Growing a Little Schulze: 5 months old

5 months old!

5 months was a big month for Ellie! Lots of new experiences plus a trip out of the country to Curacao.

Sleeping:
We have the 3 nap thing down. A morning nap, an afternoon nap, and a quick nap in the evening right before or during dinner time. Then in bed by about 8:30. Night time sleep continues to be kinda crappy. She's back to eating twice a night plus another one or two wakeups some nights. Now that she's figured out how to roll she has become a tummy sleeper. Settle her on her tummy, pop in the pacifier, and she'll often go right to sleep for her nap. After we got back from Curacao we started to work on her sleep a little bit. First we let her cry for a little bit at night instead of feeding her. That wasn't too bad. I think there was one night of about 25 minutes of fussing/crying around 11:30 before she got the hint and went back to sleep. And some similar but shorter instances on other nights. That helped reduced the frequency of her wake ups from 4 to 1 or 2. So a step in the right direction!

Big happenings in the world of food!
Ellie got her first bottle of formula on January 3rd. Mommy tried to avoid it but finally had to concede. Ellie slept for 7 hours straight that night so we were thinking maybe we had an answer to all the wake ups. But it was just a fluke.

We also introduced some solid foods this month! We started the week of January 6th with avocado and banana. After we got back from our trip she got to experience sweet potato, peas, carrots, and puffs (cheerio shaped rice snacks). She loved banana, both in chunk form and mashed up. She wasn't too sure about avocado but liked it a lot more with some banana mixed in. Sweet potatoes were a big hit. Peas took a little time to warm up to. She's getting a mix of purees and finger foods. She's done very well with her motor skills and being able to pick up food and feed herself.

Development:
Still growing and growing. She's in size 2 diapers and 3-6 month or 6 month clothing. The cotton sleepers that are more tight fitting are getting too small. At the beginning of the month she was just mastering rolling back and forth. Three weeks later she was rocking on all fours and doing an army crawl!