4 months old

Aiden will be four months tomorrow and has lots to share. He is still quite loved by his siblings. They love now that he can interact more with them by smiling, talking and now reaching out for them and holding onto their fingers. It always makes me smile when I hear one of their voices go into the high pitched baby talk voice with, "Hi Aiden!" Aiden is always willing to listen to whatever they have to say to him with great smiles and even some words of his own. At any little fuss, I have at least one interpreter telling me that Aiden wants a bottle, to go to sleep, or my favorite, to go outside to play. We still have occasions when one of them is concerned that someone who is holding Aiden isn't going to give him back to us. One of the family jokes has become that Aiden is "our baby". It started when Aiden just a peanut, but I called Aiden "my baby" and Zander was quick to correct me that it was "our baby". The talks about how the toys in our house are all of ours not just his came back to me.

One of the things that Aiden has gotten quite proficient at is rolling over from him belly to his back. He loves not having to strain to see what is going on above his head, but is still struggling not being able to get back over to what he was attempting to obtain in front of him on the floor. If only God had designed arms a little bit differently, the task wouldn't be so hard.

In case you haven't been able to tell by Aiden's cheeks, he is a chunk. He's a happy, healthy chunk who sleeps through the night, but none the less, he is a chunk. He had his four month well-baby check-up yesterday and we found out that he has gone from being in the 90th percentile (meaning that he was bigger than 90% of baby boys his own age) on the growth charts to no longer even being on the growth curves. The good news is that he is proportionate. His weight, height and head are all huge. It pretty much comes down to Aiden being the size of a normal nine month old and he is only four. No worries though, he is also ahead of the curve on cognitive development and like most other babies will probably work off the chunk as he starts moving more.

Since our big boy does get quite hungry with all the growing and developing he is doing, he has begun eating "big boy food". Elias is so excited for this. Elias has been trying to feed him applesauce and banana squashed between his fingers for a month or so now. For Aiden's first rice cereal feeding, Elias fed him about half of it. They both were having a great time. During that first feeding, Aiden figured out that he had quite a captive audience in his older brothers and starting blowing bubbles and spitting rice cereal everywhere. That got a great reaction from his brothers! Elias thought it was so funny that he would put a bigger spoonful of food in Aiden's mouth then mommy had showed him to do and then Elias and Zander would demonstrate their spitting and blowing bubble techniques for Aiden. It is hard to discourage such fun when you hear all three of them giggling, but then you look at them and Aiden is covered in rice cereal and the boys have white specks all over their faces and you know that this is only going to escalate over the years. What is a mother to do?