4 1/2 months

I hadn't planned to write another update on Henry until five months, but we had his 4 month appointment today and on top of that he's changed a lot in just two weeks.

Stats: At 4 1/2 months, Henry is 14 lbs 15 oz (38th percentile) and 26 inches long (75th percentile). At two months he was at the 40th and 70th percentiles, so he's about the same proportionally. Because he is long, some of his 6 month footed suits are getting too short for him. I've retired some of those and sometimes put him in a 9-month suit instead.

Schedule: I started shifting Henry's bedtime a little earlier in hopes that his nighttime sleep would improve. Now I bring him upstairs around 7:30. It seemed to work very well at first. For a while he was sleeping for an 8 hour stretch (sometimes closer to 9 hours) each night. Then something changed and he's now back to waking after about five hours around 1 am, and often again around 3 or 4 am. Naps were also going very well, but Henry has started having a harder time staying asleep for naps lately. I'm wondering if he's having a bit of that 4 month wakeful period I read about. I've also noticed that sometimes Henry has to poop or has a diaper bothering him at night, and that impacts his sleep. Yesterday his naps were terrible, and I knew it was because he had to poop. Sure enough, he finally went around dinner time and was instantly happier.

Development: In the 4-month update, I mentioned that Henry had stopped the babbling he had started doing. Sure enough, he was just busy learning to do other things. In the last two weeks he has started rolling more from tummy to back, has found his feet with his hands, is starting to touch and hold onto things more, and is clearly growing cognitively. He has started to show surprise when something unexpected happens (like when a toy disappears and then pops up again), and often anticipates what's going to happen in simple social games. He's also started to display joint attention, looking back and forth between a toy and a person to share the experience. Today when watching the video below with Chris, Henry would laugh at the video and then look up at Chris to check in and make sure he was watching too. Sure enough, once all of these new skills were in place Henry's babbling returned just a couple of days ago.

Today we were playing a game with one of Henry's toys and he kept laughing at it, so I took a little video. The best part was that afterward, I showed Henry the video, and he wanted to watch it over and over. Just watching the video makes him laugh every time. Never mind my weird antics that apparently involved turning the seahorse toy into the Swedish Chef of the Sea... Just watch the giggling baby.