We had our second swimming session (water appreciation/confidence) of the term today. All the other babies in the class are just starting out, whereas Nathan went to the last 5 classes of last term. The difference between the others and Nathan is amazing…..Nathan even screws up his face and shuts his eyes in preparation for being dunked now, so I no longer have to blow in his face! Sam, the instructor, says that he can’t teach Nathan any more in the class we go to, and suggested we move up to ‘crabs’ if there is a spot available. If I don’t hear from the pool then we go to the same class next week and Sam will see what other options there are. I’m just happy that Nathan seems to enjoy the water, dunking and all.

He sleeps in his cot!!!! OK, so the photo above isn’t a sleeping baby, but I don’t have any photos of him asleep in the cot yet. The day he was exactly 5 months old I decided to try Nathan in the cot. I rocked him to sleep on my shoulder, and within minutes of falling asleep I laid him in the cot, and he stayed asleep!! He does still, occasionally, wake because of a start, but they don’t happen very often any more. So his day sleeps are now (generally) in the cot when we are home, though they are still half hour naps. At night Nathan is often fed to sleep, and we are trying to get him asleep between 8 and 9 pm (closer to 8 pm if possible). Nights start off in the hammock, and he migrates to our bed when he wakes and wants a feed, and stays for the rest of the night.

When he wakes from his sleeps, Nathan has a little chat to himself, to Andrew or I if we’re in bed with him, or he plays with his dummy or sheets. I often walk into the room after a sleep and Nathan has his hands in the air playing with his dummy.

Our big sleep issue now is that Nathan seems to need me to go to sleep, and just screams/cries when Andrew tries to get him to sleep. I only have 5 weeks left until I return to work full time and Andrew takes over, and Andrew is getting nervous about this sleep issue. We’re working on it, but so far unsuccessfully.

Getting away from sleep issues, Nathan is so very excited about food. The current recommendations are to introduce solids at around 6 months, but he has been showing signs of wanting food for a month now. So far I haven’t given him anything he can actually eat, but he loves sucking on apples and corn cobs (after I’ve eaten the corn) and is mildly interested in raw carrot.

We’ve tried giving Nathan expressed milk in a sipper cup with mixed success. The milk comes out pretty fast, I think, and so he often spits out some of the milk. If we slow it down by tipping the cup and regulating access to the milk seems to help. Nathan goes nuts when he sees the cup though…he can’t get to it fast enough!!

Nathan’s hair continues to get thinner, and it seems to me that the tiny hairs on his head are blonde. So I am not sure what colour his hair will end up. Every day finds Nathan being more and more mobile, though proper crawling is still way beyond him. I think he is pretty close to sitting on his own, though.

I am spending my spare moments making new nappies of the next size up! The boy is growing fast…most of the clothes he wears now are size 0 though he still fits 00 quite well. Last weekend we bought a couple of Bonds wondersuits size 1 to use as pyjamas since his old size 0 no longer fit over his bulky night nappy and his legs are too long for it.

I forgot to mention in the 5 month old post that Nathan’s hairy ears have gone….not his ears, the long hair that was on them when he was born. I don’t know when that happened. He does still have his gunky eye, though. Oh, I can’t believe that for my next post he will be 6 months old! Where has the time gone??

This is what Nathan should be doing right now….

Yes, 4 am is the time that Bugalugs decided was awake time thismorning. Well, I have to admit that it wasn’t entirely his fault…he woke at 4 am for a feed, and then Andrew’s phone rang. He had been expecting to do some night work and was waiting for the call to tell him that they were ready for him, but it didn’t come until 4:08. The light of the phone and the talking and moving were enough to distract Nathan so that he was now wide awake. I tried for ages to feed him back to sleep…unsuccessfully.

Oh well, I guess he’ll be ready for a nap around 6 am…only 40 minutes to go!

Another 2 weeks down and Nathan seems to be developing in leaps and bounds. He is standing (while supported) for longer periods of time, he topples over when sitting down but I don’t think it will be long before he learns to sit on his own. I sometimes put sit him in the front car seat while I adjust my sling, and he sits without flopping over. Nathan wriggles and rolls around on the change table, making putting on nappies a little difficult. He puts a lot of effort into moving around when he’s on the floor, and we have to make sure to keep an eye on him and put him back on his mat if he roams too far (since we haven’t baby proofed the flat yet).

Food…oh, he wants anything and everything that I pick up, and in particular he is so very interested in what I put in my mouth. A few days ago I was eating an apple and Nathan was pestering me about it, so I gave him half an eaten apple and he went crazy sucking on it. On the weekend I ate another apple to show Andrew how Nathan reacts to apples, and we taped it. The edited version is at the end of this post. We now sit Nathan at the dining table when we eat dinner. Sometimes he sits on my knee, but mostly now he sits on the table in his Bumbo seat with the tray attached. It won’t be long before we start putting pieces of veggies on his tray for him to try eating.

Nathan seems to be very curious about faces, and regularly touches and grabs my face, my glasses, my hair and my ears, and he does the same to Andrew (minus the glasses, of course). Talking about body parts, he seems to have discovered his feet in the last two weeks, and he regularly lies on his back and sucks his toes or sometimes even his heel. This means that socks are even harder to keep on his feet, because they are grabbed before the foot and therefore generally removed before the toe sucking, though socks on his feet don’t stop him.

We’ve also noticed that Nathan’s facial expressions are changing. He doesn’t suck his bottom lip quite so much any more, and instead he sticks his tongue out.

And finally, the last couple of weeks has seen Nathan’s hair start falling out. It’s noticeably thinner than it has been previously. It looks quite funny because a small percentage of his hairs are growing, so he has this thin whispy hair now.