Month 5

It's official, this is my favorite stage. I'm sure I'll say that every month of here on out, but she is so much fun right now!!! She's so interactive, but she's not mobile yet, so she is still pretty dang easy to take care of.

She talks nonstop. Allllll day long. She loves making noises and trying out new sounds. She's gotten into gurgling and random little screams. She responds to you when you talk to her, and she loves to copy the noises we make. She laughs all the time too. Little giggles, and full-on laughs. I LOVE MAKING HER LAUGH. She laughs at the funniest things. She loves when Nathan does funny dances for her. She loves to be startled by loud noises. She still loves any high-pitched sounds. That's a surefire way to at least get a smile. She can't resist the high noises. She loves singing and dancing. She is starting to like playing "airplane" or being gently thrown in the air. And when I say thrown, I mean she doesn't even leave my hands. She's found her feet and she loves to play with them. She hasn't put them in her mouth yet, but I'm sure it will happen.

My favorite time of the day is getting her up in the morning. I always know when she is ready for the day because instead of waking up crying, she wakes up talking. She is SO HAPPY first thing in the morning. I love when she wakes up before me, and I wake up to the sounds of her babbling or playing with the sides of her crib. I'll just roll over and watch her until she notices me.

Although I spent most of this month with little sleep, I think I can safety say (knock on wood) that our sleep problems are gone. For now, of course. But I'll take any sleep I can get. Back at the beginning of January, Sadie went from sleeping through the night, to waking every 2 hours. It went on like that until a couple weeks ago. A lot of people told me it was a normal sleep regression, and I think it was for a while, but then I think she just got in the habit of waking up so often. Like clockwork, she'd wake up at midnight, 2:30, 4, 5:30, and 7. She wasn't even going a full 2 hours sometimes! She wouldn't calm down until I nursed her, and then she'd nurse for 2 minutes and fall back asleep. It was so frustrating. I had always known I would do cry-it-out, but I was hesitant to start so young. And the funny thing is, she puts herself to sleep with no problems. For naps and bed time, I lay her down wide-awake. She rolls on her side and goes to sleep within a minute or two, every time, but she wouldn't do it in the middle of the night! So last week I finally gave in and just let her cry when she woke up in the middle of the night, and what do ya know? After a couple of nights, she was sleeping straight through until 7. A lot of the time she goes back to sleep for another hour or so after eating at 7 too. It's awesome. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to sleep again! It makes nights so much more enjoyable. I used to be anxious just waiting for her to wake up, or feel like I needed to go to bed when she did. Now I can just enjoy my nights. Nathan and I can hang out and watch tv and spend time together without me just sitting and waiting for her to wake up. Thanks cry-it-out!

We are going to transition her to her own room next month. I will be honest, I'm terrified! I LOVE having her in our room. She doesn't make tons of noises at night, and I love just being able to look over at her and see she's breathing. Yes, I am still paranoid from losing Madelyn, but what can ya do? Her room is really far from ours! I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it makes me sad. I have started having her nap in her room so she can get used to it, and she's not a huge fan. She took a couple naps that lasted an hour. But they usually only go for 30 minutes. Hopefully she'll adjust. She's still not on a real napping schedule. She usually take about 3 a day, but their length and timing varies. I'm sure she'll start being more consistent now that she's sleeping through the night.

She's so good at grabbing and holding things now, and moving them right into her mouth. She still chews on her fingers non-stop. She is also still the drool queen, and proud of it. She loves tummy time and can turn herself in a complete circle. She has mastered "swimming" on her tummy too. When on her back, she can shoot around the entire room. She wants to be mobile so bad! She can sit up for a few seconds at a time, but always ends up falling forward. She loves to read books! We read several a day and always have a bed time story. She gets her big eyes and tries to grab at everything on the page. She still loves her bouncer and when I can't get her down for a nap no matter what, the vibration on that little guy does the trick every time.

She loves to be a part of everything. She hates if we leave her on the floor and sit on the couch and talk if she can't see us. She screams when you leave her by herself in a room for longer than 30 seconds. She just loves attention. Sometimes if she's fussing, all I have to do it look at her and say, "hi!" and she'll smile and laugh and be happy again.

Thanks to the worlds best weather, we have gotten to spend a lot of time outside. She loves the sun and loves having so many new things to look at. It's started getting cold again so our park trips have been fewer, but hopefully Spring will pop back up, because I love taking her outside. We have a baby swing in our backyard that we have taken her on a couple times. She loved it at first, but got bored fast. I'm sure she'll love it more in a couple months.

She is OBSESSED with Lady. Unfortunately, Lady hates her, haha. Hate may be a strong word, but Lady wants nothing to do with her. She has swatted at her one time, and I had a freak out followed by a melt down that my cat is going to kill my baby. We have started training Lady more intensely, and now Lady just walks away when she is annoyed, but it may be harder once Sadie starts crawling, because seriously, Sadie loves her. She laughs is Lady just even walks by. She stares at her and talks to her as she sits in the window. If she get her close enough, she grabs a fist-full of fur. No wonder Lady doesn't like her.

At her 4 month check-up she weighed 14.5 pounds, and I would say she's still probably around the 15 pound mark. She's getting really long. She has a big belly, and chicken legs. It makes it so that all her shirts are too small, and her pants are too big! She also has a giant head. My genes are to blame for that one. But I love that giant head!! The mullet is almost completely gone, and her hair is really starting to come in! It looks dark, which is strange, but we will see what color is really is when it gets a bit thicker.

Her "stranger danger" seems to be fading, because she sure flirts with everyone at church. She has become increasingly harder to take to church as well. She does not want to be in her car seat at all, she wants to be standing up on our laps, looking at everyone and talking. Nathan and I both teach 3rd hour some weeks, so it has been interesting juggling that. It's a good thing she is so dang cute!

We experimented with some solid food this month. Our doctor said it would be a great time to introduce them and see what happens. It was pretty fun to watch. We started with some rice cereal and I don't think she swallowed a single bite. We tried avocado and her face was hilarious. We have done a little rice cereal a couple times a week and she is slowly getting used to it. Poor girl just doesn't know how to swallow! We will take it more seriously after she's 6 months, but it's been fun to try it out.

At the tail end of this month, she got her first cold. I'm really thankful that she made it this long without getting sick. It's scary enough to have a 4 month old sick, I can't imagine having a sick newborn!! It was just a small cold. She was super congested and just a little sad and mellow. She got a mild fever for about a day, then she got a cough. That was about it. She had to sleep in her bouncer because she was so congested so that was weird, but she still slept through the night. I, however, woke every hour to check on her. But I'm not the only one! I caught Nathan up taking her temperature around 2am. (We have a temporal scanner thermometer, he wasn't shoving one up her butt while she slept). It's cute when he gets worried. Sure, we were excessively worried, but it was our baby's first cold!

I really just love this little girl so much. My favorite thing she does now is when she's nursing, she reaches her hand up and strokes my face and neck, or plays with my hair. I love it so much! And when she's done eating, she pulls away and just looks up at me and talks, or will reach her hand up to my face. She is so sweet, and I fall more in love with her everyday!