Akinya at 4 Months

According to the calendar, today is the first day of March.  According to tonight's snow and sleet, though, it is still winter!!!

Being the first day of a new month, that means that it's another monthly "birthday" for Akinya!  I know it sounds so cliche, but seriously, how is she already 4 months old?!  Or, as I told Justin this morning, a third of the way to her first birthday?!

February was a month of many "firsts" for Miss Smiles.

The month started out with a major snowstorm...over 11" of snow in just a day's time!  We've actually had numerous snow falls this winter, but that one constituted a REAL storm.  As a result, Justin's company shut down for most of the week and then that Friday, he had surgery on his meniscus.  Needless to say, Akinya had LOTS of Daddy-time in February!

The following week, she started daycare.  We finally found somewhere that had an opening for an infant and so far, she's loving it there.  But it didn't take long before we experienced the contagious environment of a daycare facility...after she came home from her last day of her first week at daycare, she was sick with the stomach flu!  In fact, it was the first time she had ever been sick so we had no idea what was going on at first.  But I have to say, making it 15 weeks without any type of illness during the winter is a blessing!

Feeling better!  15.5 pounds at 15 weeks!

Once she and I were on the mend (yup, I was the lucky one who also caught the bug!), Akinya went to her first home inspection!  It was one of those deals where I made a phone call to see when the inspector could get us on his calendar and he was available in two hours.  My "work from home" day quickly turned into a "baby's coming along" day!  Fortunately, she was her typical happy self and once she was done learning about how a house should be maintained, we headed off to the title company to learn about how ownership is transferred.  Something tells me that once this little girl starts school, she'll be able to tell her teacher not only her ABC's, but all the inner-workings of the real estate industry!

Aside from all that, she's just growing and changing everyday!  She's now in 6-months clothes...and some of those have already been outgrown.  We've just moved up to a size 3 diaper and finally, finally she's now eating 6 oz each feeding.  And the feedings are now about 3 hours apart...vs 2 hours!  I feel like I get SO much more done now!  The hair?  It's still growing like crazy.  It's now long enough that it's laying down and starting to form the shape of a bob.

Developmentally, Akinya is leaps and bounds ahead of where she was just a month ago.  We're hearing LOTS of vowel sounds and her little hands are grabbing EVERYTHING!  She's nearly rolled over on several occasions and belly time finds her holding her head and chest straight up.  Akinya is also starting to "jump" when excited and she's learned to "throw" herself around, too.  When taking a bath, she kicks like crazy and just smiles, smiles, smiles.  She's exploring everything she can with her mouth and even though she hasn't had any teeth cut through yet, we're seeing more and more nubs in her gums with lots of drool and fists in the mouth.

It's still crazy to think our Miss Smiles is already 4 months old.  I still can't figure out where the time went.  In fact, today we finally had her "newborn" photo shoot that was scheduled for back when she was 2 weeks old!  lol...long story short, we had to reschedule and this was the first weekend that we were available!  Guess that gives a little bit of insight into how/why time has flown by!

For those of you who like to watch paint dry, these videos might be up your alley ;-)  lol...the first video is a 3-month old Akinya checking out her Baby Einstein and the second video is her at 4-months.  Quite a bit of difference, developmentally!