Five Months Old

My Phoebe Grace is five months old! I can't believe that she will hit the half-year mark next month. Phoebe turning five months means that Lucy is turning two and a HALF soon...can time please slow down just a little bit?? It is going way too quickly.

Phoebe has learned to roll in both directions now, so she can travel across a room by rolling. This is great for her because she can get a toy if she really wants it, but of course it puts us in a whole new realm of safety considerations. No more leaving her on the changing table for a moment with the belt buckled -- she can wiggle her way right out of that! This newfound independence of hers means that she is now a bit happier on her tummy because she can roll to her back if she wants to. Also, she is starting to push up on her arms and even to hitch forward a bit, so it is a while new world of possibilities for her and I think that makes her more content if we leave her on the floor to play with a toy. And, and photographed above, she is hard at work on her sitting up skills and can sit up if she supports herself with her arms. She even lifts her arms up a bit at times into a real sitting position, though I think we are a few weeks away from her being a full-fledged sitter.

The big news this month is that she started eating solid food. We started this a few weeks ago (I know, I never posted photos!) and so far she really seems to like eating. We started her a lot earlier than we did with Lucy, but she seemed very ready (lunging for our food, etc.). We also did it because we want to get her up to eating three meals a day with the hope of sleep-training her once we know that she has adequate food during the day. Lucy didn't sleep through the night until she was 18 months old and we just can't go through that again! Anyway Phoebe has been a willing participant in the eating process, gobbling up rice cereal and mashed avocado, but her body hasn't cooperated too well. She got pretty constipated over the weekend and poor thing, she was in a bit of pain trying to "work through" the issue. So it's back to breastmilk
and maybe just a little rice cereal for the next few days. We learned from Lucy to just go with the flow when it comes to food and not to worry too much about it.

Sleep-wise, well, she continues to get up to nurse during the night. The frequency varies -- the night before last, it was midnight, 2 am, 4 am, 6 am...*yawn*. But last night she only got up at 3, nursed really well, and then slept through until just after 6. We'll work through this issue after she's doing a little better moving the food through her body. Although we do want to sleep train her, our first concern is her comfort and wellbeing (of course!) so we'll just see how things go over the next month or two. There is no rush.

As I have stated in previous posts, we are now a proud cloth-diapering family! Phoebe looks so cute in her Bum Genius diapers and she is proud that she is doing her part for the environment :)

Happy Five Months, Phoeber-Beeber. We love love love you!