Smiley Face

Luke has started to get the hang of eating his cereal over the past couple of weeks.  Since he was doing well with rice cereal, we let him try oatmeal a few days ago.  He is really into the oatmeal and will now devour a whole little bowl at dinnertime.  The ped told me that when he is consistently eating a small bowl (about 1/4 cup) of cereal that we can let him try veggies too.  For the past two nights, Luke has quickly finished all his cereal and seemed to be looking for more food.  So, we broke out the sweet potatoes yesterday.  Luke’s eyes brightened when he tasted them, and tonight he ate half a container of sweet potato in addition to his cereal.  He is really digging his solid food!  I am optimistic that this will lead to more sleep at night, but we shall see.

Two days ago Luke went for his 4 month checkup with Dr. Pettit. The poor little guy ended up with 2 shots in each leg plus one oral vaccine. He did remarkably well with the shots, calmed down quickly, and didn’t have much fever or irritability. He was a little out of it and not quite himself for the next 24 hours, but that is completely understandable.

Luke is now 25 inches long and 14 pounds, 1 ounce. He is around 50th percentile in height and somewhere around 30-40th percentile for weight. He is only slightly bigger than Brooke was at this age. He is very healthy and happy. He is getting the hang of eating his cereal for dinner, and for 3 nights he managed to sleep through the night until around 5 am. Last night, however, he was up at 11:15 and 4:30. Boo! Hopefully his sleep will continue to improve…yay!

Since Luke’s sleep has gotten worse in the past few weeks, we figured he might be ready for cereal.  It is about time for him to start in the next week, and we decided that tonight would be the night.  This week I purchased some rice cereal and new baby spoons for him, and then Brooke helped me get the highchair set up when I got home tonight.  Luke was kind of swallowed up in the highchair and was not thrilled about sitting there, so we eventually ended up sitting him in the bouncy seat to eat.  He was not sure what he thought about the cereal.  He ate about half of the cereal I had prepared and didn’t quite know what to do with it.  When he got it in his mouth and realized it was not milk, he got this surprised look on his face with these wide open eyes and a smile.  Hopefully he gets the hang of it in the next few days and we see some sleep improvement.

So, today Luke got his third swing in 3 months.  We started out with the hand-me-down Evenflo swing that Brooke had used.  Well, I guess she put too many miles on it because no matter how many times we put new batteries into the swing, it just kept dying.  We got rid of that and purchased the Fisher-Price Flutterby swing for Luke.  He has been using that swing for around 3 months now and takes all his naps in it.  The swing is really cute, and I am basically very happy with it.  The problem, however, is the batteries.  We bought two sets of rechargeable D batteries for the swing, but the batteries are already worn out and not holding a charge well anymore.  For the past two weeks I have been buying D batteries, but they get expensive when you use the swing for hours a day (which is why we purchased all the rechargeable batteries to begin with).  This weekend I ended up going out and buying another new swing figuring that the constant battery cost over the next few months would be about worth the price of the new swing.  The swing is not as cute, but it plugs into the wall as well as taking batteries.  For this reason, I highly recommend that you check out the Fisher-Price Power Plus swing.  It is new on the market (withing the past few months), and it is the only one of this kind we have found.  If you think you might have a kid who likes to sleep in the swing (both of mine have been swing nappers/sleepers), I think you will be wise to go with this swing.  Luke has also given it his seal of approval.

Just wanted to let you know that the past two nights have been more typical in sleepy land. Two nights ago Luke slept all the way through from 7:30-6. Last night he was up at 3. He is going to start rice cereal sometime this week (when I get around to seeing if we actually have bowls and spoons that Brooke did not destroy), so hopefully that will help him to maintain better sleep habits. He is not a bad sleeper, and I have to keep reminding myself of that. It could be much worse, I know. Brooke would only sleep in her swing and not her crib at all until she was 6-7 months old. So, as much as it sounds like I am complaining, I am thankful that Luke has a room of his own where he sleeps well (most of the time).