My cheery little boo-boo is 5 months old already! Actually it was 5 days ago, so I figure I better get this update done before she turns 6 months old! The days just seem to rush by!
Stats – she is following her growth curves. About 25% on the charts for her head, about 50% for height and about 60% for weight. I’m not sure exactly what her weight is since Naren was the one who took her to the scales and he couldn’t remember 
They write it on our chart, but we misplaced the little chart book they let us take home, they are preparing a new one for us to pick up next time.
She has seemed to go through a growth spurt 1-2 weeks ago. She was nursing EVERY hour during the day for almost 2 weeks, eeks!! I could tell by the end of that growth spurt that she had gotten a little extra chub, especially on her cute thighs!
Blowing Raspberries!
Blowing raspberries continues to be one of her favorite sounds. One night she was blowing raspberries for HOURS in her crib. I was sooooo ready to sleep. Speaking of…
SLEEP - This has seemed to be a crazy month for sleep. In the beginning of the month she had gone back to being easy – just lay her down in her crib, give her pacifier once in awhile if she dropped it, and she’ll quietly go to sleep. But that only lasted 1-2 weeks, until her growth spurt started. Since then it’s all about being held. Plus she’s not going to bed in the evenings these days. She takes 2-5 naps a day (2 if they are 2-3 hours each, but normally her naps are less than an hour with maybe one 2 hour nap each day if I’m lucky). Then she gets tired sometime between 7-8 o’clock, depending on when her previous nap was (she stays awake 1-2 hours between naps). That is Svara’s time to get ready for bed as well, so we all shower, get ready, and I put Talisa to bed. She goes to sleep…. for about half an hour Just long enough for me to do Svara’s beditme routine. Then she’s awake for awhile, sometimes until 11 or 12, or even 1am a couple times!! Crazy!! Then she still wakes up 2-3 times during the night to nurse (but she’ll USUALLY go right back to sleep now, whew!). She’s up for the day sometime between 7-9am, depending on when she went to bed. So I’ve been going to bed pretty late these days. Of course tonight she went to sleep for “good” at 10pm, but I’m down here on the computer and it’s already midnight
Up until now Talisa has been swaddled for every nap and every bedtime. We even tried getting her to sleep without it since she had learned to roll over, but she really needed it. But a couple weeks ago she started to REALLY fight being swaddled. So just like that she gave it up! She’s now in a sleep sack or footie pajamas and does just fine. The only problem is that now she turns over really easily (she never tried to turn over while swaddled) and when she gets on her stomach she wakes up. So we put her sleep positioner back in her crib (it’s like two little bolster pillows attached with fabric between them. So when I put her in she turns on her side, puts her leg over one side of the pillow, and sleeps. It’s pretty cute 
One of the last times she slept all swaddled up. Such a sweet sleeping face!
Now sleeping with no swaddle!
Late one night I thought she was asleep and I was doing some last minute surfing on my ipad in bed. I hear her, turn over, and I see THIS! It was definitely time to raise the side of the crib higher!
FOOD – Talisa is still fully breastfed, but she is getting SO interested in our food! She moves her mouth and tries to grab onto our food/our hands when we are eating. We’ve given her a few licks of apple and watermelon, and today I gave her a couple grains of rice during lunch. I also froze some breastmilk as icecubes and put them in a baby mesh-feeder thing, she liked that. I was going to wait until 6 months to start solids, but if she has her way we might give her a few this month We’ll see! I was looking forward to another month of not having to rinse out poopy diapers (for those who don’t know, when you do cloth diapers and your baby is fully breastfed you don’t have to rinse them, the washer takes care of everything. Once you start baby on solids, the poopy diapers need to be rinsed out before putting them in the diaper pail). We are going to IKEA this week to hopefully buy a high chair (we sold Svara’s years ago) this week. I think Talisa will really enjoy sitting with us at the table.
PACIFIER - Talisa uses her pacifier for sleeping, and for when we are out of the house, but not usually otherwise. I think this is good, hopefully it’ll be easier to wean her from it if she doesn’t use it all day long (I think…) She loves chewing on her fist and also sucking her thumb sometimes.
PLAYING - Talisa is more and more interested in her toys. She’s a lot better at grabbing now. She can stay in her exersaucer for 10-20 minutes, depending on her mood. Usually I put her in there next to Svara and me while we are at the table either doing school stuff, art projects, etc. Then when she gets tired of it it’s time for group playtime! She adores Svara! Svara can make her laugh by making funny faces, noises, jumping up and down, etc. And she loves it when Svara sings to her, it’s sweet We have to continually work on Svara being gentle with the baby, but I guess that’s pretty common. She is so loving, but doesn’t always realize how fragile babies are!
Sisters playing together. Talisa naturally thinks Svara’s hair is great for grabbing!
Talisa LOVES when we put one of her swaddle blankets over her play gym. She thinks it’s the greatest. And if Svara comes in her tent? Even better!
MOBILITY - Not much change from last month yet. She is still doing her “crunches” every day, all day. She rolls over onto her tummy easily, and she’ll stay there for a few minutes now and play/smile before starting to whine and want to turn back over. But when I turn her onto her back again she’ll soon roll to her belly again. She cannot sit up by herself, but with some support she can. But she doesn’t like to stay in a sitting position for very long. She prefers standing!! We joke that she’s always “planking” because she stiffens out her legs if we try to make her sit so that she’s standing instead.
TRAVEL - This month we got out of the house much more often! My brother, Xander, was visiting from the US for a couple weeks (I’ll do another post on that soon!). We spent two nights away in the city of Malacca, and did several day trips as well. Sometimes only Naren and Xander went, or Svara tagged along as well. But there were several trips when we all went which was fun. Talisa didn’t do too badly, as she still falls asleep in the wrap if she needs to. Thank goodness for this wrap! I only used a sling when Svara was a baby. Slings are great, but can be hard on the one shoulder. My back tends to start hurting after awhile. But I can wear a wrap for hours with no back pain, yay!
This is from our trip to Malacca!
Me, 5 months postpartum:
Not many changes this month. Still slowly losing weight. Actually I wasn’t losing much weight until her growth spurt, then I lost a couple more pounds haha. I’m down to 56 or 57kg. It’s hard to tell with my imprecise scale, but somewhere around there. I haven’t tried on any more pants besides that one pair of jeans. But it IS easier to fit on these past couple weeks. So in a couple more weeks I’ll try some more jeans and see if they fit. No exercise yet, eep! I really have been meaning to, but always find one excuse or another. Once again, the month went by super FAST!
What a beautiful smile she has!