Five Months

Holy crap. Time is flying. This baby is growing soooo fast! Like I get a panicky feeling in my chest when I realize that Indiana has been here for FIVE MONTHS and she's not my teensie baby anymore! It's both thrilling and so sad. Five months! This past month was cRaZy! I should probably just stop saying this every month as it will most likely be the norm, but she has changed so much in the past month! Like insane development. INSANE.

We had to move the photos from the crib to living room (what I should have done all along). Indy's sleeping in her big crib now so I've got some rather janky light blockage going on the windows. You do what you gotta do.

Indiana is about sixteen (!!) pounds of awesome. She's grown SO much in the past month, which makes sense because she ate like a little piggy. She loves smiling at her reflection, mama's singing, anything involving daddy, and playing! She loooves to play. She can sit up mostly on her own! With help of her hands. Still extra wobbly, but one day she realized she could use her hands to hold her self up, and off she went. It's like a lightbulb went off and she could do it. Now she's into one hand or no hands, which means she's the leaning tower of Pisa, but it's real fun. Sitting in the high chair now and that makes dinner way better, she's at the table with us! Speaking of being at the table and near things she shouldn't get, she reaches and grabs for EVERYTHING. Like if it's in her reach, she's gonna get it. And if it's not, she's gonna try. She'll leeean and stretch towards whatever she wants. And then it goes in her mouth to get soaked. Drool queen!! She found her feet, which is the cutest thing ever. They also go in her mouth. She sticks her tongue out pretty much nonstop these days, even when she smiles. It's hilarious. Just call her Barty Crouch Jr! And laughing is beginning to happen! Little tiny bits that sound extra fake, but it's amazing. She screams like a baby dinosaur when she's happy. She's very into following you with her eyes and entire body when you're moving around the room. She'll pull some exorcist moves to keep an eye you. Oh and she finally noticed the cats! She loves them. They're still on the fence about her, as she tends to just pull their fur or kick them. Indiana can roll from her tummy to back and from her back to her side, but she hasn't made it all the way from back to tummy yet. Almost all of her baby hairs have fallen out, except for her very awesome mullet. She's had it since she was born and it shows no signs of disappearing. Her hair was pretty dark at first, but the new stuff is more of a golden color. Which is baffling as she's got dark haired parents. Who knows. Eyes are still blue though!! I think they're gonna stick around!

The not so fun stuff: This month was real hard. All that development meant a crazy baby. Have any of you used the Wonder Weeks app/book? It's basically weeks of developmental leaps that equal a cranky baby. I don't know if it's in my head or what, but it seems to be pretty accurate. Most of the past month was leap four and shoot, it was a doozy! Lots of wildness, some of which we are still dealing with. Recently she loses her cool if you walk away from her and she's anywhere but in her crib. It's made day to day home life for me interesting. She gets super frustrated when she can't get to something she wants, or move the way she wants to. Understandable. Occasionally cries when you take something away from her (more of this to come). And the hardest part... Indiana's good sleep habits went out the window right before four months and never returned. She was a dang good sleeper until then, I thought we had it made! But then a switch flipped and boom. I thought I was going to die from exhaustion; she was waking up pretty much every hour at night. I lived in the rocking chair. I was tired, grumpy, and frustrated, and so was she. I was becoming someone I wasn't a fan of. Constantly on edge and so angry at everything. Not cool. Something had to give. So after a hell of a lot of indecision, procrastinating, and dragging our feet, we moved her into the big crib in her room and did some sleep training. I won't go into details because I know it's a hot topic, but so far sooo good! We're less than a week in and naps are still a mess, but I can honestly say it's life changing. Everyone is so much happier. Best thing we could have done for our family. Sleep is important. So important. We got the book Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child from a friend when I was preggo and although the methods are whatever, the biggest thing I got out of it was to treat sleep like food. You need it to survive, and to thrive! Healthy sleep is like healthy food, so much better than the junk variety. And not just for babies, y'all. Adults too. We don't take sleep seriously enough! Coming from someone who went from barely a few hours a night to a whole bunch, it greatly impacts your happiness.

Anyway, it feels like we're almost out of woods with that phase and all that not so good stuff was so worth it. Because Indiana is a rockstar baby and watching her learn and grow is my favorite. She is becoming the coolest cat. So fun. I might be biased, but gosh she is just so alert and aware of everything around her. I mean, I know she's just a baby... but she seems really smart! Ha, gah what a mom thing to say. But really, she wows us daily. She's turning out to be just the badass we thought she'd be. Extra cute too.

As evidence, here's Indiana and some of her tricks:

Rolling over!

Sitting up, like a boss! So proud of that big headed little munchkin.

These updates are getting sooo long. Sorry not sorry. If you want even more baby spam, scroll on back in time. Here's the ever growing Twelve Months of Indiana.