happy 4 month birthday

4 months and 6 hours ago, our lives changed forever! this precious little guy officially entered our lives and we feel so blessed.

and now he's so big! we don't go to the pediatrician for his 4 month appointment until june 14th, so i don't have any stats for you yet. correction. john says "the stat is that he's awesome". so there you go.

i have decided to be more detailed in my birthday posts, partially because he's doing so much more now and partially because i realize that i'm not going to remember all of the little details like i thought i would. so if you get bored or don't want to even start reading this list, feel free to just skip to the pictures. i'll never know! so here's what quinn's been up to in the past month:

• smiling and laughing all the time! he laughs when you bounce him, make him "jump" on your legs, and kiss his neck.
• reaching for objects, grabbing them, and often pulling them to his mouth to suck on
• sucking on his right hand - at first he sucked on his fist but lately he's just been sticking all of his fingers in his mouth and chewing on them
• sitting in his bumbo seat and looking around or playing with toys. he has one toy with big buttons that makes sounds and lights up when you hit the buttons and he loves it!
• rolling...sort of. he can roll from his back to his side and back, and from his side to his stomach and back, but hasn't quite put it all together yet.
• talking/making noises constantly. he says "goo" and sometimes when he cries it sounds like he says "mama" even though john says this doesn't count as his first word. he tries to imitate what we say to him - for example, i stick out my tongue and pretend to cough after he coughs sometimes and today he started sticking out his tongue and going "ah ah ah" to pretend cough like i do! he's also become quite good at squealing lately.
• splashing in his bathtub (as you've all seen) and kicking
• taking all of his naps in his crib. give him his lovey and a pacifier and he just closes his eyes and goes to sleep. i still have a hard time believing how easy it is sometimes since he had such a hard time napping for the first few months. now he naps about 2-3 hours in the morning and then takes 2 more naps in the afternoon of about 1-2 hours each. hooray!
• sleeping 8-9 hours straight at night and sometimes more (one night he slept 11 1/2 hours!)
• eating about 5 times/day and is still a SLOW eater. it takes him about 30 minutes to eat but he's eating a ton - about 6-8 ounces each time.
• teething?? after two hours of screaming sunday night, we realized that it seemed like his mouth was hurting. he's been drooling and sucking on things a lot but i didn't think he had actually started teething until then. he finally went to sleep around midnight after some motrin, baby orajel, and cold washcloths to suck on. he's been fussy for the past few days, but still no teeth to speak of.
• earning almost as many nicknames as his uncle bill: monkey, squirmy worm, q-dog, quinnster, q, buddy, q ball, q dub...

he still has his beautiful blue eyes and is starting to grow a little more hair, though we can't really tell what color it is. sometimes it looks blonde and other times it looks brown. we'll have to wait and see!

because of his dairy allergy, i am still dairy free and soy free and i guess it is working. he still spits up EVERYWHERE but hasn't had anymore blood in his diapers. needless to say, i can't wait to have regular milk, cheese, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies....actually now that i think about it, my diet is probably much healthier without dairy. :)

again, sorry for the wordy update. the older he gets, the more i realize that there will be a day that i don't remember what he was doing at this age or the way his giggle sounded. it makes me sad just thinking about it. thank goodness for blogs, digital cameras, and flip video cameras so we can record as much of him as we can!

happy birthday, quinn! we love you!