4 Months

Georgia was 4 months old on Saturday. She has been eating for over a week now. She started with rice cereal and did really well with that. I then moved on to testing her on baby food with bananas. She liked that too. Then today I gave her pears and that was a hit as well. We have several different kinds to try. The doctor said that normally the recommendation was to try one food at a time. However, he felt that trying out many things would be better. She will supposedly be less likely to have an allergy develop for any certain food if she tries several different kinds. We had a tiny smidge of progress with her taking a bottle. Today she sucked on a bottle for a couple of minutes. I got so excited that I called Shawn to tell him. As soon as she heard my voice she quit sucking and started fussing. As long as she didn't know I was nearby she seemed to be fine with taking a bottle. So, hopefully tomorrow when we try to give her a bottle perhaps she will take it if I make myself scarce.

As far as progress, she sits very well with support, has really good head control, makes lots of noise (a whole lot sometimes), she loves to kick her feet, she grabs things with her hands and will hold onto things that we put in her hand. She still has reflux and every few days she will erupt like a volcano. My mom had to leave early on Thursday because her entire shirt was soaked. She does seem to tolerate taking her medicine more.

The other day I took a picture of her after I finished changing her diaper. She was sucking her thumb and almost put herself back to sleep (I had just gotten her out of bed).



This is Georgia sucking on her Sophie giraffe. She loves to chew and suck on the giraffe, so why not a bottle?



Shawn was working on the sewing machine and needed my help, so we set Georgia up in her bumbo seat.



Here is Georgia getting some rice cereal.



And finally, Georgia's 4 month picture.

15 Weeks

Last Wednesday Georgia was 15 weeks old. She went to the pediatrician on Thursday and we heard some not so surprising news, she is big. Georgia weighed 15 lbs 6 ozs, 95th percentile, and was 25 1/2 in long, the 98th percentile. So, in short, we have a giant baby. She is healthy and doing well.

In other news, baby girl still won't take a bottle. I'm very frustrated now because I have to go back to work in two weeks and I don't know what I'm going to do. We ordered another type of bottle that someone else said worked for their baby that wouldn't take a bottle, and yesterday she wouldn't take it either. I'm going to try again with my mom or my dad giving it to her because yesterday it was just Shawn and my brother around. She never took a bottle from them before. So, everyone send up a prayer that she'll start taking a bottle. The doctor even said that we could try her with rice cereal. So today I tried her with rice cereal mixed with breast milk. That was an epic fail. The recommended dose for a first feeding leaves you with a very liquidy mixture. It seemed to essentially be milk with a little solids dissolved into it. As soon as I spooned some into her mouth she started crying. I tried two more bites and she got even more hysterical. I'm not sure if she thought we were just trying to give her milk in another delivery system or what, but it was not happening. So, I just don't know what I'm going to do.

Meanwhile, last week we had snow. After it snowed, it sleeted. So we were left with a snowy landscape covered in a thick sheet of ice. I actually didn't even leave the house until Wednesday when I went to the dentist. By then the roads were really clear and not a problem. We didn't take Georgia out in the snow because she had already been outside the day after Christmas when it snowed and it isn't like she will remember it. Plus, the way the winter has been so far, we may have more snow in the near future.

This is me and Georgia taking a nap. I didn't even know it had been taken until a few days ago.



This is Georgia with her hoodie on. Doesn't she look gangsta?



I also took a picture of Shawn napping with Georgia.



Shawn found a bandana of his that he decided to it put on Georgia. The first picture makes her look gangsta yet again.



This is more like her normal expression, looking at us like we are fools.



And finally, I had to show just how big she had gotten. So, here is Georgia taking a bath. You really have to see her in person to understand the fat on her. Her legs have several rolls.

3 Months

Georgia was three months old this week. It took us a few tries to take her picture because she was pretty fussy that day. At three months Georgia is getting really big and is way more social. She says ooo, goo, and does a goo with a gurgling noise added in. It makes her sound like static on a radio. She likes to be held to where she is sitting up and enjoys someone holding her so that she is standing. She also loves to suck on her hand. If anything gets near her mouth she tries to get whatever it is in her mouth. She goes back to the doctor next week. Until then, we did weigh her yesterday and she was 15 pounds. So she is a very big girl.

This week we also had a bowl game to watch. Georgia dressed up for the occasion, but the game didn't go so well. Consequently we didn't watch the second half. That day, the 31st, also happened to be Shawn's birthday.

Here is her three month picture.



While taking her shirt off, we realized she looked like she was wearing a turban so we took a picture.



All dressed up for the Clemson game. We tried on a pair of shoes that one of Shawn's cousin's gave us. They are close to fitting, which is kinda sad since they are meant for babies that are walking. It seems that she will outgrow them before she actually walks!



Here she is all knocked out after nursing.



I had to get a picture of her wishing her Daddy a Happy Birthday. We were trying to get a smile out of her but we kept getting puzzled looks instead.

