Happy 20 weeks to my gorgeous lady!

Happy 20 weeks to my gorgeous lady!  Five months old – ho-ly crap!  I would like to think that America reveled her five-month birthday with lots of fireworks and parties (and our neighborhood celebrated well into the night much to the chagrin of my poor pups who are petrified of fireworks), but I think that it had something to do with America’s birthday.  Let’s not tell her that.   Alright, let’s get this update going…

 

• We had her doctor’s appointment last week for her four month checkup.  I don’t think that she gained enough weight or height that I’m going to be able to tell a difference.  So Finn the Fierce is weighing in at 15.5 lbs and is 26 inches long!

• It’s a wonderful thing that Finn is starting to get hair!!! I have been waiting and waiting. At first, we thought that her hair was just getting darker. But now when you look at the top of her head, she has all these little hairs spiking out all over the place! Yeah! (But it’s at the expense of Mommy’s hair, as her pregnancy hormones are starting to fade and her hair is starting to shed again. Boo!)
• Everyone still sees a lot of her Daddy in her. They say that she has E’s eyes. I KNOW that she has E’s baby ears. I’m not as upset as I used to be that she doesn’t resemble me as much. I think that she is beautiful (and if I’m being honest, I really can’t see either of our resemblances. I think that it’s because I see her all the time).
  
  
  
  

• As the photos show, she is officially started on rice cereal. She had her first “bowl” of rice cereal on Sunday (the 1^st), which is when the photos attached to this post were taken. She didn’t like her first couple of bites, being not quite sure about the texture of the cereal. But by the end, it was like old hat to her. She would open wide for the spoon and not spit as much of the cereal out. I can definitely tell there is a learning curve here, though. Both for me and for her. I have to learn the right consistency of the cereal, because I forgot to add in the fact that as she spits out the cereal, there is added spit that will be wiped by the spoon. When we ended her first feeding, it was like water. And for her the last two times, she wasn’t as keen on eating.
• Lady loves tummy time now. She can extend her arms and hold herself up with them. She likes looking around and seeing everything from her tummy. Still no rolling. She gets her legs a’going and tries to go places, but doesn’t quite know how the logistics of it works yet.

• She is a scoocher on her back. I’ll lay her down in her Pack ‘N Play and when I come back, she’ll be in a completely different place, still on her back but facing a different direction.
• She is a double fister now! She can hold things with both of her hands, but she can also pass an object from one hand to the other.
• Sister is in size 2 diapers – we switched her this weekend. And we are going to switch out all her clothes for her “3-6 months” gear. I get SO EXCITED for this because I forgot what outfits I have in what sizes.

• She is definitely slowing up on her night feedings. Last night, I think that she only partially fed twice (once at 1am and once at 4am). The last two weeks has been really hard on the bed-to-crib transition – she has been in bed with us each night as I’m just too exhausted to try to go through the nightly ritual of putting her to sleep in her crib. It’s partially my laziness, but also it’s very comforting to wake up next to her (and with the week that we had last week, I really enjoyed the comfort).

• She really enjoys sitting up by herself (with Mama holding her hands). She will be laying down and I’ll grab her hands and say “1… 2… 3…” pulling her up on “3”. And the look on her face is priceless – it almost says “Hey, I’m a big girl now! I can see!” E has joked with me that I need to start counting higher, because she isn’t going to know any numbers past three (as when I take off her shirt I count to three, or pick her up I count to three, or change her diaper I count to three).

 

• She is still a dancer when it comes to changing her diaper. I’ll take off her dirty diaper and put a new one underneath, but let her air-dry for a while. Lady loves it with a capital “L” – kickin’ and a kickin’.
• She has become very distractible during feeding time both with me and with the bottle. She’ll eat, see something out of the corner of her eye (most of the time, it is me), pull away, smile really big, and then realize that she isn’t eating. This happens multiple times during each feeding.
• On the bottle front, she can hold her own bottle! She can’t do it the entire time, but you can put it in her mouth, let go, and she’ll hold it all by herself!
• And one last thing -- girl does not, and I repeat, does NOT like the "Soooo Big Man"!  She refuses to participate whenever he comes around.