5 months old

So I've gotten a little slack about keeping up with the blog and am a little late posting his 5 month news! Not has changed much this month except that he is growing like a crazy weed!

The biggest change is that he has randomly started sucking his thumb.  It is so cute and precious! I was a thumb sucker when I was small, and truth be told I was hoping he wouldn't start the bad habit, but I know he'll grow out of it.  He has become VERY attached to his blanket that his Mimi made him which means so much. I was never attached to any type of blanket or stuffed toy but I'm glad that he has something so special to hold onto.  At this point in time blankie heals all wounds.  About a month ago he started fussing and crying in the car....but now we take the blanket with us and between that and his thumb he is good to go!

To me it is so awesome that Mimi can make everything better even when she is 400 miles away! Thanks mom!

We also gave ridding in the shopping cart a try too!  He can't sit up on his own yet but if he has some support he does pretty well!

His reaction the first time was so funny! It was kind of like, um mom what is going on and is this ok???  But he cruised around the store for a bit until he was ready to be held.

We had to take a break from the cereal again, I just don't think his little tummy is ready for it yet.  He LOVES it and would probably eat anything you put in front of him but you can tell his little tummy is bothering him the next day. He is still breastfeeding just fine so we're not pushing it, he'll be ready soon enough. 

It's so funny to watch him discover new things.  The other night we had him in the bath tub and he was watching his fingers move around and he started waving at himself and he look at David and me and was like guys check this out. So now I've started waving at him and telling him hi and I'm hoping we'll be getting a wave back soon. He's also started to hold his bottle too! He and I were stuck in traffic on Saturday and he was hungry so I had to hand him his bottle and he managed to feed himself. He's still trying to figure out the tilting it up thing but we're getting there.

While I was pregnant I had major concerns about whether or not I would be able to bond with my baby and love him the way I should.  Now I realize all that worrying was for nothing.  This baby means the world to me and everyday the love just grows.  He smiles and laughs at me when I dance and act crazy and it makes me feel special. When he reaches up and grabs my face so that he can snuggle the joy that wants to just spill out of me is amazing. I am so thankful for this wonderful blessing God has given us. This baby is such a wonderful gift!

I Love my sleep!

So I really thought that not swaddling the baby would take some time for him to get use to it, but boy was I wrong. He now gets soooo excited for nap time and bed time.  When he gets tired  he is so ready to go down and he seems to get frustrated....like hey mom why haven't you put me down yet?  The second he realizes that we are starting his night time routine...or that he is going down for his nap he stops fussing and starts babbling and kicking his legs!  It's so wonderful!  At nap time, he plays with he hands and feet for a little while before he rolls over and wipes out. (he really enjoys sucking on his big toe, he's so silly).

My mom made him a special blanket that he sleeps with and when you lay it on him he clutches it in his little fist and rubs it on his face and rolls on his side! Its so precious. So I tried to capture it with our video camera.....but he didn't act like he normal does because he noticed the camera but it is still so cute.

I would say that my biggest lesson learned so far is that a little fussing goes a long way!  Just because he starts crying or fussing I don't jump up and run to his side. I do check to make sure that he is OK.....that he isn't stuck or that something else isn't wrong but he has learned to self soothe and put himself back to sleep if he wakes up.  There have been numerous occasions when he has started crying during his nap that he has fallen back asleep and slept for another hour. If I ran right in an picked him up he wouldn't get his nap out.  He generally always wakes up in a fantastic mood, unless he is hungry then nothing makes it better until he eats.  The morning are always my favorite.  He greets me with the biggest smile and laughs, it starts my day out on the right foot. 

