So according to all our baby books, four month old babies are supposed to sleep for approximately 14 to 16 hours each day.  Yeh right!

Wonderbaby has decided that sleeping is for ordinary babies, that special babies like him only need 9 hours a day and staying up and wearing his Mummy out with exhaustion is so much more fun.  In fact its become a bit of a game to see whether or not we can get him to nap.

So far Reed is winning...however armed with Baby Einstein DVD's, Dr Seuss books and the determination to sleep once again, Mummy is not giving up!

So stayed tuned...

Reed Wonderbaby has hit another milestone, one we initially found a bit strange.  He loves to chew on everything in sight!

It started with his fists, we noticed he had them around his face alot.  Then they were near his mouth, then in his mouth and from that moment on we lived with the lovely sounds of sucking and slurping and smacking as he dined happily away on a meal of fingers and palms.

Lately this chewing fetish has moved to anything and everything he can get his little hands on.  It doesn't matter what, a toy, a blanket, Daddy's nose, put it near his mouth and he'll gum it to death.  Nothing in the house is safe so thank goodness he's not  mobile yet!

We are now just waiting with bated breath for that truly horrific moment, the moment when he discovers his thumb!! 

Well we now know how 'breastmen' are created.  Our little wonderbaby is still getting the good stuff from his Mummy, however sometimes, so she can head out to places that little babies can't really go...like the hair salon, we have a pump that makes sure he has a supply of food at the ready should he get hungry before she gets back.

This sounds simple doesn't it?  Not really!  Reed has decided he doesn't like this plan and all of a sudden refuses to drink from a bottle at all.  He won't even let it near his lips!  So, thinking we could out smart our three month old (how naive we were) we left Reed in his Daddy's care with a bottle of milk and a dropper that we thought he would take the milk from.  Boy were we wrong!

Mummy had to drive quickly back from the hair salon after her appointment so she could feed him as it would appear our little man would rather starve himself than take his milk any other way than directly from the source. 

So yep, another breastman has been born!!

Reed and Mummy took a trip to visit his new pediatrician in Milton today to find out why hes still suffering from bad congestion.  It turns out he has a mild case of bronchiolitis but its nothing to worry about and all going well should go away completely in a few weeks.  He just has to spend some time sitting in a steamy shower room getting those little nasal passages of his clear.

However the real story of the day was how everyone reacted to our little wonderbaby.  As soon as Mummy pulled him out of his carseat in the waiting room people were cooing and awing at how cute he was...and this was from the other mums with babies of their own!  It turns out Reed thoroughly enjoyed all this attention and even showed an interest in all the other little babies.  In particular he gave big smiles to one little 6 month old who was not impressed.  Looks like he has a taste for older women!

But it was the pediatricians reaction that really had Mummy smiling.  As soon as we had him undressed and the doctor had a chance to really study him her face broke out in a huge smile and she exclaimed that he was 'a very beautiful boy'.  Reed of course loved this and wriggled and giggled as she listened to his heart with the stethoscope.

Looks like a little ladykiller has been born!

So our wonderbaby rolled over for the very first time this morning much to his Mummy and Daddy's surprise.  First we thought it was a fluke when we were all cuddling in bed in the early morning hours and he rolled towards his Daddy looking for food.  (yep, he was a little confused but thats another post altogether ).

However, when Mummy put him on his playmat for tummytime he promptly rolled himself off his tummy and back onto his back.  We knew he didn't like tummytime very much but now he can avoid it completely by just rolling over.  Lets hope this doesn't lead to crawling too soon....we haven't baby-proofed the new house yet!!

We are fast learning that babies are very unpredictable little creatures.  Our wonderbaby has just started grinning at us 'for real', not just the 'I've got gas' type of smile.  At the same time he has entered into what we like to call his 'cranky pants' phase.

He has gone from a very placid, easy-going baby to one who has definately discovered his lungs...and his grumpy face.  So while we sit and bask in the glory of great big grins that light up the room, we are also living with a baby who likes to grizzle a lot more than he did a couple of weeks ago.

In fact, we were so concerned this wasn't typical Reed behaviour we started to wonder if he wasn't feeling sick.  So we took him to the pediatrician this morning to make sure there wasn't some underlying medical reason for his irritability and after a thorough check-up the doctor grinned, laughed and told us that hes just going through a 'phase' and to take heart, even the Queen's babies would have behaved like this one time or another.

So it was a relief that all was well with our baby boy, however we also reminded the doctor that the Queen probably had 20 nannies and a seperate wing to go hide in when the baby cried too much!  To be honest if this is the worst it gets with our little man its not that bad at all.  While he's a bit crankier than usual (it should go away when he reaches 12 weeks and he can process all the stimulation around him a bit better...his little brain is over-worked at the moment) he's still got a wonderful personality and greets us with lots of coos and an enormous grin whenever we walk over to him.

How can you possibly be upset about that?

So, our little superstar did it again!  Liverpool won yet another game while he was watching with Daddy.  This time when Daddy started rubbing his lucky little head, Liverpool scored 30 seconds later!

So this is good news for Liverpool but very bad news for Reed who will have a bald spot by the end of the season. :)

Thankfully our little man is starting to feel more like himself again.  His rash has completely gone and his snuffles are slowly clearing.  We are very relieved.

However one good thing did come from all the doctors visits...we got to find out that little Reed is not so little anymore!  At his last weigh-in he was 9 pounds 8 ounces, which means he gained an entire pound in 8 days!  In fact the doctors exact words were 'hes growing like a little weed'...he was very impressed.

We are understandably ecstatic as when you weigh less than 6 pounds just 6 weeks earlier every ounce counts.  Thank goodness he loves to eat (Matt has even taken to given him a bottle of expressed milk at night as he gets to guzzle back a more concentrated amount) and he has even managed to bypass the weight of babies who were born bigger than him.  What a little piggy!!