5 Months

Another month has come and gone and not much has changed. Joel is still the easy, happy baby he's always been. We are so blessed to have such a delightful baby....especially since his siblings seem to be more of a handful each day!

EATING: Joel has gotten much better about taking a bottle and the scare last month where he wouldn't take a one is a distant memory. We cured the problem by making his last feeding of the day a bottle of pumped milk, so he started to get pretty used to taking a bottle. About halfway through the month, he started waking up again in the middle of the night, so we tried adding oatmeal to his bottle, but that didn't make a difference. We've been trying to give him more solids, but he really isn't very interested in baby food yet. He'll sometimes eat about half of a stage one serving of baby food, but that's it. Unfortunately, we came to the realization that he was definitely not getting enough during the day from just liquid feedings (because he began waking up again once or TWICE at night), so we've started to supplement with formula. We're beginning the process of weaning to just formula, and he seems very happy and much more content that way.

SLEEPING: Joel is still a pretty good sleeper. He's the best one we've had so far when it comes to putting himself to sleep. You can usually rock for just a few minutes, lay him down wide awake, and he'll drift off as long as he has his pacifier in. He takes about 3 fairly predictable naps each day. The first two are around 9 and 1 (they last for about 1.5 to 2 hours) and the last one starts around 5 and doesn't last quite as long. He sometimes wakes about an hour into his nap, but usually will go back to sleep if you put his pacifier in. He is usually asleep for the night around 8 or 8:30 and wakes up for the day around 7:30. Once we started to fill him up more during the day, he stopped waking in the middle of the night. He does still wake around 5 or 6 and usually I'll nurse him back to sleep. He would probably go back to sleep if we let him fuss or rocked with him for awhile, but 5 minutes of nursing him is just as easy and it allows me the chance to get up and go for a jog before the other kids get up. Overall, he's a pretty good sleeper and we're glad to have gotten his middle-of-the-night waking under control!

MILESTONES: Joel is becoming stronger each day and has tons of control over his body. He rolls both ways really quickly and with ease. He is close to sitting by himself, but still topples over if there's nothing supporting him. Lately, he seems REALLY determined to get up on all fours. He can lift his arms off the ground, but can't quite get his belly up. He'll usually get up on his arms and start pushing his knees and feet into the floor in an attempt to move. He gets pretty frustrated, though, when he realizes that he's not getting anywhere. We, on the other hand, are happy to see him not mastering this skill just yet. Having a third kid to chase after is more than we are ready for right now!