5 Months

Happy 5 months to Cole!

Cole continues to amaze us with his happy diposition and all of his big smiles.  We all just adore him.

Here are a few notables at month 5:

• Continues to adore his big bro
• Is really starting to grab/grasp things within arms reach - necklaces, faces, shirts.  My favorite is when he gazes at me and then grabs my face.
• Continues to enjoy time in his Bumbo and Exersaucer
• Really goes to town on his play mat, moving all around, playing with all the toys
• Loves to kick his legs and they never seem to stop moving. I joke that it looks like he's a River Dancer.
• Rolled from tummy to back a few more times, and back to tummy once or twice, but not consistent by any means yet
• Continued to bust out of his swaddle, so we started using the Magic Sleep Suit to help transition into a sleep sack.  This has worked out really well - no more middle of the night wake ups when he's busted out of his swaddle, requiring his pacifier to go back to sleep (and then several trips for us to put it back in).  After a few days in the suit, he also started sleeping through his 4/5 a.m. awake period.  In the nearly three weeks since then, he's been sleeping in this, he's slept 10.5-11.5 hours straight at night.  (Thanks for the tip, and loaning us the suit, Natalie!)
• We did a little sleep training in the evening --- he always puts himself to sleep but often wakes up crying about 45 minutes after we put him down.  Sometimes we could bounce him just once and he'd go right back to sleep, but other times it took many trips in to get him settled back down, and back to sleep.
• We started doing a dream feed before we go to bed, to help get an extra feeding in to keep his formula intake up.  At his 5 month weight check, he was still in the 50% and the doctor was happy to see he hadn't dropped percentiles.  We'll likely get rid of this soon, but during the week, he doesn't drink quite enough at daycare yet to be able to completely drop this.
• Has taken some longer naps of 1-2 hours - he typically does at least one of these per day on the weekend and once a week or so at daycare.
• Can sit unassisted for a few seconds at a time.
• Tried purees for the first time - sweet potatoes and pears.  He mostly just pushed the food right out of his mouth, but would then smack his lips and intently watch us eat.
• Is drinking between 38-40 oz. per day
• Loves to stick his tongue out
• Loves chewing on his toes
• Intently listens and looks at the pages of the few books we read before bedtime
• Is taking after his big bro a bit, and drools a ton during the day - between that the spit up (which continues), we go through MANY bibs each day.
• His hair is finally filling in on top.  Still months out from rocking any sort of mohawk