My five month old boy

So, this month has been the most fun so far! I do every once in a while look at the sleeper he wore in the hospital and feel a little sentimental for my tiny tiny baby, but he's been such a blast lately.

He is "talking" a lot more now. He's added some words to his vocabulary like "ga" and "da" and "mmm" and "th" (that one is accompanied by a lot of spit). Every morning he wakes up just talking and talking. I've never been great at waking up in the mornings, and it's still bad. I hear my little man start talking around 7:30, and he's just happy and talking, and I finally feel bad after about 30-45 minutes and go in there and get him up.

He's been sleeping in his crib this month!!! I know, I know... we just couldn't part with him before. I've been experimenting with leaving him unswaddled during the night. The first few nights went really well. We started to have him unswaddled in our bedroom in his co-sleeper and he did pretty well. Then we realized that if he's not bundled up tightly and he's free to move around, that he is much too big for the co-sleeper - so after getting him used to sleeping unswaddled we graduated him to his crib :-(. The first two nights he slept the whole night unswaddled, but then the next few nights he was restless and couldn't sleep. We've been back to swaddling since then. I don't know when he'll be ready for sleeping without his blanket, but I just don't see the problem with it. He likes to be bundled and cozy when he sleeps. If anyone sees a problem that I don't, let me know.

He sleeps pretty consistently about 8 hours. Very rarely he'll do a 6 hour night and then also as rarely he'll do a 10+ hour night. He usually goes to bed around 8:30-9:00 and wakes up around 4-5 in the morning. I bring him in our room to nurse him, and then I put him in the co-sleeper until around 7-9 when we get up for the day. He's really restless that first hour (after his 5 oclock feeding) going back to sleep and needs his paci to fall asleep. But then, he keeps dropping it. I counted the other night, and he dropped it 7 times in 45 minutes! Then eventually he'll drop it and not care. I'm just hoping that his 8 hour sleeps will stretch to 10-12 hour sleeps so that we can lose that final feeding, and paci fight. The other night, he woke up at 3:00am (after I had gone to bed at 1:45), and would drop his paci and wine every few minutes until around 7 in the morning when I finally gave up and just got him up for the day. Last night was perfect though. He woke up at around 4, but instead of me feeding him, I just put his pacifier in and he went back to sleep until 7:00, gave him his paci again, then awoke to a jabbering boy around 7:30. So hopefully that will become the new routine. (sorry for all the detail, this is just a great way for me to document and remember things - I know the general public is not interested in how many times he drops his paci during the night).

One day he took a four hour nap (two is usually his max, and that's rare). When he woke up from that four hour nap, he was a brand new boy. He had learned some more words, he had discovered his tongue and was making funny faces, he was actually raising up on his elbows during tummy time (when before he would occasionally raise his head briefly), he was grabbing stuff out of my hands (when before he would only grab something if you put it in his hand). I don't know what happened during that nap, but he really did wake up with all these new tricks. Bizarre.

So far, he's had rice cereal, squash, green beans, and apples. Surprisingly, apples are his least favorite. He is a HUGE fan of eating, as you've seen in his videos. We just can't get the bites in his mouth fast enough. Nursing has totally picked back up. I only give him a bottle at night now (and I nurse him). I feel like he's getting plenty to eat, and that makes me so happy.

He hasn't rolled over yet, but that's just fine. His daddy didn't roll over till he was 5 and a half months old, so he has about a week until he's behind daddy. I'm in no hurry for him to roll over though, because once they do that, then the roll over the other way, then the crawl... and I have a feeling motherhood will become a lot harder once he's mobile. I'm enjoying him a lot now when he stays right where I put him!