But now that I have a 5 and a half month old things are starting to improve...slowly. We're now into the wonderful teething phase and everything, EVERYTHING, is going into the mouth. Our favourite thing to chew on is either our hand, our Sofie the Giraffe toy, our Razberry soother or of course the best of all...Mommy's fingers. And man does that kid have some chompers in him and there isn't even teeth yet!
We also seem to have stumbled into the stage of "mommy can't be beyond arms reach or I may flip out". Usually not a problem until that dreaded bathroom break comes then its like "hrm do I hold it? If I run off while he's playing with his blanket will that give me enough time to go and then come back before he even notices?" Sometimes we have no idea mommy has even left and other times it's like our world has ended and there's mommy feeling guilty for having a full bladder. But sometimes when you gotta go, you gotta go. I already clean enough messes up I don't need another to deal with!
We will every once in awhile surprise mommy and spend time playing by ourselves. We're not too sure yet of our exersaucer or jolly jumper. It's funny because we like the toys in our exersaucer but we get frustrated when they can't come closer into our mouth.
And with the jolly jumper we like it when mommy or daddy make us bounce but haven't figured out the whole jumping thing just yet. We also have a bouncy chair that has become entertaining...more so for mommy and daddy as we can now shimmy our way out of it or if we get really squirmy we can almost roll out of it. Definitely keeps us on our toes!
Our favourite activity though has now become naked time. We are going through towels like crazy because of it. This also means that we are rolling around a lot more. For some reason we're not a fan of being on our tummy when we are in our diaper or clothed but when we're naked we still don't love it but are willing to put up with it for a few minutes longer. At least (knock on wood) we haven't figured out the rolling thing at night. I've heard stories of kids waking up in the night screaming because they've rolled onto their stomach and can't get back and the parents have to rescue them every few hours. I may not be getting much sleep but at least I'm getting more then that!
And sleep training. There's something they should prepare mothers more for! So Munchkin can actually do quite well putting himself to sleep after we go through our routine. It's the staying asleep through the night we had issues with. He thought that every 2 hours would be more then enough and the only thing that would help put him back to sleep was milk. Great for him...not so much for me. So we tried the whole sleep training thing...well sort of. I started doing modified versions of a bunch of them but none of them were working. Plus it didn't help that I couldn't stand listening to him cry longer then 5 mins. So after talking to a bunch of my friends and doing lots of research online I decided to give the Sleep EASY method a try. My girlfriend told me to do the routine and when he woke up 1-2 hours later don't check on him for 15 mins. I had always gone in after 5 mins so 15 seemed like a life time. Sure enough after 13 mins we had a little boy who had put himself back to sleep but of course a frazzled mom thinking she was the worse parent in the world for letting her kid cry that long. Well one week later and I can now say I think it was the best thing in the world for us. I can easily get a 4-6 hour stretch of sleep which makes for a much happier mommy (and baby)!
So what's next for us? Well we're hoping to try solids very very soon. I've been looking into how to make rice cereal and other foods so we'll see how Munchkin likes that. I'm hoping that maybe on Christmas he can have some potatoes and or yams with us at dinner. We're also looking forward to his first Christmas. I swore up and down that neither us nor Santa were going to spoil him and yet somehow there is already a couple of bags worth of things in our closet waiting to be put under the tree. But you only get one First Christmas and even though he may not remember it I'm sure the whole family will!
But we're definitely starting to show our emotions more. We have our fussy times but we also give big smiles, giggles and show excitement over just about anything. I think though one of my favourite faces after big smiles is our pouty face. How can you say no to this...
