All the new things he's doing
4 months
He's doing so many new things, I can't believe this is the same little guy I gave birth to 4 months ago. He's totally different.
* He sticks his tongue out at random times. At first, he stuck it out to imitate us last week. Now he just sticks it out every now and then. We made a posting when he was about 3 weeks old that said he stuck his tongue out imitating us, but really he was only barely doing it back then. Now it actually comes out past his lips.
* He can go into a sitting position when we are holding him there. Previously, his curly little baby body resisted bending at the waist.
* He rolled over 3 more times this week for Jerry. He still doesn't do it easily. It's as if it requires great concentration, and when he doesn't get it, he cries. Often he rolls over and then can't get his arm out from underneath him. Usually babies roll over from tummy to back first (because of their round tummies), but Evan is doing back to tummy, and has never done it the other way before.
* Once he rolls onto his tummy, he acts like he is trying to crawl. He doesn't lift his tummy off the ground yet... I'm sure he doesn't have the arm strength yet. But he scoots a few inches forward. Often this activity ends in him crying because he's upset he can't crawl (at least that's why I think he's crying).
* When lying on his back, he'll lift his arms up in front of him. It almost looks like he's reaching up for me to pick him up, but I'm not sure.
* He briefly touched his toes the other day. Perhaps the cute thing where babies hold their feet is coming up next???
* Jerry does this thing where Evan is lying on his back on the bed, and Jerry pulls him to his feet by his arms (Evan's arms will be all tight). Evan loves it.

Sleeping problems
It's a really good thing I'm not working right now. As of a couple weeks ago, our goal was to get him to sleep in his crib and get him out of our bed. I started putting him in his crib for all daytime naps. He sleeps in there, but never for more than one hour (if he is napping with me, he can nap for 2 hours or more). Then, at night, Jerry puts him in his crib at 6:00 and I bring him to our bed at 12:00. The only problem is, he wakes up once every single hour. He isn't hungry. He will go back to sleep once he's rocked, and then when he's in a deep sleep we put him back in the crib. This is tiring, but we figured that if we did it often enough, he would eventually get used to the crib and start sleeping in there for longer periods.

This plan backfired. Now, when I bring him to bed with us at 12:00, he continues to wake up every hour, all night long. He goes back to sleep when I either rock or feed him. Sometimes he'll just go back to sleep if I pat his baby butt and comfort him. But before this, he would only wake up every 3 hours to eat, and even then he didn't cry, he would just stir a little, I'd feed him, and we'd peacefully both go back to sleep. This, however, is not peaceful.

The baby book says babies go through a sleep cycle every hour (just like adults do, except their cycle might be shorter). When they enter the light sleep cycle (each hour), they will wake up if they are unhappy (say, if they're hungry, in pain, or all alone in a crib when they dont' want to be, for example). So that explains why he has been waking up every hour. I believe he continues to wake up even when he's in our bed because his body is now in the habit of waking up whenever it enters the light sleep cycle.

So what are we supposed to do? Take a break from pushing the crib thing and try again in a few weeks? Or keep pushing it, and allow the family to be so sleep deprived we can't think straight? I get flustered just thinking about going through another night like that.

Last night was actually a little better... he still woke up every hour, but all I had to do was pat him and he'd go back to sleep. I didn't have to actually get out of bed and rock him.