Five Months

Bridget is five months old today. She just gets bigger and cuter every day!

She is very vocal now, realizing that she can squeal and we applaud her for it, which just gets her going more. It’s noisy but adorable. I know that in not very long I’ll not enjoy the squealing this much, but for now, we love it.

Bridget has chosen her comfort fingers now. She sucks the middle and ring fingers of her left hand. She does this mainly when she is tired, so it’s a nice signal we get early before she is very upset and wound up. It’s kind of gross though, because her fingers are so often wet, and at the same time, she loves to reach out for the cheek, nose or ear of the person holding her. It’s disgusting to get slimed in this way, but we tolerate it because how can you resist an adorable baby who is reaching out to touch you?

She rolls like crazy now, both directions. We spend a while every day on the play mat on the floor in her room and she just rolls over and over and over again. She is now a bona fide tummy sleeper, although I don’t place her in the crib on her tummy. I place her on her back and she’s usually on her tummy before I am out of the room. There is nothing I can do about that so I try not to worry too much about it. Thankfully, she hasn’t made any more progress toward crawling. She went through a period where she would draw her legs up under her like she was going to try, but thankfully that has stopped for now. She is way too young and I am way too unprepared for her to crawl.

We tried feeding her cereal after her four month checkup, but she wasn’t a fan of it. She figured out how to swallow, and had stopped pushing the food out of her mouth within three feedings or so. But she would take a bite or two of cereal, then immediately put her comfort fingers in her mouth. I would have to restrain her hands with one hand of mine, then try to feed her with the other. I figured that it was too soon to make food be a point of contention between us, so I put cereal on hold for a while. Plus, it was not at all helping her sleep through the night, like all the old-school moms kept telling me it would. In fact, I think it may have been having the opposite effect so I stopped. I am thinking of starting again, only I am going to try oatmeal this time, because I think it tastes better. Hopefully she takes to this more than last time.

Bridget continues to be a very focused little girl. When she wants something, she wants it. Her eyes light up and she eagerly reaches out for a few favorite toys (her big, soft keys, her telephone rattle, and her stuffed lion) when she is shown them, and then immediately shoves them in her mouth. We also noticed that she eagerly greets the bottle in the same way, although that confuses me because she gets so few bottles. She’s also started noticing the pets and they make her smile, especially when Lucy comes and pushes her snout in Bridget’s face while she’s in the swing or exersaucer. Yesterday, Bridget was in my lap and Kiri jumped up in my lap. Bridget’s face lit up and she reached out to touch her. I thought Kiri would bolt because she doesn’t really like to be touched by anyone, but she allowed it. Until Bridget grabbed a handful of her tail. Even then she just jumped down, she didn’t turn and do anything to Bridget in retaliation, so that is comforting to me.

We are still waging the war against television. However, if we were stronger people, we would simply not have it on in her presence. We are not that strong. I just try to turn the exersaucer away from the tv, or if I’m holding her, I’ll turn her so that she can’t see it. But the other day I was standing holding her, with my back to the tv. My head was in her line of sight of the tv, and damn if the child didn’t lean over so she could see around my head. While I am not convinced that tv is the devil, as some moms are, I don’t want to get in the habit of using the tv as a quieting influence. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using tv for entertainment purposes, but I don’t think she’s ready for that yet.

Sleep is an up and down thing. She has actually gone a few nights sleeping from about 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. without waking up once. That’s not the norm and usually we still wake up to eat once a night. We have a bad night every now and again, like last night, where she wakes up a lot. I try to avoid feeding her every time she wakes up on a night like that because I know she doesn’t need to eat and I don’t want her to rely on nursing to fall asleep. But, at 4 a.m. you’ll do almost anything to get the baby quiet and get yourself back to bed. So I usually break down and feed her. It’s not that bad, though. She’s a small baby and her little tummy just may not be ready yet to take her through the night on a regular basis.

But the best news is that Bridget has become a great napper. I can usually count on her for about a two hour nap in the morning and then again in the afternoon. And if she doesn’t get those two hour naps, it really shows in her attitude for the rest of the day. Bonus for me that I can use that time to work, or do laundry or sneak in a nap myself.

It’s been an exciting month, full of changes for us. I am definitely tired most of the time, and sometimes I am cranky because of that. But mostly, I wake up each day and am so thrilled that I get to spend my days with her, and eager to see what she will do that day.

It’s a great life.

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