Five Months!

 

Our little babies are now five months old! It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed since they came into our lives, but when you think about how much has changed for them, five months hardly seems like enough time. Pretty much an hour after I wrote my last post, Micah decided to roll over for the first time, from his back to his tummy. Thus began a few weeks of major changes in the Anstey house. First, we moved Micah from his rock and play into a crib. That first night was a little hard, because he just wanted to keep practicing his rolling. But once he was asleep, he did well in the crib and has stayed there ever since. Since Noah had also been showing an interest in rolling, we had to rearrange the nursery to accommodate a second crib. Luckily, we were able to fit the second crib and keep the giant pillowsac chair in place by taking out the decorative bookshelf and moving the changing table. We moved Noah into a crib for a couple of nights, but he was less happy about it so we moved him back into his rock and play. He is doing a slower transition to the crib, but will nap in one. I think he’ll be ready to make a full time move to the crib soon, but it’s actually convenient for me that he’s still in the rock and play (when Mitch is out of town and I’m doing bedtime solo).

 

Feeding update: no major changes here. The boys nurse in the morning, have two six ounce bottles during the day when I’m at work, then nurse twice when I get home. The last two feeds are kind of like a cluster feed, since they occur within 1.5 hours of each other usually. They may not need both feeds, but I’m reluctant to drop one because I want to keep my supply up and it’s nice to have that last feed right at bedtime to relax them. We tried dropping the dream feed cold turkey, and it went okay for Micah the first night, but then the babies started waking up in the middle of the night and seemed hungry, so we reinstated it and will drop it more gradually over the next month or two while we get solids established. Speaking of solids, we tried feeding them some very liquid-y rice cereal a couple weeks ago, and neither boy seemed very interested in eating. Micah was maybe more curious than Noah. We shall try again soon!   

Sleep update: the boys are keeping us on our toes a little here. They take between two and three naps during the day, and go to bed around 7 pm, depending on how long they eat at their bedtime feed. They’ve been waking up once in the middle of the night, and will happily babble for a while. Then, when no one comes in or they get tired, then they will start to whine and cry. For a while, the waking happened around 5 or 5:30 am, so we thought maybe they were just ready to start their days. But they’ve pushed up this to 4 am and now 3 am with the time change. We’ve realized they aren’t waking from hunger, because they will generally stop fussing as soon as we go into the nursery. They are realizing that their actions and noises have an impact on their parents and are having fun experimenting with it. Also, they might just be having trouble going back to sleep on their own when they change sleep cycles in the early morning because they’re more aware of their surroundings now. We’re letting them learn how to fall back asleep on their own with some controlled sleep training. The past couple of days, after they’ve gone back to sleep, they’ve woken up for the day around 6:30, which is great, given the hour of falling back for daylights saving. They’ve also adjusted to the time change quite well, in terms of naps and bedtime. They’ve been falling asleep for the night well, and just wake up the one time. So, we are still in the lucky boat when it comes to our babies’ sleep. Micah seems to be a slightly better sleeper than Noah, and sometimes falls asleep on his side now! It’s so cute.

Developmental update: As mentioned already, Micah is a rolling baby, though he hasn’t rolled from tummy to back as far as we know. Sometimes in the morning, we will find him in a 180 degree position from where he started the night in his crib. He could spend hours on his tummy now, and is trying to hardest to crawl. Noah is enjoying tummy time more too, but hasn’t decided to start rolling yet. Both boys are much more dexterous these days, and will grab things and hold them…and shove things into their mouths. They are in the early stages of teething, with Micah seeming to have a couple of white spots on his lower gum line. With the teething comes a little fussiness, but not much to be honest. They mostly just drool and want to munch on their hands, toys, teethers, etc. They’re starting to imitate sounds and love hearing their voices. Their nanny, Norma, sings and speaks to them in English and in Spanish. We also got some baby sign language DVDs and will introduce them to those gradually.

Noah and Micah continue to be happy, easy-going babies. They greet us with smiles and laughs in the morning and keep it up throughout the day. Seriously, we are so lucky to have our happy, laid-back baby boys.