5 Months

Sweet baby girl,

5 months old is my favorite age so far!! Baby girl, you are so incredibly awesome at this age. You are developing into your own little person and I LOVE it!

You are such a happy baby and are quick to smile at everyone you look at, especially if they are giving you smiles, funny faces, or funny sounds of their own. Many times you give the person a huge smile and then hide your face in my neck, as if you're being shy. But you are always quick to turn and look for the person again, with another smile just waiting on your sweet little cheeks. Your laughs you are more frugal with. We have to catch you in the right mood. Most often it's your dad who can get you going--you are a lot like me in that regard!

You think that it's great fun to take off your socks. In fact, your dad jokes that your alternative Russian name is Alina Sokov (sock-off). I think you are like me and just love to go barefoot! You spend most of your time trying to grab things and stick them into your mouth--your socks, your shirts, your blankets, your toys, my water bottle, the phone . . . anything that is within reach.

Your very favorite thing right now is faces, and you LOVE when your dad or I (or anyone else) puts our face right down close to yours and lets you explore it with your little hands. You feel our noses and our ears and our cheeks and our eyes and our lips . . . you are so curious! Your dad got sad the other day when he realized that eventually there will come an age where you won't want to put your hands all over his face like that anymore--he loves it so much!!

You are still rolling from your tummy to your back and are soooo close to rolling from your back to your tummy. You get all the way over on your side before deciding that something on the other side of the room is more interesting, and you roll back the other way. When you are placed on your tummy, you kick your legs, pull your knees up under your butt, stick your butt in the air, face plant, and then get frustrated. But then you remember that you can roll off of your tummy onto your back, and once you do that you look so pleased with yourself.

Always a big talker, you have started making discernible syllables and consonant sounds. Your favorite sound so far is "da," and when you are tired or cranky you tell me quite forcefully, with a very serious look, "DA-DA-DA-DA-DA!" I feel like you are scolding me. Even though I know you are trying to get across a serious message, it's so adorable that I just melt and laugh and hold you to me.

You kind of skipped "tripodding," which is where you use your arms to hold yourself in a sitting position. We tried to teach you how to do it, but you just toppled over. Then in the last three days you decided that it's fun to sit upright and have your hands free to grab for toys . . . so you are! It has been absolutely stunning to watch you teach yourself to sit upright in such a short amount of time. Four days ago you could sit upright for about 1 second before tipping over (usually to the left). Now you can sit for minutes while reaching all around you for toys. You are incredible!!

The 4-month-wakeful period did, in fact, strike. After sleeping peacefully through the night since you were 8 weeks old, for the last month you have gone back to waking once (or twice), usually around 2 or 3 a.m. Some times you are simply hungry and drift right back to sleep after eating. Other times you are convinced that it is morning and time to play, and when you see me or your dad walk wearily into your room, you squeal and laugh and wriggle with joy. It takes a bit longer to get you back to sleep on those nights! We are weaning you off of the swaddle, and so far you have done sooo well! We are now leaving both of your arms loose and just wrapping it tightly around your torso. You kick your legs so much, I think it still helps you to feel the tightness around your body and to have your legs a bit tamed. But in the next week or so we will probably do away with the swaddle completely. You are such a big girl.

We have also altered your bedtime routine. Whereas before we were doing a bath and then our final feeding of the day, you were always falling asleep while nursing, which made you more likely to wake up in the night, hungry. So last night we fed you first, before your bath. This also made it possible to start doing a bedtime story and snuggles in our rocking chair. You handled the change like a champ and slept all the way through the night again, from 7:30 to 6:30. Hopefully, now that you are five months old, the 4-month-wakeful period is behind us!

You had your very first Valentine's Day this weekend. We took some Valentine's pictures of you with sweet signs for several of my friends' little boys, and Daddy got quite mad about it. I'm going to apologize in advance for him . . . if he is already that protective of you now, just wait until you are all grown and going out on dates for real. He is going to have such a hard time with that. I think he just wants you to be his sweet baby girl forever.

This month marks the end of several things. I will no longer go and nurse you during my lunch break. You haven't needed that feeding in quite some time, but I loved seeing you so much. It just got too hard on you to have two totally different eating and sleeping schedules--one for weekdays and one for weekends--so now we are just following your normal weekend schedule all the time, and that means I don't see you anymore for lunch. The last two and a half months--ever since I came back to work--have, in part, been so wonderful because I knew I got to see you during the day. I am going to have such a hard time with this newest transition, but I know it's what's best for you. Just another example of you growing and becoming more and more independent . . . and needing me less and less. It makes me so proud, and at the same time a little sad, too. This will also be the last month that you receive only my milk for food. At six months we are going to start you on solids. I am so excited for this next step, this rite of passage into the adult world. And I'm so proud that you have grown the way you have simply on what I have been able to give you, especially after our somewhat rocky start. What an amazing five (and then six) months it has been for us.

Thank you for the most amazing five months, baby girl. Thank you for the squeals and smiles and hard-earned laughs and almost-rolls and face-explorations and neck-hides and scoldings and even for the occasional sleepless nights. These are the jewels of my world.

Love love love you,
Mom