Pedi update + Good riddance

Time for another update! Penelope went to her four-month pediatrician visit and I thought I'd post her latest stats. She's now 23 1/2 inches long, and she weighs 11 pounds 10 oz. She's pretty small for her age; her weight is only the 10th percentile, but it's still normal. Everything was just fine, she's perfectly healthy. She still has her pink checkmark on her forehead, which we call her Harry Potter mark, but the official diagnosis is just stork bites that will fade with time.

Penelope has finally begun growing out of some of her newborn habits. Around her birthday, we stopped swaddling her at night finally. She's been swaddled every night since she was about one week old. It really helped her sleep well because it kept her wild hands from smacking her in the face and provided a womb-like cuddling. But now she has much better hand control and has lost her Moro reflex, so she doesn't need it anymore.

A few days after dropping the swaddling, we also triumphed over the pacifier. For the first few months, we absolutely loved her "chupon" because she loves to suck and it really calmed her. But lately it has become more of an annoyance when she constantly drops it and then cries for it over and over. It's not so bad during the day, but at night I don't want to have to keep getting up; neither of us was getting a good night's rest. So slowly over a few days we stopped giving it to her. Of course, she hasn't lost her desire to suck at all, so now she's just transitioned to sucking on the first two fingers of her left hand (which is why we had to wait until we stopped swaddling her before doing this). But that's fine with me, because she can't lose them. It's amazing how it still instantly calms her down. She'll be absolutely wailing, and then put her fingers in her mouth, and immediately looks happy and content. It's like flipping a switch. Anyway, good riddance to the pacifier! We're free!