davis jeffrey | five months

GROWTH

WEIGHT: He hasn't been officially weighed since 4 months but on our scale, he is 16.8 lbs! That's 1.5 lbs in one month. He definitely did lots of growing recently because he suddenly feels huge and clothes that fit last week don't fit this week. 

CLOTHING: 3-6 months and 6 months but some stuff is oddly tight. He's pretty tall (long) so he usually outgrows things in length first. It's about time to go through clothes again...

DIAPERS: We are on our last few size 2's and we have size 3's in the wings!

LOVES

• BEING HELD (this can usually quiet him down)
• being fed when he demands
• watching Beau
• the jumper
• watching Motley and Kitty walk around
• anyone with a face that will look at him
• ATTENTION
• sleeping in your arms
• holding onto fingers
• standing up
• being thrown into the air (and subsequently caught)
• being tickled
• kicking

FIRSTS

• grabbing lots now! 
• sickness :( we all have had a nasty snotty/coughy couple of weeks. 
• rolled over from back to tummy....on the bed. It was totally cheating so I'm not actually counting it but he is SO close and tries every day to roll over.

EATING

• this is about normal, although I feel like he is doing better finishing his bottles. The last couple of days I haven't even paid attention to what time or how much I've fed him, I've just done it when he seemed to need it. He also seems like he's suddenly gotten much bigger! Although he RARELY takes more than 4 oz in a feeding. I've decided he just doesn't like to eat that much? Also, at his 4 month appointment, the pediatrician recommended we do a trial of putting him back on the Nutramigen formula (still expensive, but more than half the cost of what he's on now) at 6 months to see if he has outgrown his dairy sensitivity. It would be awesome if he does well on it because A) less expensive and B) he was sleeping through the night when he was on it!

SLEEP

• Davis is keeping his reputation of being the 'challenging' baby by introducing new obstacles right and left. This month it's sleeping. I noticed for a couple of weeks now that whenever we put him to bed (between 7 or 8, at his request) he wakes up 5-10 times until around 10-12. It's a circus of putting the pacifier back in, feeding him, holding him, shushing him. He would usually go back to sleep but then wake up again 20 minutes later. I finally assumed maybe it wasn't just a phase and googled it and came up with overtiredness. I never experienced anything other than general fussiness with Beau when he was tired so I didn't think it was really a thing; that being overtired would end up waking up Davis. Anyway, we set off on a strict schedule of naps for the next few days and on day one, he didn't wake up after bedtime and he has done well since then. We don't let him be awake for more than 2 hours at a time (which I thought I was doing anyway) and we make the conscious effort to make sure he falls asleep rather than just letting him doze off when he needs to. So hopefully that is solved. What isn't solved, however, is the fact that he is still waking up every 3-4 hours at night to eat. When he goes to bed as early as 5:30pm some nights, that makes for a long night for me! I told Mark this week that I REALLY need a full night of sleep soon. It's been wayyyyyy too long. Mark does help out from time to time but he is a HARD sleeper so he doesn't hear Davis start crying. I end up having to wake him up to feed him and then I have trouble getting back to sleep. I told him he needs to sleep on Davis' floor sometime when he is off work so he can hear him and wake up with him ALL NIGHT and so I won't be disturbed. It happened a few days ago and I felt so rested the next day! I'm hoping it happens a couple more times this year! Also, unrelated, he is the cutest sometimes because he 'sings' or coos himself to sleep. It's usually when he is in the car seat and he has to be in a good mood to do it, but it's hilarious! He gets super loud and then suddenly he's passed out asleep.

HEALTH

• Other than the fact that Davis, Beau, and I have been sick for all of December (we miss you, friends!), he is doing pretty well. We had a meeting with an occupational therapist to see if he had a flat spot on his head and needed a helmet (he doesn't) last week. We are also following up with the GI at Cook Children's after Christmas and the plan is to discuss introducing foods at 6 months and the possibility of going back to Nutramigen. Otherwise, I think we're good!

SOCIAL/PLAYING

• This month has been good because I feel like Davis is just starting to interact with us and with Beau as far as being playful...and Beau is getting better at playing! Davis is VERY social and usually coos turn into cries until we pick him up. Otherwise, he can be entertained just by having a face to look at and smile at. He's way better at grabbing now so he is almost never without some sort of toy (he really likes the chains right now). He's also getting LOTS of toys for Christmas to encourage him to crawl and just to entertain him.

PARENTING

• Nothing really comes to mind for this section this month...We've just been hanging in there and working more with Beau on his discipline and trying to reign in that two year old 'personality'. We've been taking advantage of as many Christmas activities as we can (without sharing our cold with anyone) so Davis has mostly been along for the ride. I realized that was very much the case when I was looking for pictures of Davis from the last month and there aren't many that I haven't shared already! Oops! I'll do better next month.

Here's the monthly photo dump!

(this was the last night we used the swaddle...he was almost rolling over!)