Five months - 07/13/2012
How grown up you have become this month! We can hardly
believe it – as I type you are sitting up playing with your toys on your mat
like a little boy. I have to do a double take when I look at you sometimes – I just
can’t wrap my mind around how big you are. You know what you want and you know
how to get it now – whether it’s scooting on your belly over to the toy of
choice, or squawking for my attention. You also KNOW how cute you are, and you
turn on the charm for people. Everyone loves it, of course, and we love that
you bring joy to people with your smiles. You’re such a little ham – especially
when we pull out the camera, you know exactly what to do. We love to watch your
personality bursting out of you more each day!
Hello, world!
Grin :)
Relaxin'
"Watcha doin', mom?"
"Hmmm. Let me ponder this."
"By Jove, I've got it!"
Cutie pie.
His favorite two fingers.
"Mom, what is this weird thing on my shirt?"
"I think it's stuck there."
"I'm gonna get it off."
The Smirk.
Shaking that rattle.
Eating that rattle.
Big boy!
[Also, Gerber makes onesies for midget babies. At 5 months old, Judah is completely busting out of this 6-9 month sized onesie. He fits all other brands of 6-9 month sized clothing just fine.]
How big you are:
I took you in for your shots on 07/13/2012, your 5-month
birthday. I asked for a weight and height check too – you are 18lbs 15oz, big
boy! 84th percentile for weight. You are 26 and ¼ inches long – which
is in the 58th percentile.
You are rapidly moving up to all 6-9 and 9 month size
clothing. You still fit some of your bigger 3-6 month stuff. You’re in size 3
diapers. Momma is hoping to start back up with cloth diapers when we get back
from Oregon next month.
What you love:
You still LOVE your bath time! This month you’ve been
playing with your bath toys – you love it when we fill them with water and
squirt you with them. You like to push them around in the water and chew on
them. Now that you can sit up bath time is a whole new level of fun for you!
You are also fascinated with running water – sometimes I sit you in the tub and
just turn the tap on. You stare at the water pouring into the tub, and try to
grab it with your hand. Your little eyes blink furiously as you get splashed in
the face and you try over and over to grab at the stream of water. Momma and
Daddy just die laughing as we watch you try to make sense of it. You even
leaned over and put your face in it one time – now that was a shock to your
system!
You LOVE to play peekaboo and you LOVE to be “thrown” up
in the air – you just cackle with delight at both activities.
You LOVE the sound of your own voice, haha! You jabber
and screech and grunt and growl and talk to me all day long.
You LOVE boxes, and always try to get inside them (mainly
your toy box)!
You LOVE swimming! We took you for the first time on
06/16/2012, and you squealed and kicked and splashed your heart out. We’ve
taken you many times since then and you’ve become very comfortable in the
water. You like to relax and float on your back and “swim” on your belly. It’s
really funny – as soon as we put you on your back in the water, your whole body
relaxes and you just lie there floating (always with one of our hands
underneath you, of course). When you’re on your belly, though, you go crazy
splashing and kicking and swimming like a frog. We have a floaty ring/device
thing that has a mesh seat for you to sit in, and a sun shade to block the
blazing Texas sun – you would happily sit floating in the water for hours. You’ve
come close to falling asleep in it several times – swimming tuckers you out.
When we want you to take a good nap, we just take you swimming!
You LOVE to get out of the house and go places with us –
grocery shopping, walking around the mall, the farmer’s market, the great
outdoors (when it’s not unbearably hot)… you are so curious and your eyes dart
around as you try to take everything in. You always take good naps after
outings as well, because you wear yourself out trying to figure the world out!
You LOVE music. If you are overtired or fussy, we just have to put on some calming music and you will settle right down. Uncle Matthew sometimes plays the piano for you over Skype and you just love that... it calms you and often puts you to sleep. You also love being sung to, which both momma and daddy do every day. You like to croon along with us.
