I think it’s so funny when people tickle me, especially my tummy and neck! It just makes me smile and cackle every time.

- Hayden

Our little Maddy is entertaining us more than ever before – that is when she’s not following her father’s example and impersonating a vegetable in front of the TV (or computer). She’s addicted to the movie Annie, and despite my resistance, has convinced us to let her watch it at least 5 times now.

She knows every word to the song “Tomorrow” and sings it all the time. I couldn’t decide on which of these cute videos to include, so here are 3 of her recent performances.

She also spends lots of time recounting scenes from the movie after we turn it off – like the opening scene (”Annie sad. Want mommy daddy.”) or the rescue scene (”Help Annie, falling. Helicopter. Annie scared.”)

She’s also obsessed with flickr and every time I open my laptop she insists that I put on a slideshow for her to watch – she chooses a different photostream each day, sometimes it’s “Sydney” or “Sierra” or “Jude” or “Eva“, but lately it’s always “Maddy.” She sure likes to look at herself.

When we can entice her away from the various screens in our home, we’re constantly amazed at her rapid pace of learning and how far she’s already come from her baby days. She loves to read books all day long (me reading to her, her reading alone, or her reading to Hayden or her dolls) and her favorite books these days are Polar Bear Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, Where the Wild Things Are, Go Dog Go!, and Little Oink.

She is counting to ten in English and Vietnamese, knows most of her colors (and enjoyed pointing them out when we got this thermograph photo taken at The Tech museum in San Jose), is great at matching games, and has started to correct her own slang. She’ll say “yeah, mommy” then stop herself and say “Yessss, mommm” with extra emphasis on the proper word endings – we have NO idea where she got the idea that she had to correct either of those words.

Maddy is also very concerned about people’s emotions (real people or characters in books or on TV), and is frequently asking if they’re feeling sad, worried, happy, surprised, scared or tired. The best part is the faces, body language and voice inflections she uses to mimic the emotion she’s commenting on. When Hayden got back from her doctor’s appointment last week and I explained to Maddy that she had gotten shots, Maddy said “Pooooooor thing. It’s okay, Hayden!” in the cutest voice with a very concerned look on her face.

Hayden turned 4-months-old today. I didn’t think it was possible, but time definitely moves faster with kid #2.

These days, she’s loving her fingers and feet, and is sure to shove one (or all) of them into her mouth at every opportunity.

She also rolls all over the place (front-to-back and back-to-front), and has lots of “Happy Hayden” moments when she showers us with huge smiles and her adorable cackle-laugh.

On the less-than-adorable side, she’s also been deeply engaged in fighting two intense battles with us: the Battle of the Bottle and the Battle of the Nap.

More on those in a minute if you want to hear the gorey details, but first here are her latest measurements…

- Weight: 12 lbs, 7 oz (25th %)
- Height: 24.25 inches (50th %)
- Head: 39.5 cm (<25th %)

Battle of the Bottle
At moments I’ve worried that I’ll never be able to leave Hayden for more than a couple hours during the next 8 months (which could be a slight challenge with work). She’s been screaming bloody murder and thrashing her head back and forth at top speed every time we try to give her a bottle.

Luckily we seem to be making some headway over the past week. After upping the frequency to 2 bottles a day and trying to perfect the conditions of Hayden’s bottle-feedings, she’s now willing to drink around 1.5 ounces before starting to put up a fight. Now we make sure the milk is no more than 2 days old and is the perfect warm temperature.

We’ve also discovered that she prefers to be held very snugly with the feeder standing up and slowly bouncing her up and down while she drinks. She rarely allows anyone to sit down and feed her, but sometimes that’s okay as long as we look her right in the eye for every second of the feeding.

Now if we can just figure out how to get her to drink that last 1/2 ounce she ALWAYS leaves in the bottle…

Battle of the Nap
As I’ve mentioned before, Hayden’s been going through a phase of very very short naps. This is quite disturbing to me, because I personally LOVE my naps and cannot see how it’s possible for a baby to get good quality sleep without good lengthy naps (during which said baby’s mother could actually GET STUFF DONE).

So, 3 weeks ago I started a color-coded sleep log (thanks Truas) to get a visual of what I’m dealing with and also figure out some good times of the day to start working towards a consistent daily nap schedule. It has been an interesting exercise, but so far hasn’t helped me get on a regular schedule.

More importantly, I took Jessie’s advice and bought a Miracle Blanket – which amazingly Hayden can’t wiggle out of like her other swaddle blankets – and also purchased some white noise to play on a loop. We’ve also done the cry-it-out thing several times, which is no fun, but seems to help. Having her sleep in a dark, quiet room without constant interruptions by Maddy has helped immensely (why didn’t I think of that earlier?).

Progress we’ve made includes increasing from an average of under 14 hours of sleep per 24 hours to almost 15 hours, reducing from around 5 short naps/day down to 3 long naps, and increasing the average length of uninterrupted naptime from about 30 minutes to almost 90 minutes.

Let’s hope it sticks so we can start battling the nighttime sleep issues now. Waking up to feed her 2-3 times/night just isn’t cutting it anymore…

P.S. Hayden slept over 9 hours after I wrote this post! First time ever. Great way to celebrate her 4-month birthday