Wow, I have let the last month fly by without an update on our sweet Gracie. Her 5 month birth date has come and gone, and she has learned so much!
She continues to become more and more aware of her surroundings. We are playing with lots of toys these days, and she loses interest in playing with them much quicker! The only way we can get her to roll over is if we entice her with a new toy! Gracie loves watching the dogs play, and they bring a huge smile to her face. She also loves to grab at their face or let them lick her hands. We are so blessed to have such great dogs that are accepting of our newest addition to the family.
In the past month, Gracie has learned that she can bend her knees to bounce up and down when she's "standing" on someone's lap. We like to call this her dancing because it looks like she is jamming to the music in her head. Speaking of what is in this little girl's head, I really wish that we could tap into her brain to find out what she is thinking. Sometimes she has the funniest facial expressions, so I wish that I knew what was going on inside there.
Gracie is almost able to sit up on her own for long periods of time. When we sit her on the floor, she can use her hands and arms to keep her chest up in the air for quite a while. It's funny for Trinity and I to watch her wobble back and forth and finally topple over when she's reaching for a toy or dog. She looks like a weeble-wobble as she learns her balance!
Grace has finally learned to enjoy eating rice cereal. She gets rice cereal twice at school and then again at home before her final feeding. She often hums as we feed it to her, which is a trait she got from me (I hummed when I ate anything as a baby)! I am hoping that her recent enthusiasm in eating will continue as she tries vegetables next month. Hopefully she won't get the veggie-adverse pallet from her dad!
Our one struggle continues to be getting her night-time sleeping schedule down. I never thought we'd have this problem since she slept so well for her first few months of life! We finally got her bedtime moved up to around 8pm, which means we dropped that last bedtime feeding, but Grace has been waking up anywhere from 1-5 times per night. It's mostly just small cries that are easily silenced if we stick her pacifier back in her mouth. Last week I was convinced she had an ear infection because she was waking up multiple times per night and crying harder than she's ever cried before. Well, her ears were completely fine. The doctor just thinks she's going through a phase; one we are hoping will be over soon!
3 comments:
I LOVE that she and the doggies are so sweet together!! Glad Hazelnut and Douglas have accepted their baby sister with open arms.
Addy went throught those phases when she just wouldn't sleep. For the most part, I think they happened when she was hitting growth spurts. She occasionally still wakes up in the middle of the night, though now I think it is bad dreams.
You may want to try moving up her bedtime even earlier. I know it seems odd but sleep begets sleep. I had a friend recommend "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and it recommends that at this age they should be going to bed between 6:30 and 7:30pm. Brayden is down by 7pm and then I wake him and feed him one last time before I go to bed and he sleeps through the night. If he stays up later than 7pm I can definitely tell and he lets me know he is ready by 7pm.
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