She is, in fact, so much of a non-newborn that the first thing anyone comments on when they see her these days is her size. She's a chubby girl. Last week a lady in Target had a baby about the same size as Tamyra. She excitedly asked me how old my baby was. When I told her that she was almost four months. The lady pointed to her own baby and replied, "Oh...he's 8 months." Wow...way to make me feel like my baby is abnormally large! I had already started to develop a complex when she was 75th percentile for weight at 2 months after being just 50th percentile at 1 month (apparently, I produce some high cal breastmilk!) She quickly followed up with, "...but, he's a small baby!". And as we parted ways, she yelled back to me, "she's beautiful, though!". Yes, I know.
After people acknowledge her abundant fat rolls, they then generally comment on her hair. It is also abundant and blows her big sister's full head of hair at this age out of the water! Her hair cracks me up though. It's a mullet but, I love it. Tight, tight curls in the front and 2.5 inch long straight hair in the back. The two textures are so apparent and I fear my child will eventually hate her hair for that reason. I rarely brush or comb it but, have started an almost daily regimen of smearing a little baby oil on it. Otherwise, it dries out and looks rather dull. The baby oil gives it a nice shine and restores the color to jet black. I'm also putting a little headband on her most days. Then I don't have to smack anybody for referring to my baby as a "he".
Tamyra is a dream baby. Very, very sweet. She rarely fusses and when she does, it's clear what she wants and usually fairly easy to fix. Mama has a better knack for fixing things quickly than Daddy does, but that doesn't stop him from trying. And generally, she gives him a break eventually, even if he doesn't meet her exact expectations. Her favorite hobbies her sucking her hands, drooling (clearly inherited her sister's abilities there), and talking. The girl babbles constantly! She loves her voice, I think. And will flash the brightest smiles when you talk back to her. She's even given us a few chuckles...not all out laughs, yet...but, I suspect that's coming soon.
She sits pretty well, assisted, and has recently started to show a preference for sitting up rather than laying down. She also loves to stand on her chubby little legs (with assistance, of course). She is not a particular fan of tummy time. As a result, she never does it. Neither did her sister. But, her sister did roll over from front to back on the day that she turned 4 months. Tamyra has not yet hit that milestone but, she does generally turn to her side now, whenever you put her down on her back. I guess that's something. She can grab whatever she wants and put it into her mouth. I hadn't realized how good she was at this until I was trying to play a card game with her in my lap last night. Yeah...she managed to swat my cards to the floor at least twice!
Tamyra has been a good sleeper since the beginning. But, she is still nursing once each night. That's something that Jayla was not doing by now. For some reason, I don't mind getting up with Tamyra whereas, I HATED it with Jayla so, I didn't after she reached 3 months old. Tamyra typically goes to sleep between 10pm and 10:30pm and wakes between 4am and 5am for a quick snack and then slumbers again until around 8:00am or so. It's something that I've been able to easily live with. She still spends her nights snuggly wrapped in her miracle blanket but, has never really used it for naps. Tamyra is generally good about taking her naps around any errands or activities we have planned for the day...which is awesome! She likes to stay awake and be involved in whatever we're doing and reserves sleeping for another time. But, left to her own vices, Tamyra would take a 1-2 hour nap following each 2-hour awake period. It's something magically about how programmed she is to desire sleep after she's been awake for exactly 2 hours. Accordingly, she nurses every 3-4 hours during the day. But, the nice thing about it is that she's totally flexible with it.
Our schedule, however, will likely be shaken up a bit soon. Tamyra will start going to day care on Tuesdays and Thursday this week so that I can return to school starting September 1. I will miss her like crazy but, I know I will learn to enjoy having those two days to focus on my studies each week.
We took Tamyra to have her first professional photo shoot last weekend. I was hoping to get our first family-of-four portraits as well as document Tamyra at 4 months and Jayla at 4 years (she will get her own post about that later). It was a disaster! Tamyra screamed through the entire session. She wanted NOTHING to do with the photo shoot and refused to be consoled...even by me. So, in many of the shots, she is seemingly emotionless and in reality, the camera flash occurred as she was drawing her next beath to release a deafening wail. But, in her defense, she was battling a fever of 101 degrees as we would find out when we got home. It was her first fever ever and she dealt with it well after we rescued her from the evil photography studio. She had no other symptoms. After a couple of doses of Tylenol and a mega-sleepfest, she was back to herself (though, she was still doing some uncharacteristic night-waking during this past week - hopefully, that has passed). And, truthfully, I adore the pictures despite the tear-stained clothing and general unhappiness of the littlest one in the portraits.
My goal with this post was to paint a snapshot of what Tamyra is like right now. I have done a very poor job of documenting her life in any form so far. I've got to do better...a third of a year has already gone by and I know from experience that it only gets faster! But for the record, I am totally, totally, undoubtedly in love with everything about Tamyra. Her sister and daddy think she's pretty cool too.
