Author Archives: Jennifer

One of the sweetest sounds is the sound of Jessica’s laughter. Her daddy is extremely good at making her giggle. See how she laughs as she gets ready for bed.

Jessica has reached a pivotal point in her short life. She is a quarter of a year old today. Time has truly flown by. It seems like only yesterday she was born, but the speed at which she has grown makes it seem like the three months it is.

She now has excellent neck control. This comes from sitting up in her super seat and tummy time. We haven’t made it to 10 minutes of continuous tummy time, but Jessica enjoys tummy time for 5 minutes or so at a time and she gets tummy time 5 or 6 times a day. She can push herself up and stay up (i.e. no face in the activity mat) and this has definitely increased her enjoyment of tummy time.

I still haven’t been able to catch her on video rolling from tummy to back, but stay tuned as I’m sure I will eventually.

Jessica has quite the grasp. She will consciously hold onto something as well as grip something placed in her hands. This is where lots of hair isn’t always a good thing. Once, she grabbed a hold of her hair and pulled it making her upset. The more upset she got, the tighter her grasp. It took some effort for James and I to uncurl her fingers from around her hair. Fortunately, there has not been a repeat of this situation, at least not yet and hopefully there won’t be.

Jessica loves playtime. She grabs a hold of the hanging toys. She moves around by rolling and scooting and has even gotten herself completely off the activity mat this way.

She smiles a lot and has recently started laughing. It is adorable how she will laugh and then you will laugh and then she’ll laugh more and this back-and-forth laughter is a lot of fun. Jessica also “talks” to us and her cooing and babbling is just too cute.

We’re starting to get into a routine. She sleeps really well at night. Our pediatrician currently doesn’t want her to sleep more than 8 or 9 hours between feedings, so I wake her up before I go to bed to feed her. I really don’t think this is necessary, but it’s convenient for me so it’s not really too big a deal. I figure if I didn’t wake her up to nurse her, she’d wake up around 7:30-8:00 AM instead of 9 AM and I wouldn’t get as much sleep, since I try to get ready for the day before she wakes up in the morning. Daytime naps are bit trickier, but we’re getting there.

She is quite accomplished in moving around in her sleep. You can see she turned herself almost ninety degrees from her initial bedtime starting position. In this way, she’s very much like her Daddy. Her Mommy sleeps in one position almost the entire night, while Daddy moves around a fair amount in his sleep.

Naps typically start with a pacifier, otherwise I don’t think she would fall asleep. Night-time sleeping doesn’t require a pacifier, but I often find her in the morning with her thumb or thumb and some fingers in her mouth. Sometimes, I think she must keep herself occupied this way until I come in her room in the mornings, because she doesn’t cry in the mornings. Hopefully, thumb-sucking won’t become a bad habit, but I’m glad she can pacify herself.

It has been difficult to get her in the nap routine. On occasion, I will put her in the swing and that works really well and can get guarantee a long nap.

Shortly after Christmas, we went ahead and started putting her in 3-6 month sleepers since her night-time diaper and her long legs made it difficult to change her diaper in the middle of the night. This last week, I started packing away her newborn and 0-3 month clothes, more for length than girth. Her pants no longer look like capris. It was a little sad packing away the clothes since some outfits she only wore once, but she doesn’t have quite as many 3-6 months cloths so they should get a lot more use.

Jessica enjoys meeting and interacting with new people, although the last hour or so before bed time usually finds her not so open to people other than Mommy and Daddy. Last week while Jason, Julia and Aspen were in Park City, Utah, Bella stayed with us and they got along great.