Watch James Grow: 5 Months

James can razz.  He gives the lips a good buzz and lots of drool accompanies it.  He thinks it's funny.

Over winter break, James and Madeline really cemented their bond.  Madeline loves to talk to James and James loves to listen to her.

I can't look at you.  I'm watching football on tv.

Oh!  Things are more interesting now that Madeline is making funny faces above your head.

I feel like I'm losing the sleep battle.  I'm at the point where I feel like it might not ever get better.  Deep down, I know it will get better.  But at the current time, I'm losing.  Crying it out works for us  -- it's not the "cool" parenting thing to do nowadays, but it works for us.  Does the actual crying portion drive me batty?  Yes.  Do I feel like I'm emotionally scarring my baby for life and teaching him not to trust me?  Not at all.  It took about two nights of less than five total minutes of crying to get the going to bed part under control.  I can now lay him down at night and he goes to sleep with no fussing.  I feed him, we read a book, we sing songs and he goes to bed sleepy with no tears.  It's the sleeping all night that gets me.  For about three days in a row he slept all night.  I was ecstatic.  This week we've regressed to being up every two hours.  Problem is he nurses for about five minutes and falls asleep.  Then I put him to bed and he wakes up 1-2 hours later.  My conclusion?  He's not hungry.  (It's rocket science, I know.)  What do I need to do?  Let him cry it out for a few nights and see what happens.  *I wrote this yesterday and last night we tried some crying.  He cried at 11:00 for about five minutes.  Fell back asleep until 3:45.  Needless to say, we're trying that again tonight.

He's rolled over one time.  Just one time.  I blame his chubby belly for that one.

James is quite skilled at tummy time.  He gets his legs moving in a motion that strikes fear in my heart.  It's a crawling-like motion.  One of these days when he can lift his chubby belly off the ground he might just take off.

James had his first bites of oatmeal this week.  He ate it wholeheartedly.  We've got the typical array of first vegetables ready for action in the coming days.

He plays more.  It's amazing how he has gone from a newborn who does very little to a baby who interacts.  He reaches for toys and passes toys from hand to hand and eats toys and seems to have a few favorite toys.

That's all for this month.

Goal for next month...sitting up, perhaps?