What you don’t
like:
You are a little charmer when we’re around other people,
but you always make sure that momma or daddy is within sight. You get unsettled
when you are separated from us, especially if the environment is noisy and
crowded.
You don’t like waking up with gas pains at night – poor baby
L
Who does? But we are trying to figure out how to stop them from happening (more
on that below).
You don't like getting overtired, but that's usually an easy fix with music, rocking, or nursing.
As always, there's not much you don't like!
What you’ve been
up to this month:
Sitting – You've been doing the "tripod sit" (when you use your arms to lean on and hold you up) since you were 3 and 1/2 months old. Then on 07/09/2012 it just
clicked – you realized that you could sit up without using your arms and you’re very proud of yourself!
You’ve become a sitting pro in just a few days. You can’t quite get up into a
sitting position from lying on your stomach or back by yourself yet, but you
have figured out how to get from sitting back to lying down. You lower yourself
down onto your side and then roll onto your stomach or back. I love watching
you figure it all out! It’s like the world is a whole new place for you now
that you can sit up and look around!
Scooting – You’ve
become very good at getting to where you want to go! You get your little bottom
up in the air and then push with your legs and scoot. It’s precious. But momma
really needs to watch you now – and she needs to baby proof the house too. The
other day you quickly scooted over to an electrical outlet and were tugging on
the wire of a plugged in lamp before I noticed! Oops!
Playtime – It’s
been so fun to watch you play this month! You have developed favorites from
among your toys, and you always go for those first. At the moment you really
love your Fisher Price Learning Table – it has lots of things for you to push
and turn and it makes music and helps you learn the alphabet. Right now you’re
mostly fascinated with the music and the flashing lights, I think J.
You also love your little toy box – which is just a square canvas tote basket.
You like to turn it over and dump all the toys out and then try to get inside
it. You like anything that rattles or
jingles and you will sit there and shake it with all your might, often flapping
both your arms – it’s adorable, of course. Pretty much anything that you do is
adorable.
Reading – You love
to be read to. You have grasped the concept of a book now. Whenever you pick
one up, you know it’s supposed to open, and you try to turn the pages. You sit
still and listen and look at the pictures when we are reading to you. Your
favorite one at the moment is Goodnight Moon, probably because of the bright
contrasting colors.
Spatial awareness
– You are starting to understand the world around you – things like gravity and
object permanence. When you drop a toy you will look down and around to see
where it fell. When I play peekaboo with you, disappearing behind a doorway and
then jumping back out, you know that I’m still there even when you can’t see
me. You watch and wait for me to pop out again, and then squeal with laughter.
You are starting to understand balance more – you figured out how to balance
sitting up. You don’t pull up to a standing position yet, but when we stand you
up holding onto something you can balance & stand for quite a while, especially
when you play at your Learning Table. You’re getting very good at picking toys
up, even small or oddly shaped ones. You reach out and rake the toy that you
want towards you, and then pick it up. You want to reach out and touch/grab
everything, and you will try to launch yourself out of our arms to get at
something that you want! When we wear our glasses, you grab them off our faces,
and you’ve spilled more than one drink and plate of food.
Social – You are
a little ham, baby! You also KNOW you are cute. You’ve started being “coy”… you
will smile up at people shyly and bat your eyelids, then bury your face in
momma’s shoulder!
You’ve developed a little close-mouthed smirk along with your
big open-mouthed grin… you look very mischievous when you flash it.
When we ask for “kisses” you open your mouth and attack
our faces with big slobbery kisses – it’s hilarious and precious J.
You reach your arms up to be picked up when we come over
to you. I love it when you wake up from a nap all happy and I go in to get you
and you flash a big smile and reach up to me J.
You are fascinated with other babies and small children –
I wonder what goes through your mind – “Hey look, another small person like me!”.
You laugh all the time now – funny faces, funny noises,
tickles, and sometimes just random things that strike you as funny. The other
day I was changing your diaper and you just starting cackling with laughter as
I strapped a new one on you – I wonder what was so funny to you!
