Clara, you're five months old! You are such a sweet and happy girl. You make everyone you see smile. You've played shy a bit this month, but despite not always wanting to be held by strangers (who could blame you?!), you are usually ready to give smiles from a distance!
You love to grab things. If there is a toy you want, you try to grab it. If your hand brushes any sort of fabric, you grab it. You love grabbing your toes and our fingers and really anything that your little hands fit around! And boy do you ever have a good grip! Many people who hold you comment on your grip. And of course, if it's in your hand, it goes straight to your mouth! You started sitting today, for minutes at a time instead of just a few seconds. And you can easily roll fromtummy to back and back to tummy, which is often more fun than going straight to sleep at naptime!
You are starting to babble now. You just open and close your mouth over and over and make noise. It's so sweet. You have a beautiful voice! You haven't actually said any words yet, no surprise there, but I've heard some "mamma" noises so I've been encouraging that.
You eyes are still so deeply blue. They are a dark blue, absolutely beautiful. And they are so expressive. They smile and they get sleepy and they get sad and mad. I love looking into your eyes. You are always watching what's going on around you. Your eyes light up whenever you see someone you know. And then your whole body moves and it's almost like you're going to wiggle right out of my arms to get to them.
Your brother and sisters continue to just LOVE you! They still fight about who gets to hold you first or who gets to talk to you or make you smile. You get excited when you see any of them coming. I look forward to seeing your relationship with them grow. You seem especially excited to see Kayden coming. There's some sort of sister connection there, I think.
You are growing all the time but you're definitely not a big baby! The scale today said 13.5lbs. When you had your four month immunizations this month, you were 12.5lbs and near the 3rd percentile for both height and weight, though you would be described as long and skinny proportionally. You are wearing mostly 6 month clothes. All your 6 month sleepers are fitting perfectly right now!
You had your first haircut this month! I noticed a few really long straggly hairs sticking out randomly all over your head so I took the clippers and ran it over your head to even it all out. Much better. We didn't take off any length, just made it more even. We got a handle on your cradle cap this month which means your hair is a lot more thin on top than it used to be but I see it coming back in already. Your hair has developed a bald spot on the back in the last month though. I blame it on so much time spent in car seats, bouncy seats, and on floors this month. We have been moving around a lot this month. You started your fifth month in Hudson Bay, SK at grandma and grandpa Buhler's house. Then we were home for about two or three weeks and now we have been in southern Manitoba for two weeks. That means you've had your first long road trip (to Manitoba - 8-9 hours). You did pretty well. You don't cry nearly as much as you used to in your car seat. I think it helps that you can hold toys and get them to your mouth now.
Your sleep this month has been...ok? We've done so much travelling that your sleep has changed and then changed again. At the beginning of the month, you were fighting naps with everything you were worth, so I changed your naps from coming after one hour of being awake to after two hours. That helped immensely. You have stopped napping in the midst of the action, sleeping so much better in a dark, quiet room now. You nap three times a day, usually, and for 45m-2.5hours at a time. At night you go to bed between 7-8pm and wake between 7:30-8:30am. You were swaddled at the beginning of the month and, while we were staying in Steinbach at Uncle Andrew and Auntie Pearl's house, I noticed that you were rolling in your swaddle so decided to try to put you to bed without the swaddle. You slept great! So I ditched the swaddle for good. Your sleep hasn't suffered at all. You still wake up 2-3 times a night, every 3-4 hours. A quick feed and you're back asleep! You always wake up with a smile, which is such a blessing.
You still eat every two hours during the day, which means I've had to do some tricky scheduling to have your naps and feeds work together without feeding you directly before putting you down. But we've found a system that seems to work! I feed you when you wake up and then an hour and a half later again. That way there is half an hour between being fed and going down for another nap. You are such a fast eater, usually only five minutes or so. People are always surprised how quickly you eat and make jokes about how it's probably because you're the fourth child.
You are so easy-going. In all of our travels and visiting of people and crazy schedules, you've remained our happy, content girl. Every once in a while we can tell you've had enough, especially enough of being held by other people. But a quick nap and you're usually all set and ready to roll again. We love you, Clara Mercy. You are a beautiful soul, inside and out. I love my time with you and am so proud to call you my daughter!
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