Five months!

My baby girl turned five months yesterday, so here's an update!

The little stuff:

Julia's mood has gone back to normal. For reasons I don't need to go into on the internet, I think either she had a GI bug or something I was eating really didn't agree with her. And either my bland diet is helping or she's gotten over the bug, but both her GI symptoms and her mood have returned to normal. It's great; she's all smiley again. :) She also hit a milestone (well, a milestone in my eyes!) today - she had three textbook naps! A long morning nap, a long midday nap, and a short evening nap. It was heaven. I don't have high hopes for it happening again tomorrow but I could totally get used to it.

The big stuff:

Julia goes to bed at 7 PM and sleeps until about 7:30 AM. She has an early morning wake-up to eat but goes right back into her crib again until morning. She's sleeping all night and all naps in her crib. I put the bumpers on it a few weeks ago because she kept rolling into the side and screaming, and she absolutely loves them. She literally cuddles up with them. She's definitely going to be a stuffed-animal girl when she gets a little bit bigger. Her naps are finally getting longer; I usually get at least an hour in the morning and afternoon, but she's still partial to the 25-minute catnap (and actually she wakes up at that interval during those long naps but has learned to put herself back to sleep). She's still breastfeeding exclusively, although I think she's ready for solids; the only reason we haven't started is our out-of-town schedule and our desire to keep disruptions to a minimum. (And it's SO much easier to do cloth diapers with an EBF baby - that's selfish on my part.) It's still a struggle to get her to settle down and pay attention to eating, but I'm finding a few things that work (dark room, laying down, using the nursing cover to cut down on visible distractions).

She can roll from back to front, both ways, although she definitely prefers to the right. She is getting better at tummy time every day and is moving from the Superbaby thing to pushing up on her hands. She's very responsive to sounds and loves to watch our mouths as we talk to her, although she's not giving us much back yet. We're really only getting pterodactyl-like squeals and moaning when she's upset with us. She's getting much better at reaching and grabbing for things and I think her eye-hand coordination is her forte right now. She's also pretty darn good at putting weight on her legs and she can stand fairly well as long as we keep her balanced. She's getting better at sitting up, too, but I can tell she's itching to start moving more. She loves shoving everything and anything into her mouth but her favorite is any type of cloth. (The other day I left her mid-diaper change and came back to find her chewing on her (clean) diaper.) She's totally starting to get interested in Scrappy; she watches the dog and tries to reach out and touch her whenever she gets close. She LOVES her Jumparoo. She also loves being held tight while I spin around fast in a circle, and I've promised her we'll go to Six Flags just as soon as she's big enough. But her favorite thing is probably running errands with me. Whether she's in her stroller, the Baby Bjorn, or the sling, she just stares and stares wherever we are. It's the one way to guarantee she's quiet and calm.

We made her first mark on the little growth chart in her bedroom - she's a little more than two feet tall!

And she's obviously very intelligent.