5 months down...

Emily will reach five months of age tomorrow and both her and we are getting the hang of this baby thing. In the past two weeks we tried some different schedules because she was showing signs that she didn't want to be woken up for her last feeding. We have recently determined that she only wants four feedings per day and sleeps better if she is in bed by 7:30pm. This means her feedings are every four hours starting at 7am. At least that's what we think. For now. Until tomorrow. Or tonight. Of course, once we made this change we looked back on it and said to ourselves, "duh, it makes total sense now".

 A few other items of note:

• She's now wearing size 3 diapers. They look big on her but the size 2 diapers were noticeably small. We think the larger diaper is helping with her sleeping as well. She's also just transitioned into the 6-9 month sized clothes.
• She is loving daycare. Her "friends" yell her name and run up to her when she gets dropped off every morning. We've noticed some odd whining occasionally on the weekends and think it is because we aren't nearly as entertaining as her daycare pals. We also think she picked up her high-pitched vocalization by listening to and imitating those same pals. Sue (the daycare lady) has taken the kids to the playground and splash pad recently and reports that Emily loves watching them run around.
• Thumb-sucking has begun. A few times at night we have woken up to Emily sucking her thumb while sleeping.  She doesn't do it very often during the day yet but seems to if she is getting ready for a nap.
• Giggles McGee is still making us laugh too. Our tickles and peek-a-boo attempts get regular belly laughs from Emily that often result in her getting the hiccups.
• She's trying to roll over. She has done it all the way by herself twice.  She can get on her side but doesn't know how to tuck her bottom arm to complete the roll. Any. Day. Now.
• While it's tempting to try now, we are planning on waiting one more month before we try to give her any baby food.
• She is up to 18 pounds according to our bathroom scale!  Which means she has so many cute baby rolls!  We are still finding hidden areas on her body where gunk builds up. We found a roll under her chin that was collecting wayward formula and some crustiness behind her ears. Both were easily cleaned up and the small rash under her chin cleared up within two days.  But Mom and Dad are learning that bathtime is a bit more work than before!

Swaddle: 1 - Emily: 0

As we mentioned in our last post, Tom put Emily to bed without the swaddle on Thursday night while I was out of town. Emily did great, and pretty much slept through the night. Then Friday and Saturday nights she did ok, woke up a few times each night, but went back to sleep easy enough.

Sunday and Monday nights went downhill. She just kept waking up and had a hard time calming down. Both nights we ended up putting her back in the swaddle by around 2am just so we could get some sleep. We aren't giving up yet, but already decided that tonight the second time she wakes up we are putting the swaddle back on just so we can sleep. Hopefully she will get the hang of it soon. Part of the problem is that she is developing her skills of rolling over and has woken up the past two nights trying to roll over and gets stuck in the halfway rolled over position because she is not totally awake or aware of what she is doing!

Time to go get some more caffeine!

Peek-a-boo!

Emily sure loves to laugh! She loves being tickled and playing peek-a-boo with Daddy! (see the YouTube videos)  She has also started to roll over from back to tummy, getting all the way over by herself a couple times, and several more times with us helping with that one arm that gets stuck underneath her!

The other big milestone is that she has slept three nights now without being in the swaddle! Daddy tried it on Thursday while Mommy was out of town and she did perfectly.  The last couple weeks hadn't been great for her sleep wise at night, so we think she's been trying to tell us that she didn't want the swaddle anymore, we just weren't listening to her signs enough!  Then Friday and Saturday she only woke up a couple times but went right back to sleep as soon as we gave her the pacifier. She didn't used to use the pacifier very much at all, but seems to want it more at nap time and when she wakes up at night. But we'd rather have that and be done with the swaddle.  She continues to lose most of her long dark hair and has some fine blond hair coming in!



She has had a great few weeks since our last post, but we sure have been busy! She had a great week with Nana Ellen not this past week, but the week before. She also got to see Grandpa Lee for a couple days and he did a great job with his first bottle feeding! Nana bought Emily some great new books to read, a stuffed doll they named Lucy, and some more toys to suck on, which Emily loves! Emily had her 4 month check up at the beginning of Nana's visit and had some more shots, which made her really sleepy the next couple days while home with Nana. At her check-up (july 25) she weighed in at 15 pounds 12 oz and 25.25 inches! She is just about out of her 6 month clothes and will be starting 9 month sizes soon. We were so appreciative to have all the help from Nana! And the freezer is happy to be fully stocked with yummy dinners too!

On August 1st Emily started daycare at Sue's house (a in-home daycare that is a few blocks from our house). She was a little off with her naps the first day, but then after a few suggestions to Sue, she had a great rest of the week and seems to really love watching the other kids at story time, and singing. The only issue Sue had was that on the second day Emily pooped through her diaper onto her clothes, that's the first time she has ever done that, and we were glad it wasn't with us!! Mommy and Daddy are still getting used to being away from her all day. We are excited for when she is able to stay up at night a little later so we get more play time with her at night. It's hard to put her to bed at 6:45 when she is sleepy because we still want her to stay up so we can play with her!