Elise Indietta | 4 months

It makes me feel sad to think about how little I’ve written down and documented about Elise’s life so far. There are so many things I want to remember about Elise as a baby and about our lives right now.


The first thing I want to say is that everyone, EVERYONE loves Elise. It’s the one thing that Chelsea, Alexa, and Barrett can agree on. She got passed around a bit at a family reunion over the Fourth of July holiday and won over each and every one!

^^some of us love Elise a little TOO much. This is an accurate depiction of almost every encounter Elise has with Alexa (haha!)^^

She is such a happy baby. My favorite thing is that when Elise first wakes up, she doesn’t cry right at first. She looks around and if she sees anyone, she smiles. It melts my heart time and time again. She’ll also smile at the gasping noises her older siblings make and tongue-clicking. She really didn’t like lip buzzing when she was smaller, but it doesn’t scare her now like it did then. She has such a happy demeanor and when she smiles, it reaches all the way up to her big brown eyes.

Her eyes are usually what people comment on first when they meet her. “Look at those big, beautiful, brown eyes!” they’ll say. After that, they’ll comment on her olive skin tone, her round head, or her perfectly round ears. She is certainly a beauty!

 

So far, her hair has stuck around. I think it would be so fun to have one baby with hair before they turn three, but I’ve never minded my bald babies. I have about a million bow headbands that I love to put on her every day and it’s gotten to the point where it’s more normal to see her with a bow on her head than without! She’s recently graduated from the small bow size to the larger ones, despite her smaller head circumference.

As far as percentiles go, Elise is long and skinny with a small head. I think she has a good chance of being the tallest girl in our family. Her hands and feet were so much longer than any of my other babies when she was born, so I’ve suspected that she would be a longer baby all along.

Elise sleeps really well at night, only awakening once around 4:25 to nurse (although, she didn't wake up until 6:00 AM this morning!) and then right back to sleep again until her siblings wake her up around 7:30. She eats every 2-3 hours or so and has *mostly* regular bowel movements. There were a couple of weeks there she went without one, but with some help of massage, oils, and other herbal remedies, we were rewarded with a BIG blowout. She’s been pretty regular ever since.

A description of Elise at this stage would be incomplete without mention of the amount of drool that soaks her clothes daily or her rubbed, raw feet because she kicks and rubs them together. Socks have helped solve that problem. She also has become so talkative recently and has gotten a little more control over her hands. She loves her bouncer chair with the monkeys and elephant mobile and is always reaching out to grab them, but my favorite is when she reaches out to grab my face. It pinches a little when she really digs her nails in to my cheeks or my arm as she's nursing, but I love it anyway. She also loves her jingly lady bug and whatever blanket or fabric nearby that she can get her hands on. She often grabs hold of something when she's falling asleep and holds it up to her face. It soothes her.

With starting up my birth photography business again, there have been a couple of times that I've had to leave her for an extended period of time and I gotta admit, it wasn't easy. I feel very connected to little Elise. I remember having days earlier on in my parenting career where I felt like my babies only loved me because I was their source of sustenance! I don't feel that way with Elise. It might be because I understand babies more than I did back then, but I also think Elise has a special spirit that just loves others. The ways in which she blesses our family is just going to become more and more obvious as she grows, I'm sure.

Having 4 kids has definitely changed things in our family, but I just feel so much more whole than I did before. It's amazing how you can live without something (or someone) your entire life and never realize what you're missing.

We love you, Elise!

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Susan is a birth photographer/videographer serving Chandler, Arizona and surrounding cities. Considering a photographer for your birth? Contact Susan for EDD availability.