4 Months!

As Cody says, I can't believe Arlee is not our "itty bitty" anymore. She really is getting so big and discovering new things everyday. She has discovered her toes. She puts her feet together and plays with them, reaches for her toes (She can almost get them to her mouth), and pushes her feet up against the play gym. As soon as you take her diaper off to change her, her feet go up in the air to meet her hands. She has been sucking on her bottom lip a lot (Cody says she learned this from watching him play with his flavor savor :) ) and when she sleeps she sucks on her tongue. She loves telling daddy stories at the end of the day. When he gets home, she has lots of big smiles for him. She still pulls her little shy cock of the head for him too. So cute. She also still really likes blowing bubbles and she will spend a lot of time blowing bubbles at "that baby in the mirror" Arlee has always liked when Mommy sings to her (finally an audience that appreciates me singing), but recently she has really liked "Three little ducks" and "3 Little Speckled Frogs". If I sing them relentlessly in the car, it calms down her normal car fussies. Though we still get the big car blowouts, they don't happen everytime we get in the car like they used to. Her grip is getting better every day. She can grip the skinny bar on her piano toy and her binkie handle. She has started reaching for so many things too (i.e. the remotes and my phone). I think she must really be noticing colors now too. She got so excited when Cody held her up in front of the juice aisle at the store and she reaches for my cups of juice. She went through a stage where she would fall asleep just by rocking her in the rocking chair, but that is over. She must have decided that her mommy needs more exercise, because she now insists on being bounced...and she fights her naps hard! She has shown a little more interest in her binkie recently though, but mostly with playing with it and gnawing on it.

She sucks on her 2 little fingers a lot more at sleepy times now. The other night she fell asleep with them in her mouth and I thought, "I've officially got a finger sucker." She is still waking up at least once a night, but now I'm just happy if its not twice a night. She usually goes to sleep about 10-10:30 and wakes up for good between 6 and 8 (depending on how willing she is to go back to sleep and give mommy an extra morning nap :)

She reaches up to play with the hair that she doesn't really have and she has started to pull her headbands off, so I can't put them on until we get where we're going other wise I will find it down around her neck in the carseat. The other day we were coming back from getting the laundry. I took the laundry up the steps and I turned around to get her and this is what I found:

She pulled the clip off too and is playing with it. These days she will only sit in her bumbo for awhile before she gets bored and starts arching her back to get out. Mostly she just doesn't like to sit--she likes to stand.