Max: {Almost} 4 Months Old

I haven't been posting enough about little Max!  I can't believe he's nearly four months old.  It's gone so quickly.  And yet, I can't really remember him not being a member of our family.  Here are some tidbits about sweet Max right now: 

• He has become super smiley!  He absolutely loves attention.  If you pay attention to him he'll reward you with the most heart-melting smile.  
• He's working on his giggle.  I can get him to giggle about once a day by tickling him.  It's the sweetest noise in the world.  It starts by sounding like he's going to cry, but it turns into a darling giggle.  
• He has a really sweet and chill disposition.  But--he needs to be held most of the time to maintain his chill-ness.  :) 
• He's learning how to use his hands and has gotten so much better at grabbing things.  It's fun to watch him learn and develop so rapidly.  
• Loves, loves, loves to stand up and sit up.  Hates tummy time.  
• He loves bath time and kicks like a crazy man in the tub.  
• He loves to be sung to.  Especially, "You Are My Sunshine."  He also loves when I play piano.  
• He has turned into a pretty good napper!  He takes two long naps (2-3 hours!) a day and will sometimes take a third cat nap.  This is a huge improvement!  A month ago, he took a bunch of short naps each day.  We started putting him back to sleep if he woke up too early.  That helped him.  Also, I think getting his own room helped, too.  I'm loving having a great napper!  Sadly, we're pretty much past the "napping on the go" phase.  We spends lots and lots of time at home while Max sleeps. 
• Night time is okay.  Like clock work, he wakes up every three hours.  Sometimes I'll get lucky and his first stretch is more like four hours.  This means I get up about twice a night?  This is a huge improvement from a couple weeks ago, when he was waking up 5-6 times a night and was getting to be so hard to put to sleep.  We let him cry it out and he improved so much.  Now we can put him to sleep awake and he falls asleep on his own.  And he started waking up only when he needed to eat.  I can handle it like this.  It was so interesting to sleep train a normal baby! (No offense Andy.)  When we first tried crying it out with Andy about this age, he cried for two hours solid every night for a month, with no improvement.  Max was fifteen minutes the first time, and it got shorter each time over a couple days and now he rarely cries.  What a dream, by comparison! 
• He is not a great nurser.  I'm hoping this improves.  His bad latch gives me painful clogged ducts.  He unlatches a million times every feeding.  Many of his feedings are super short.  Like: two minutes on one side, and one minute on the other.  (Of course, his night-time feedings are the exception. He's decided that's the ideal time to take his sweet time.)  He's still gaining weight normally, so I'm not as worried about the quick feedings anymore.  It just means that he eats more frequently than most babies his age. I think he's just a little lazy and prefers the easy foremilk to the hindmilk he has to work a little harder for?  Who knows.  That's enough nursing talk.  :) 
• He's chunking up, and I love it.  At his two month visit he weighed 13 lbs 4 oz (66%) and I think his height was 24"?  Whatever it was, it was in the 68%.  And his head is in the 44%.  (Much smaller than Andy's cute pumpkin head that has always been in the 99%.)  I took him in last week for a couple shots and weighed him again and he weighed 14 lbs 10 oz.  He goes in for his 4 month visit mid-March, so we'll see what he weighs then.

Max has been such a bright spot in my life lately, and I'm so grateful for him.  It sounds cheesy, but his smile literally lights up my life.  Things have been so hard and stressful with our big move, and he's been such a blessing a source of peace.  We love him to pieces.  And even Andy is warming up to him! :) 

With Aunt Sara back in December.

That smile! 

He likes the Bumbo (sometimes)!

A visit with Great-Grandma Bonnie last week.