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Look who is looking at the world from a different perspective these days.
She still isn’t super stable sitting up on her own, and in the blink of an eye she will topple over. But, each day she seems to be sitting up better and for longer before she face plants.
The girl likes to keep us on our toes with a little game she has developed to make sitting practice more fun. She loves to throw herself back as fast as she can. If we don’t have a pillow, or ourselves, behind her she would smack her poor little head super hard. You can’t see it coming either. She’ll be sitting smiling, reaching for things, having fun and then in the blink of an eye she has flung herself back and is giggling at herself. Luckily, we’ve avoided injury by always making sure that there is something, or someone, behind her.
I can’t believe she is already old enough to be sitting up by herself. She is my little big girl.
Anna had her first taste of “real” food this week, and by “real” I mean food other than the boobie milk she has been consuming for the last 6 months. And, just like her sister before her, she doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of the non-boobie milk food so far. Although, each time she has tolerated it a little better than the previous day, so there is hope yet 
Her first bite of food was a little piece of a very mushy carrot that she had the other evening while we were eating dinner. I just gave her a steamed carrot to see what she would do with it. She played with it for a bit and then I put a little mushed up piece in her mouth. She let it sit on her tongue for a minute looking at me like I had three heads and was trying to poison her before spitting it out. We all got a few giggles out of the ordeal.
A couple of days later I gave her some oatmeal. She was not a fan, not in the least! I had originally planned on foregoing the mushy baby cereal all together and just going straight to veggies and fruit, but decided at the last minute to give her a little bit of oatmeal as a way to test if she was even ready for solids yet and to see if, maybe, she would like it. Turns out, nope, she’s a fan.
So, since cereal wasn’t a hit I went back to my original plan and started with a veggie. I’ll wait and give her oatmeal again later on when she is ready for regular consistency oatmeal and when I can mix it with something yummy like peaches or applesauce. Yesterday was her first shot with the veggies. I gave her some roasted butternut squash and though she wasn’t a huge fan, she certainly didn’t seem to hate it, so I’m counting it as a success. She had some again today and did even better than yesterday. I think we can safely add squash to the list of foods that she considers somewhat tolerable at this point
I have to say I love her “Mommy, what the hell did you just put in my mouth!” facial expressions. They make me giggle EVERY time. Between the silly, yet adorable, faces she makes and how darn cute she looks sitting in her highchair, I’m really enjoying this whole introducing food business even if she isn’t completely on board with the whole idea yet
As Anna quickly approaches her half birthday she is learning all sorts of new tricks. The babbling has really picked up, she can roll easily from her tummy to her back and she is even starting to be able to sit unassisted for very short periods of time. One trick that I thought for sure she would have down by now wass rolling from her back to her tummy. I mean, for a couple of months now she has been rolling all the way onto her side and has even started rolling her lower half all the way over. But, alas, she has only done it once and I’m pretty sure that was by accident.
I’ve decided that she is purposely not rolling from back to tummy because she doesn’t want to She can contort her body in all sorts of crazy ways to accomplish whatever it is she would need to roll over for. If there is a toy out of reach and rolling over would allow her to reach it she just rolls the bottom half of her body and then reaches with all her might to get the toy, mission accomplished. If there is something she wants to see that she can’t see from her back, ditto, body contorted and bam, thing she wanted to see is now in view. I’ve started referring to her as our little contortionist, because, well, look at her moves
It is funny, because people will see her in one of her contorted poses and will say things like “Oh, she’s going to be rolling over any day now.” I just smile and nod, she has them so fooled. Anna isn’t going to roll over until she has too, until that one day when the toy is just too far out of reach for her to get by using one of her adorable little contortionist poses.
Until she’ll just keep being her adorable little self looking at the world sideways and upside down
The darling, beautiful, wonderful Miss Anna is 5 months old today. That’s right, 5 MONTHS!! Wasn’t she just born yesterday 
Time flies when you’re having a blast raising the sweetest baby on the planet (I may be a bit biased, but damn is she ever sweet!).
Weight: approximately 14.5 lbs
Height: approximately 25 inches
I didn’t think it was even possible, but, Anna has some how become even sweeter in the last month. She truly is the calmest, sweetest, most peaceful, joyful baby I’ve ever met. She is so easy going, as long as you don’t make her stay up past her preferred bedtime of 6pm A smile brightens her face so easily and often. Little giggles and squeals of delight erupt from her with great frequency. Her sweetness and constant smiles make every day a little brighter.
Babies this age seem to grow and change every day and Anna is no exception. She definitely seems bigger to me, and stronger too. She is working really hard on rolling from her back to her tummy and can get almost all the way over. I’m know one of these days I’m going to leave the room with her playing on the floor on her back and come back to find her on her tummy.
Squealing is still one of her favorite things to do. We get such a kick out of listening to her. She is sitting up almost on her own. I still need to support her, but barely so I’m sure sitting by herself is just around the corner. We’ve had her in the jolly jumper a few times. Maya loved that thing but Anna, so far, seems a bit indifferent to it. She likes it for a few minutes but then wants out.
One of Anna’s favorite people in this world is, no surprise, her big sister Maya. They get such a kick out of each other. Maya is constantly trying to make Anna laugh and Anna giggles easily at her sister’s crazy antics. I hope they always get along this well.
Anna truly is an incredibly easy baby. She eats like a champ (I could do without the constant spitting up, but hey, if that is my only complaint I’m pretty lucky). She sleeps so well both at nap time and bed time. We love her to pieces and love watching her grow.
I feel like I was just writing about Anna’s sleep regression and the resulting lack of sleep for both her and I, and now here I am about to tell you how amazingly she is sleeping. Something clicked for Anna in the last couple of weeks and now she is sleeping like a total champ.
Her sleep regression lasted for about 3 weeks. I wouldn’t say she was a terrible sleeper even on the worst days. But, I’m certainly thankful it seems to be over. At the height of her sleep regression she wasn’t napping well, only taking short 30 minute naps and never seeming particularly rested. She was getting up 2-3 times a night, which, as I mentioned in my previous post, was so uncommon for her. The lack of sleep made her a bit fussy and she just always seemed tired. I was hopeful our sleep troubles would be short lived as that had been my experience when Maya went through a similar phase during her babyhood.
As luck would have it, it was short lived. Something all of a sudden just seemed to click for her. It all started with her being able to soothe herself to sleep. Up until a few weeks ago I was rocking her to sleep for naps and bed time. One afternoon rocking her wasn’t working so I decided to just put her in her bed and see what happened. To my amazement she fell asleep on her own. I listened to her over the monitor cooing to herself for a minute or so and then she fussed a little, no crying just sort of whining and then silence. When I hadn’t heard anything for a couple of minutes I cracked her door and checked on her, she was sound asleep. She slept for over an hour. The next day I did the same thing for naps and she napped over an hour in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. Since then she has been napping wonderfully and seems so much more rested and her awake times last a little longer.
Once she was napping better she started sleeping a little better at night too, there is a lot to that whole “sleep begets sleep” thing. She returned first to getting up only once at night and each night her first stretch of sleep was a little longer. Then last week she started sleeping 12 hours straight through. I’ll hear her on the monitor occasionally some nights. She’ll coo a little for a minute or two and then falls back asleep. She goes to bed between 6-6:30 and gets up between 6:30-7, it has been wonderful.
Between the great napping and the super awesome night time sleep I finally feel like she is getting the sleep she needs, and I am too The girl loves her sleep.
So, for all you other mamas out there with kiddos going through sleep regressions, hang in there, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.