You’re also getting more vocal – you’re discovering the
limits of your voice. The other day you were talking and screeching so loudly
that you gave yourself a coughing fit. I just laughed at you J.
You’ve also figured out how to “fake cough” because you know it gets my
attention!
Food – We’ve
started letting you taste some solid foods. I’ve made it my goal for you to eat
all organic until you are at least one year old – during the first year babies
develop and grow SO much that I don’t want to risk chemicals/pesticides etc.
harming your little body and your delicate digestive system. I’ve made all of
your food so far, so I know exactly what’s in it. We’re doing baby-led weaning
(no spoon-feeding – baby self-feeds), and although it’s not recommended to
start until 6 months, you hit all of the “ready to eat” milestones early – you sit
up well unsupported, you’ve [more than!] doubled your birth weight, you seem to
always be hungry (you nurse often 10+ times during 24 hours), you’ve lost
the tongue thrust reflex, and you're always trying to grab at our food and put it in your mouth.
I put small chunks of very soft foods on your Bebepod
tray table, and you play with them – squishing them and painting them all over
your chair and your body. Sometimes you manage to get some in your mouth.
Sometimes I “cheat” and help a bit by holding the food in my fingers and
letting you grab my hand and put it in your mouth. This works better with
really slippery food like avocado that you can’t pick up well by yourself. At
the moment it’s really about getting you used to the idea of food and eating –
you still get all your nutrition from momma’s milk. So we let you play with
your food and get tiny bits in your mouth – you have so much fun with it! So
far you’ve tried: sweet potato (loved), banana (loved, but made you very
constipated, so no more of that for a while!), butternut squash (also seemed to
constipate you), chunky applesauce (loved it, you had lots of fun painting that around
your tray and putting your fingers in your mouth!), pears (loved), whole wheat
pasta (cooked very soft, you loved it), avocado (LOVED it… might be your
favorite). I think you like applesauce and avocado the most so far.
Sleep – Well,
it’s still not perfect, but we’re getting there. This month you seem to have
had more trouble with gas pains waking you up during the night. You wake up
crying in pain and scare yourself, which leads to more crying, and you won’t
settle until momma feeds you. You go to sleep around 10pm and the first time
you wake up is around 3:30am to eat. After that it’s anyone’s guess – sometimes
you wake up every hour or two with gas pains, and one of us has to carry you
around on your belly in football hold until you’ve “tooted” it all out. We’re
not quite sure how to prevent you from getting gas at night – maybe momma’s
diet needs to change? We thought it might be because you started eating tiny
bits of solid food… but it doesn’t seem to be related to whatever solid food
you eat, because we’ve tried not giving you solids for a few days and you still
get the gas pains. Hopefully we’ll figure it out soon and all get more sleep
*yawn*.
You’re taking good naps during the day – you usually take
two 2-3 hour naps, one in the early afternoon (because you only wake up for the
day around 10am) and one in the early evening (usually between 6-8pm).
Sometimes you need another little catnap or two. I always rock you to sleep
when you start showing signs of being tired, and then put you in your crib.
Sometimes (depending on when you last ate) you half wake up in the middle of
your nap hungry, and I feed you back to sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sweet baby boy, what a busy month it has been for you! You
are learning SO much every day. I can hardly keep up with you. I can’t believe
that in one month you will be half a year old. But I’m trying not to think
about that. This month has been a little harder for this first time momma – you
are delightful and I love every. single. minute with you, but I’m also
realizing more and more what a great responsibility parenthood is. Both the
great challenge and the great joy of it is that you don’t ever stop being a
momma – not when you’re sick, not when you’re exhausted, not when you’re sad.
And you are just growing up so fast – sometimes I feel like your babyhood is
slipping right away before I can grasp truly being a mother! I’m trying to just
take one day at a time and invest fully in being your momma – and you make my
days so full of joy that I can hardly complain J
We love you Judah William, forever and for always.
