Mommy's Recliner

Mena enjoys Mommy's recliner as much as Mommy does. Mostly they rock together, but sometime she sits in it by herself while Mommy's doing stuff in her room.

Road Trip

In January we visited Great Grandma & Papa Olson.

We also visited Great Grandma Frye and Aunt Sherri,
but I forgot to pull out my camera when we stopped at their house.

4 months old

Our precious daughter is now 4 months old! She did great with her second set of immunizations. She screamed during the shot but quickly calmed down when I picked her up. She's 25 7/8 inches long (95%), 13 pounds 15 ounces (50-75%), and her head is 16 1/2 inches (75%). She's doing great! I told Gene I wasn't sure whose kid she was since she scored in the 95% for length and neither of us are all that tall!

Rice Cereal

We've introduced rice cereal. We tried it with a spoon on January 5th. She made lots of faces to let us know she didn't really like this new idea of ours. We tried the spoon on a couple days. Then Gene left for a conference in Pheonix and I was a little busy doing everything so I skipped the spoon feeding. Then the day before Gene was supposed to return to Lincoln, Mena got sick. Our little girl was actually a pretty good sick kid. Between bouts of vomit and diarrhea, she was smiling and talking to me like everything was just fine. She was sick for about 5 days. January 18th we decided she was 100% back to normal and we tried rice cereal again. This time we followed my mom and sister's advice and gave her the rice cereal in a feeder bottle. She really enjoyed the rice cereal this way. Once she's gotten used to the texture, then we'll try the spoon again.

Father Abraham

Gene snapped some great pictures of Mena's smile while I was singing Father Abraham. She thought it was pretty funny when I moved her arms and legs up and down. She's got a great laugh--she makes the laughing noise while she's inhaling her breath!

Sleep?

Here's Mena on New Year's Day. Surprisingly, she was in a good mood. Dec. 30th the vibrating motor on her bassinet broke. She went cold turkey to sleeping without vibrations. For a few days, she wasn't getting any naps during the day. Then she'd finally crash late at night. After about 5 days she was napping and sleeping at night without any trouble.

Baby Carrier

Before I ever got pregnant, we'd seen a friend use a Maya Sling to carry their baby around. We thought it was great and bought one when I got pregnant. I'd tried to use it a couple times when I was on maternity leave but Mena would scream every time I put her in it because she couldn't see anything. I waited until she could hold her head up and I tried it again, but wasn't able to get her into it so that she was happy. So finally I just went to Target and bought a "Jennifer-friendly" baby carrier. Now Mena can happily accompany me while I'm getting things done around the house. She can face me or face out and next summer we can put her on either Gene's or my back when we go for hikes at Mahoney State Park.