Sunday 19 May 2013

5 months

i'm super late getting this posted, but chatty catty is 5 months old. we got her measured a little bit late, but she was almost 15 lbs and 26 inches, which means she grew 2 inches in one month! she went from 25-50th percentile to 75th in a matter of weeks. she can sit up from a slight incline and stay sitting up straight for a long time. she sometimes throws herself forward and gets into a crawling position, but then she gets cranky and rolls onto her back. she has yet to roll back to her belly, but it seems like she just isn't interested in doing that because she hates tummy time. she's still an excellent sleeper, going for 10-12 hours straight at night and then taking 2 very long naps every day. she's always been a good night sleeper but a terrible napper, however over the past month she has been learning how to soothe herself to sleep and that means she doesn't have to sleep attached to me anymore. i miss it, but i can actually get things done now so it's for the best. i noticed that she was waking up in the morning, sucking on her fingers and going back to sleep without any crying, so i tried putting her down for naps as soon as she starts rubbing her eyes, and it worked perfectly! she stares at the striped curtain in the bedroom, sucks on those fingers, talks to herself a little, and falls asleep in 5 minutes. she's amazing.

we finally threw in the towel on breastfeeding after she became too distracted to stay latched and i'm not able to pump enough to make it worthwhile to continue. we fought hard for those 5 months and i can say i did everything i could for her. we're waiting until at least 6 months to start solid foods, at which point we will skip purees and start giving her steamed veggies that are soft enough for her to explore without risk of choking. my mom got kitten a walker that has a removable toy bar, so we plan on using the walker with the plain tray instead of also having a high chair. i can already picture sebastian following the walker around the house, cleaning up the trail of food she leaves behind her.

in addition to sitting up, she's getting good at using her hands. she can grab the giraffes on her walker, pull them down, stand up, and put them in her mouth with near-perfect accuracy. she also loves to stick her hands inside my mouth, or grab my hands or lips and aggressively shove them into her mouth while growling. she babbles constantly and makes all kinds of consonant sounds (la, ga, da, ma) and when her hand is in her mouth she says something that sounds a whole lot like "i love you," so i always say "i love you too, baby girl!" i know she's not really saying that, but maybe it will turn into that... you never know!