Have you ever seen a cuter baby???

If you answered "Yes" to the above question, I'm sorry, but you are going to have to stop reading the blog. Because, in fact, Alex is the cutest baby ever! There is truly good reason for his cuteness, too. His cuteness is definitely helping relieve the fact that he still doesn't like to sleep!

Alex is 4 1/2 months now. He has finally started taking some good naps during the day. Most days, he is taking two 1.5-2 hour naps, with an occasional nap that is shorter or longer. His nights......now that's still a whole other story! It seems like everyone else I know that has a baby his age is sleeping through the night, but not us. Alex continues to wake up every 2-3 hours during the night. Sometimes I get lucky and he'll sleep 4 hours in a row. When he does that, I always feel so good the next day! It doesn't seem to matter what I do....let him sleep in the pack 'n play, sleep in bed with me, feed him rice cereal before bed, put him to bed earlier, etc. None of it seems to make any difference. There are about a million sleep books out there and they don't seem to help either. I have decided he is so special that the books don't apply to him! =)

His most recent nighttime escapade is waking up every morning between 4 and 5 AM. He is unbelievably happy and just wants to talk, talk, talk. Well, and also, pretend he's in the jumperoo and jump the best he can while laying down. It's so hard not to want to play with him when he's in such a good mood, but I just try to leave him to talk to himself and then soothe him back to sleep when he's ready. I really hope he'll learn soon that this is not play time.

Alex is also getting to be so much more fun! He smiles more often and laughs more often. He, in general, is enjoying life more! This also means I'm enjoying life more too! He is sitting up pretty well, but still loses his balance. The boppy helps hold him up though. He is also rolling over really well and his favorite thing to do is just be laid out on a quilt so that he can roll and move all over it. He wants to move really bad and I don't think it'll be too much longer before he figures out how to crawl and get where he wants to be!

He truly is the cutest thing ever and even in my sleep deprivation I couldn't ask for a cuter kid. The pictures above were from the other morning when it was very chilly. He jumped in the Jumperoo for a bit before we put him in the Bob to go to the park with Pop to swing.