Lots of new and exciting things have happened this fifth month. Or maybe a better way to describe it is that he is acting much more like a person so we are seeing lots of “becoming a big boy” changes in him. He is bigger, stronger, more demonstrative and more vocal.
A few of the highlights are that he now eats some solid foods. It is usually only one or two times a day though, so when you eat 7-8 meals a day it isn’t a lot of solid food. At this point sweet potatoes and carrots are the most popular choices.
Another first (or fluke?) was that he actually slept through the entire night… once… a few weeks ago… so this is not yet a trend though after the holidays we are going to work on sleep training so that should change.
He is also possibly starting to teeth, or he just likes chewing on things and slobbering. Apparently there isn’t much difference between those two with infants. We thought he was teething at first because he was super fussy for a couple days and we gave him teething toys but after a few days he didn’t seem to care about that so maybe he was just not feeling well which is why he was fussy.
His coordination and grip strength is rapidly improving too. He used to drop his toys all the time and we would not even give him some of the heavier ones since he had a habit of bonking himself in the head. But that has quickly turned into being able to hold and manipulate them, aim them towards his mouth to chew, and not drop them on the noggin! At daycare he will sometimes have a toy in each hand. Of course, that only works when he isn’t wearing baby mittens to keep him from scratching his head, which is still a big problem. He is now able to hold on to toys and fingers as well as judge his reach towards things. He can even hold his bottles a little bit (or, long enough for a photo op). The curiosity of touching things in the world around him is huge right now.
Half Calf has developed the annoying yet cute ability to produce a nice high pitched squeal as part of his vocalizing as well. We were also warned by a pediatrician friend of ours that there is another higher frequency one likely coming… we can hardly wait. But he does chatter and make a lot of noises, even in his sleep. Part of this practice of using his mouth has led us to try and teach him the very advanced process of producing raspberries. We try to do them slowly and deliberately so he can see the lips moving and believe it or not he does actually try (and fail) to do it himself!
However all is not great. As you may have noticed in previous posts, he has lots of skin issues. It is to the point that he reacts negatively to pretty much everything new. And one day at daycare he had a reaction to “something” which caused his eyes and face to puff up quite a lot. We still have no idea what it was since as best we can tell, he had no new exposures (same food, same lotion, same cream, etc) plus they are aware of his seemingly common reactions to “new stuff” so limit what he does from an activity standpoint as well. But after a doctor visit and a day at home, it was gone. That incident, while minor, did freak us out a little bit to the point we actually got him epi pens just in case we need them.
Speaking of his crappy skin; in general it is doing better this month. Of course, he is getting lotion and gel every couple of hours which is probably a big part of that. We keep hearing he will grow out of this skin stuff soon, so hopefully that is true. But since it is so dry he still has a lot of issues with making himself bleed after slicing and dicing his head and face with his baby razor fingernails.
He also had is first “illness”; a round of pinkeye. Nothing too exciting with it, just typical slimy oozing from his eyes and a had to stay home from daycare. But he showed no signs of feeling bad and it cleared up pretty quickly.
Oh yeah, we had our first big earthquake too, or maybe I should say our first 3000+ earthquakes since they have not really stopped?!? Funny thing is, I wrote this entire post and remembered about this at the last minute so had to go back and add it! For those who don’t know, a 7.0 earthquake happened 13 miles from our house. And has been followed with 20 aftershocks in less than two weeks that are 4.5 or greater. Most are still in that 15-20 miles distance and on the other side of the water so we generally only feel the ones over 4.0 at our house but not the smaller ones. When it happened, we were actually not home; we were driving into the parking lot at Home Depot. We stopped so all the employees could run out the door in front of us to avoid the stuff falling from the shelves. Since they closed the store, we went back home. There was actually a 5.7 on the drive that we never even noticed and we arrived home about 20 minutes after the initial one happened. As we walked into the house, there were a few things on the ground but not much really. The only hard part was the aquarium. It has been topped off with water in the morning so sloshed out about 5 gallons. When I got the towels and started to wipe it up, I saw a fish on the ground, under the couch. It was unfortunate but things like that happen. I reached over to pull it from under the couch when it jumped!!! I quickly grabbed it and tossed it back into the water. I then yelled for Thao to come down and do a head count. Luckily we only have 4 fish at the moment. I did find another one underneath the aquarium stand. It too was still alive!!! I am assuming that since they were laying in a puddle they were able to somewhat breathe for the 20-25 minutes they were laying on the floor. Almost two weeks later, they are still swimming around. Anyway, that was quite an unexpected result for sure. As for the rest of the house, it took about 10 minutes to pick things up and we did break one glass when it fell out of the cupboard hours later when we opened it.
OK, enough rambling, time for the good stuff.
And since it was fun last time, we have another video for you.
