This week was a hard one for me, for reasons that had nothing to do with Lydia. So it worked out well that it was a happy week for her! I’m definitely telling people she’s five and a half months old now, and she’s learning more and more all the time. I still take her pretty much everywhere with me, and in some ways I think I’ve been in a sweet spot of her being pretty happy to sit around and play on her own, and also not moving very far from where I put her down.
I’m always excited for her to get older and be able to do more stuff, but that’s what I appreciate about where I am now.
These days, it’s working really well for me to accept what she’s doing and not try to influence it much. (The biggest exception is that I can’t help myself with the crawling thing… I do keep putting toys further and further out of her reach because I get excited.) I also take her around with me everywhere, and in a lot of ways by life isn’t that different from my pre-Lydia days.
Sleep
I’ve been really happy with what we’ve been doing with sleep, mostly because it’s been pretty stress-free on my end. I do keep track of how tired Lydia seems a bit, and how long she’s been up, and I periodically walk around with her or nurse her while she’s lying down, but I approximately never do worry much about whether she actually goes to sleep. Sometimes it seems like she’s really going to, and then she doesn’t, so we play more. A couple months ago, I think this laissez-faire system might have resulted in a grumpier baby, but for now it’s working. She’s usually pretty chill, and if she’s particularly grump, wearing her tends to work.
She’s on a schedule of going to bed earlier than I want to (usually by nine), so I haven’t run into the situation where I want to go to bed but she doesn’t lately. She’s been waking up around 7:45 on average, which is earlier than I would prefer, but she’ll have days where it’s after nine. I’ve started ECing her a few times at night, mostly when she’s sucking in a particular way that doesn’t seem to be about hunger. Not sure I could describe it that well, but I know it when I see it. Maybe less swallowing is involved? I think I’m getting the EC thing mostly right, because she’ll typically settle down afterwards, detach, and go to sleep. We’re back to not using many diapers at night, and often she’ll wake up in the same one she fell asleep in.
For naps, I do try to be close enough to her that I can soothe her through the transition, since I do have the sense that longer sleep periods are more restorative. So I’ll usually nurse her if she’s lying down, or bounce her if I’m carrying her around 45 minutes. Some days, she takes all short naps though, and I don’t actually notice a huge difference. I think her body is capable of making up the sleep she needs later.
When she’s strapped onto me, Lydia can sleep through many things, including loud music and strobe lights.
Eating
Not much to report here. Nursing is the same. I’ve been weighing her most weeks, and this was a week where her weight went down. But she’s peeing and pooping, she looks a bit chubby, and is getting visibly stronger with each week. The plan is still to start solids two weeks from today, exactly at six months. Though I must say, if she eats a ton the first time we give them to her, I’ll update towards her having been ready a bit earlier than then. But I actually don’t think she’s all that interested in my food, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s a slow starter there.
I put her in her Keekaroo chair with her cup and utensils at least a few times this week, and she seems fine with it. She eventually gets antsy to get out, but so far she’s lasted at least almost as long as it takes me to eat. (I’ve gotten to be a pretty speedy eater these past 5.5 months.) She’s playing with the spoon and fork a bunch, and with the cup a little. Sometimes she uses them in ways that approximates what an adult might do, but often not. As you might expect, she throws them on the floor a lot too.
I’m definitely in the baby-led weaning camp for now, as I think I’ve mentioned, and I want to solidify my thinking on potential allergens. I’ve been doing some reading there, and I want to write up a post on that soon.
Elimination Communication
EC is going smoothly. As I said above in the sleep section, I’ve just started pottying her more at night. I don’t mind much. I’m up periodically throughout the night anyway, and it doesn’t take long to do it. Feeding her while ECing is key though, or it wouldn’t work.
I end up using diapers more often when I’m out, since she’s still sometimes picky about unfamiliar bathrooms. But she’s usually pretty relaxed about peeing outside, so we do that sometimes.
Babywearing
Not much to say here either. I think Will’s been wearing her for naps somewhat often this week, and that’s still how she’ll usually nap for the longest time. She’s been getting heavier, but this week she lost a little weight, as noted below.
At home though, she’s on the floor more and more because…
Motor Skills
I’m calling it. She can crawl! She doesn’t tend to go more than a few feet forward, and it’s slow. She’ll stop to get up on all fours and rock back and fourth. But she can do it. The funniest is that I’ll spend a bunch of time moving around her toys to try to get her to crawl for me, and she won’t care much. And then she’ll make a beeline for the power cords, or my phone or iPad or something and be moving much more quickly.
She likes the idea of pulling up on stuff, but she’s short enough that she can’t do it on most things. The mattress works, the lowest stair kind of works, and my diaper bag will do when nothing else is around.
She’s been sucking on her toes when I EC her for a while now, but sometimes recently I’ve seen her do it while lying on her back. I’m not 100% sure she’s getting her foot to her mouth on her own though. It might just be that she keeps it in there after being ECed, when I’m putting her down to change her diaper.
Being on her back isn’t her favorite, but she’ll put up with it when she has a cloth book or something else fun to play with. She still can’t roll off her back, so when she’s not happy she’s like a sad turtle.
She doesn’t often fall over when she’s sitting, and it’s gotten to the point where I don’t monitor it much unless she’s on a particularly hard floor. She also seems to hurt herself less often when she does topple over, though I’m not sure why exactly.
Personality/Other
No crying fits this week. No attempted babysitting either, since Zumba was canceled. As I’ve said, she was pretty happy. Her noises did change though. She’s making lots of raspberries, and there’s a quiet whine sort of thing that’s been happening a bunch too. She’ll also sometimes just start vocalizing really loudly, and sometimes interrupt. A couple of times this seems to have correlated with needing to pee, but I don’t think it’s usually that.
She’s been making lots of ga noises, especially in the morning. I still can’t believe she will ever talk. It will be the coolest thing ever to me when she says something to me and I know what she means!
(Or signs. We do baby sign with her, though she doesn’t show much interest in it yet. I know a couple hundred signs, but I only do a few with her with any regularity. Milk, potty, all done, book, and more, in approximately that order.)
Me
I had a bad week. If I didn’t have a baby, I would have spent lots of time lying around on my bed, playing games on my iPad, reading, and eating food that didn’t take much effort to prepare. Oh, and I would have slept a lot. The week was bad for Will too, so, while he was helpful, neither one of us had much energy.
So, I pretty much let everything that wasn’t essential slide. I still took care of the baby, obviously, but I didn’t do much of anything else. The laundry piled up, we ordered food one day (quite rare for us), I’m still waaay behind on emails.
But then we got it together and made a ton of food. It’s awesome. Pretty much everything we like to eat is prepared and in the fridge. I still wrote a (short) post, and we did a webinar. So I’d say we survived just fine. I’m still unusually tired though, and my plan is to go to bed early as many night as I can this week.
