five months of colin

Happy Thanksgiving! We celebrated Colin's 5 month birthday with a big turkey feast. It's a little before 10 pm as I write this, and I'm realizing that if I don't finish this up quickly, I might not make it to the end without falling asleep!

Our little five month old is really starting to move! He wants to be on his belly all the time. He's working on his army crawling and can use his arms to pull himself along the floor a few inches at a time. He's really motivated if his ring of plastic keys or musical jellyfish are juuust out of reach. Occasionally he'll get into a good rolling rhythm and I'll turn around to find him in a completely different part of the room. I ordered a big baby gate and some cabinet locks last week, so we'll have to do some serious baby-proofing soon!

Colin had his first few bites of baby cereal last week. I think he needs a bit more time to figure out how to eat solids, since most ended up on his face and bib! We decided to introduce cereal a little early since our biggest issue this month has been dealing with SO MUCH SPIT UP. A spitty kid who only wants to be on his belly is a recipe for mess. Oh, and the raspberries... He is determined to communicate with us through a combination of yells and wet, spitty raspberries. Thank goodness most of our main floor is hardwood and linoleum! He's always in a bib, but he usually manages to spin it backwards to wear it like a little cape.

We have experienced a bit of the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. It has manifested as Colin waking up frequently at night, but at least he usually falls back asleep as soon as I give him his pacifier. Sometimes I wish he'd just go back to sucking his thumb and let me sleep! I can't complain too much since he doesn't need bottles at night and rarely needs soothing other than the pacifier. Unfortunately, he's also stopped taking a long nap in the afternoon and prefers to take sporadic cat naps throughout the day.

Colin still likes to lay on his little pillow, but when he gets tired of it, he just does the worm on his back until he's on the floor. Then he rolls over and tries to wiggle to the nearest toy. Sometimes he lifts his head from the pillow like he's trying to sit up, but he still has some work to do on his core strength before he'll be able to sit up well!

We celebrated a quiet Thanksgiving at home today, just the 4 of us. I made all our traditional foods except we nixed the mashed potatoes for homemade egg noodles (Dan's preference.) I did still buy a pouch of instant mashed potatoes so I can make a turkey manhattan (the sandwich, not the drink) tomorrow with leftovers. We cooked the smallest turkey we could find (13.5 lbs), so we will have leftovers for DAYS! Mae is not a fan of turkey, so we'll find out how long a 4 year old can survive on cranberry sauce alone. We spent the morning watching the parade and the dog show. Mae was completely enthralled with both! We took a walk and FaceTimed Dan's family. We spent the afternoon cooking and then watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" after eating our turkey dinner. We bought our tree yesterday, so we're excited to decorate it tomorrow!

My goal over the next few weeks is to get lots of baby gates and locks installed! I'm having fun watching this little guy learn to move around. Can't wait to see what the next month brings.