Week Eighteen - Wonder Weeks

This week we had some heart struggles (see separate post here) and lots of tweaking of naps and routine, but overall it was an enjoyable week with our precious girl!

Co-worker
Karis got to go to work with her daddy while I had a dental appointment. She was HUGE hit, smiling at everyone who came to visit her, but she probably caused many a husband some stress as all the office ladies got baby fever! 

Wonder Week
This past week Karis was all out of whack on a couple of the days. She started waking up early from her first nap (very rare!) and the rest of her naps were only 20 minutes long!! Needless to say I was stressing out over what was happening. After going through a mental list of possibilities, I finally attributed it to two things. 1) Starbucks hot chocolate (so sad! back to decaf for me!) 2) Wonder week 19. (Wonder weeks are basically 10 major, predictable, age-linked changes – or leaps – during the first 20 months of a baby's life.   With each leap comes a drastic change in mental development, which affects not only mood, but also health, intelligence, sleeping patterns and the “three C’s” (crying, clinging and crankiness)). Karis was right on target hitting the peak fussy stage at 17 weeks. Hopefully we will see the fruit of this wonder week come week 19 with some new skills to show off! It is always helpful for me to have a reason for what is happening, but I have also come to terms with the fact that she is a baby and not a robot and thus sometimes I just will not know! A hard reality to accept! For now, I just roll with the punches and we ended up staying up and reading a lot.

    
Four Month Appointment
This past week Karis had her four month appointment which included shots and some basic tests. She came in at 12 pounds, 11 ounces (25%), head circumference 40cm (25%) and height 23.75 inches (25%). Looks like she is proportional! The doctor said everything looks great, although the GI issues are still a little concerning.

Growth Spurt
In addition to her wonder weeks, I think Karis also had her 4 month growth spurt. One evening she ate at three times in four hours! Thankfully, it seems to have only affected her that one night! 

Tweaks
To add to the mix, I have also done a couple other changes to Karis' routine to see how she does. The first was to drop the dreamfeed. Normally she'll go down to bed at 8-8:30 and then I'll feed her anywhere from 10:15-11 (but she'll basically be sleeping and eating at the same time!) .I started moving her dreamfeed time up a little bit more towards 10:00 about a week ago. However, this past week she woke up around 9:00 a couple of times so I decided I would feed her and then just see if she could make the night. The first night she fussed a couple of times in the night without waking up. Then there were a few days of waking up at 10:30ish pm when I just fed her anyway. And now she regularly will go from 8:30 straight until 7:00 without a peep!! Praise God for 10.5 hours of straight sleep!!!

   The other change was working with her swaddle. She has always done well with her little swaddle, but lately had been popping out of it which could be a sign to drop it. She also has more control over her arms and hands and seemed to want to suck on a hand. So for some naps I tried a few different things. I tried no swaddle. Total failure! She wouldn't even fall asleep. I tried one arm in and one arm out. Also fail. She flailed around too much! Finally, I left one hand by her mouth but still swaddled her elbow in and swadded the other arm in snug.  It seems to be the magic ticket right now!

Karis-isms
Point Dexter- Karis is getting more dexterous with her hands and now is able to maneuver toys a little better (although she still hits herself in the face often).

Raspberries- So Karis was already blowing raspberries, but now instead of talking as much she is constantly blowing raspberries, especially when in the car seat. We already told her that it's rude, but she doesn't seem to listen to us.
Cruisin in Style- Karis has so much better upper body control that we tried out our stroller without the carseat attachment and enjoyed the last hurrah of a warm fall. Love those chubby legs! 

Until Next Week!