Christmas

Christmas is a busy time for us. On Christmas Eve we went to Shawn's cousin's house for a party. We didn't take any pictures there, but we took one in front of the tree when we got home. Then on Christmas morning we went to Shawn's parent's house for breakfast. We opened up presents there too. Georgia got a ton of books and some clothes from them and opened up her glow worm and bigger sleep sack from us. Then we went to my mom's house to eat lunch and open more presents. She got a picture from my bother that we put in her room, a set of pots and pans and a snail that lights up and plays music from my mom. Then for dinner we went to my aunt's house to see the Gunter family. Every year we take family pictures while we are there. Then, of course, the next day we had snow. It was Georgia's very first snow. We bundled her up and took her outside so we could have proof that she had seen the snow as a baby.

This is Christmas Eve in front of the tree. I end up with my eyes closed in about a third of the pictures I'm ever in. The other picture Georgia wasn't looking so I'm using this one.



Georgia with her glow worn all tuckered out from watching us open her presents. Also note her Christmas pjs.



This is her first Christmas outfit. Notice her participating in her new past time, chewing on her fist.



Here she is with my mom, looking at her new toys.



Here she is with my dad enjoying some one-on-one time.



This is Georgia all sleepy after nursing.



Here is our family picture at my aunt's house. This is Georgia's second Christmas outfit. It lasted for only two or three hours and then we had to change her back in to her other outfit again. She had a wet diaper that leaked through to her clothes.



This is Georgia with her generation of cousins. There was almost a fight over who would get to hold her.



This is Georgia with her cloth diaper. We started using them on Christmas and haven't really had any problems. You can also see all her fat rolls!



Here is Georgia in the snow!

12 Weeks

At twelve weeks, Georgia is growing to be quite a big baby. We weighed her last week and she was a little over 13 lbs. She is also getting to experience all sorts of new things. We put up our tree and decorated it (over a one week period). She loves to sit and watch the lights. She has also learned a new trick. She will stick her tongue out and start trying to suck her top lip in. The first time Shawn noticed it he said she looked like an old man with no teeth. It was pretty funny. I have some videos of it, but I need a better one before I post any.

This is Georgia next to the tree.



This is Georgia with her new favorite toy, her hand. She will suck on it for a long time. It makes a really loud noise sometimes.



Georgia in some of her new 3-6 months sized clothes! She is getting big.



More hand sucking. Notice how fat her arm is compared to her hand.



We had a Gunter family get together when my cousin Lee was in town. This is a picture of all the cousins (except Ann). Lee is in the black sweater next to me. She lives in Pittsburgh and we only see her once or twice a year.



This was our first family portrait session. We were taken back an hour after our appointment time so Georgia was getting hungry and was very fussy. I was ready for them to just stop taking pictures and give up but they kept taking and taking until there were like 80 pictures to look at.



She was actually happy for some of the pictures. This was one of the few where she was awake and not crying.



Then we took her to see Santa. This was a wonderful Santa with a real beard. He was great with kids and loved holding her. They even got a picture of her holding his finger. I thought this was the cutest one.



Once Christmas is over I will get more pictures posted and perhaps a video of Georgia sucking her top lip.

Two Months

Monday Georgia was two months old. Then on Wednesday she was 9 weeks old. In addition, she also had her first sick doctor's visit. I had gone in to work to get some stuff to work on and to drop stuff off that I had done. When I got back my mom told me I should check her temperature and sure enough she had a fever of 100.2. So I called the doctor and got her an appointment for that afternoon. She had been coughing all day and just been fussy. She ended up just having a head cold, but with the fever he wanted us to keep checking her temperature and giving her baby Tylenol. She still had a fever that night but the next morning it had finally gone away and never came back. She still is sick. I can tell because she is sleeping more during the day and she still gets fussy for no apparent reason. This seems to be something that we are passing around because last Friday I woke up sick, then Wed. Georgia got sick, and today Shawn woke up feeling sick.

This week also had another milestone, our anniversary. We've been married for five years and it seems both to have gone by so fast and to have been a long time as well. We've already been through so much that it is hard to believe that we've only been married for five years. For our anniversary we went on a double date with our friends George and Shanna. We went to Cracker Barrel to eat and then went to the zoo for the Lights Before Christmas. It was really cold but we had a good time. My dad watched Georgia for us. He is one of the few people she will take a bottle from.

This week we also got our pictures back from Georgia's first portrait session. Then we all went and had family pictures made for Christmas. She was not happy when we had the pictures made because they took us back an hour after our appointment time and she was hungry. We did end up with some good pictures, but not as many as we could have gotten.

We finally got back the pictures that were taken at the hospital. The girl that took the pictures had somehow forgotten to place the order. Here is a composite page. She looks so tiny in these!



One day Shawn decided to be funny and put a diaper on Georgia's head while he was changing her.



This is one of her portraits from JC Penney's.



This is another one. I think she looks really different in this picture.



This is another one with a different background.



This is a composite with, as the photographer put it, "all her little piece parts."



And finally, this is her two month picture. I never knew how hard it would be to take these pictures. This month we took about 11 pictures before we got one we both liked. Last month it was about 5. Everyone else that has done it made it seem easy!



Next post will have the pictures we just did of all three of us.

Little video

I took a little video last night of Georgia while she was sleeping. This is what she does when she gets hungry. I thought it was cute.