Our Daily Routine

I always enjoy talking to other mothers or reading other moms blog to get an idea of what kind of schedule/routine they have their baby on so I figured I'd share a run down of our typical day!
David does sleep through the night but he just can't seem to shake the desire to wake up at 5:00 am for a feeding.  But I kind of like this because I'll lay him back down and he sleeps until 9:00 am.  This gives me a chance to get a few more hours of sleep and then get up and get my day started before he wakes up for the day. When he wakes up he is in such a wonderful mood full of laughs and tons of smiles!  We head down stairs for some breakfast and our morning playtime. Right now he really enjoys rolling all over the place and singing songs! If it's Monday or Wednesday we might be at the Library enjoying the baby class that they have called Babygarden. He stays up for about 3 hrs before he goes down for his afternoon nap at 12 pm. If we don't go anywhere and he doesn't have the chance to fall asleep in his car seat he'll sleep for 2 hours (Which is so wonderful).  When he wakes up he is really good about playing in his high chair or Johnny Jump while I clean the kitchen or do laundry.  He thinks it is so funny when I dance around the kitchen and sing (I'm sure it would be quite amusing to see). He's up for 2 more hours before he takes a short little nap around 4:00 pm which generally last for about an hour.  5:00 is dinner time for our little one and he enjoys some cereal and maybe a few bites of a veggie before we head out the door for our family walk.  David now recognizes the baby Bjorn and when ever he sees his dad put it on he gets so excited, he starts kicking his feet and waving his arms.  Once we finish our walk we get ready for bath time. David gives him a bath between 6:15 and 6:30 and he is usually down for the night no later then 7:00 pm.
I'm glad he is on such a predictable schedule but sometimes I find it hard to get some of the errands done between naps. If he falls asleep in the car he'll still nap when we get home just not as well.  I try not to stay locked up in the house but sometimes that seems so much easier then interupting his routine. But I'm blessed to have such a sweet baby boy.

Hurricane Irene Weekend

So as most of you know we thought that Irene was going to be pretty bad.  After reading all the hype about this hurricane and because of our close location to the ocean we decided that it would be best to make a run for it. Since David and I live in Base housing right now are only big assets are our vehicles and with all the talk about the storm surges we figured we better get BOTH of our vehicles out of there. As with most big decision I have trouble deciding what to do. First we were going to stay and wait it out....then I was just going to drive home to SC with the baby and David was going to stay on the ship....then that changed to us packing our bags and heading to Richmond on Saturday morning 8-27-11.  But you see the problem is that I make things more complicated then they have to be  I keep thinking things over in my head and the negative juices and worries start flowing. While checking the weather it was forecasting heavy winds and rain on Saturday and I began to stress about what it would be like to drive with the baby by myself in all that mess.  So my good friend Molli and I decided that we would take the kids and head out Friday afternoon and our husbands, who had duty until Saturday a.m., would travel up on Saturday morning.  Well of course we should've just stuck with the original plan because we sat in traffic for 4 hours!! (Richmond is only an hour and a half away!)
Once we got settled into our hotel we just relaxed and stayed indoors away from the bad weather.  Saturday of course, only brought worse weather and ironically the hotel we stayed at lost power Saturday evening.
This little adventure though was the baby's first stay in a hotel.  He did really well.  The first night we shared a room with Molli and her to young kids and he slept through us talking and TV going.  On Saturday he even managed to get his two naps in during all the craziness.  David has always needed to be swaddled up in order to go to sleep but on this particular Saturday he discovered that he could roll on to his tummy while swaddled....not so good for us.  Of course I couldn't leave him swaddled up because if he rolled over he would have no way of getting back on his back.  So now our sweet boy sleeps without his swaddle blanket and the transition couldn't have gone more smoothly. He hasn't had any trouble going to sleep or napping! If anything he might do a little better.  Sometimes he wakes up and just plays with his hands and feet quietly in his crib or puts himself to sleep the same way.
Back to our little Hurricane adventure.  We traveled back to Norfolk on Monday to discover LESS damage there then in Richmond (weird huh??) so basically we wasted time, money, and gas for nothing. Oh well I guess that was just how it was suppose to be.  We are so blessed and thankful that we are all safe and that none of our personal property was damaged! God is Good :)