugmug.com
With Love,
Kristiana, Michael and Chiara
Kristiana Kincaid
415.990.5123
Sent from my iPhone
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