Of course, anytime I say anything like “This is what Allie does,” she changes it to make me eat my words. It’s like Idlehouse said in a comment before…the sooner she says “Oh, I get it now!” re the habits of her baby, the sooner she gets screwed.

So here’s the latest change: Allie has her drowsy signs at the same time increments, about 1 hour 15 mins after she’s been awake. I take her to her room to start soothing, and instead of tucking in and settling down, she pops up on my shoulder and looks at everything around the room with wide-eyed interest. The stuffed animals gifted to her from friends, sitting on her dresser, the elephant mobile hanging off the ceiling from Dardy, the ceiling fan over her head, the crib next to her. Staring, staring, turning her head, yawning, babbling, rubbing her face in my shoulder, then popping back up, pushing away from me to sit up and look around, eyelids red from sleepiness and rubbing but forced wide open. It took me half an hour to get her down just now.

She’s now got much better motor control, so that when she reaches toward something she wants, her hands are open, with fingers ready to close around the object of interest (to pull to her mouth). Earlier when I was holding her while preparing breakfast for myself, I didn’t have enough hands to bring some stuff back to the fridge, so I handed her the bag of muffins and she held it for me as we walked to the fridge and I opened the door, then took it from her and put it away. I’m sure this makes her look at things with new interest. “Hey, I can TAKE those! I can TASTE them! What’s that? I wanna taste THAT, too!”

I guess I’ll take this time to re-read the references on 4-month-olds to pick up tips on how to put the newly-aware baby down.