5 Months!

Wow!! How times flies!! It feels like Nolan just turned 4 months old and here we are celebrating 5 months of joy, frustration, blessings, learning, adjusting, growing, and a new kind of love. Kevin and I have been amazed at how much Nolan has changed just over the last few weeks. He has really come to life and is so much fun to interact with. Here is a list of just some of the new things that he has been doing....

• Rolling from back to front (we have perfected this trick over the last few days and use it to get to toys we are interest in laying just out of reach...we also don't seem to enjoy being on our tummy all that much though...)
• Rolling from front to back (don't do this as often as back to front...although you would think that he would do this more often to get back to his back since he doesn't like being on his tummy)
• holding a bottle while being fed (he grabs at everything and while he needs assistance to keep the bottle steady and to get it in his mouth he is getting more accurate each time with this as well)
• He loves standing up....i don't know how he is ever going to learn to sit because whenever we try to sit him up he pushes his legs out until you stand him up.
• He is eating during the day!!! Some of you know about what a struggle we have been having with him not eating during the day at daycare. This week we have made leaps and bounds in this area and have gone from eating 1-4 ounces at a time to 6!!! Instead of eating 3-6 ounces during the entire day he is now eating an average of 12!! I think a few things played into this change...1. we did more of his feedings with bottles (mostly breast milk even on the weekends and in the early evening during the week), 2. we switched to a fast flow nipple (probably should have done this months ago, but i didn't know!!!) 3. we switched to a different nipple. I am now usually only nursing him two times a day (first feeding in the morning and before going to bed). I still plan on breastfeeding as long as I can (well my goal is between 9-12 months) but with the way he is eating now I am already finding it difficult to pump enough for what he needs the next day.
• He is now only getting up 1-2 times during the night instead of 3-4+. And not only is he waking less he is much easier to put down for naps and at bedtime. We have been working on laying him down in is crib awake and having him fall asleep there versus nursing or rocking him to sleep. While we miss cuddling with our sleeping baby and at times he is not very happy about us putting him down he is beginning to sleep better. The problem that we are still working on is teaching him that he doesn't need to eat every time he wakes up at night. I have been nursing him the first time that he wakes up (anywhere between 10-2) and then if/when he wakes up the second time we try to sooth him without actually picking him up out of his crib. This can take some time but we are hoping that over time he will just sleep!!! :) There have been a couple of times when he has woken up, began to cry, and put himself back to sleep before we made it into the room.
• He loves his jumper seat! Our jumper seat is one where he can move 360 degrees around and play with different toys and he has figured out how to move him self around to get to his favorite toy. Ever since he was a newborn he loved that bouncy motion (we often had to take turns sitting out my exercise ball while holding him and bouncing up and down to get him to calm down...) and now he just goes crazy jumping and bouncing himself!
• He has gotten much more accurate when reaching for things and his grasp has gotten a lot stronger. He passes toys back and forth from hand to hand and is so cute when he is concentrating really hard trying to figure the toy out. He seems to really be intrigued by faces and enjoys reaching out and grabbing at them (ok he grabs at most things..).
• His firth two teeth are almost all the way through (he has pretty much stopped biting when nursing....woohoo!)
• He can still be quite the chatter box but he has this spitting and buzzing of his lips thing that he does that is quite funny to watch. It seems like he is really trying to tell you something but all you get is spit in your face and buzzing of his lips.
• We have been working on eating cereal and for a while seemed to really enjoy it but he hasn't been enjoying it so much the last few days (up right refusing to eat any of it) so we might start moving more into baby foods.

Ok, i'm sure there are a lot more things because it seems like he does something new each day, but these are some to give you an idea of how fast he is growing-up (very exciting and awesome to watch but can't they slow down just a little!!!).

Blessings to you all!