A Heart for Simple: Claire: 5 months

Age: 5 months

Height: 26.5 inches

Weight: 18 pounds 4 ounce

Milestones: She's rolling front to back & back to front on her own. But she seems to only want to roll towards her left side. She's laughing good belly laughs now. And she's gotten really good with her hand eye coordination. She reaches, grabs, and pulls things straight into her mouth.

Sleep: No real changes here with nighttime. She still nurses a time or two at night and sleeps until 9-10. As for naps, she's now pretty easy to put down. I can put her in her crib awake and she "sings" herself to sleep. I love listening to her on the monitor. It's like she's saying "aaaaaa" over and over, finds her finger(s), and falls asleep.

Worst Moment: I can't really think of bad moments. We took 2 road trips this month and while she did better than the last time, 4 hours in the car is tough when she gets hungry. There was one day that I forgot to pack her bottles when she went to the sitters house. The babysitter used her own bottles and apparently Claire prefers ours b/c she refused to drink. She had about 3.5 oz of milk the whole day while I was at work. Luckily, I have a great sitter who brought her to me and I nursed her in the parking lot. When Matt got home with her, she chugged 10 oz. :)

Health: No issues here. She's a healthy girl.

Eating: She eats about every 3 hours now. Sometimes she'll go longer if we're out and about and she's distracted. Sometimes she'll eat sooner. But on average, about every 3 hours during the day. I think she takes up to 5ish oz at a time from the bottle when I'm at work. I reintroduced gluten and didn't notice any change. Then when we spent 2 consecutive weekends out of town, I had dairy. The first weekend it happened, she spit up so much and her eczema flared up so I cut it out again. The next weekend while out of town, I had dairy again, noticed milder symptoms and cut back. I haven't completely cut it out again but she seems fine. I'm thinking her system is probably mature enough to handle it now... or it was just all coincidence. But Matt & I both have tried to limit our consumption of diary for our own health reasons.

Teeth: Same story here. TONS of drool and chewing on anything and everything but still no teeth. She really likes chewing on adult fingers and still enjoys Sophie the giraffe teether.

Likes: She likes to play, sing, and "talk". She wants to reach for everything. She's obsessed with Nix and could watch her for hours. She really enjoys going for walks. I put her in the stroller and we could walk all over the state of Texas and she'd be happy. She's very observant these days and just looks at everything passing by. She likes when we sing fun songs. I do a lot of Sunday school type songs, ABC's, and nursery rhymes. She likes "Itsy Bitsy Spider" with the hand motions. And.. confession time.. I go a little over board and when I sing the ABC's to her, I sign it too.. sometimes with both hands... and sometimes I sing it in French also. She definitely prefers her ABC's in french. Way more fun when you get to "x, y, z!"

Dislikes: Putting her arms through sleeves after her bath. She really hates that right now. It's not a problem any other time and she's always loved her changing table but those sleeves at night.. they get her.

Other happenings:

This was a busy few weeks for us. We had our first (of what we hope to be an annual) crawfish boil.

I wanted to make all 3 of us shirts but I only got as far a making one for Claire. Maybe next year :)

The next day she got Easter baskets from her grandparents

Then we went to opening day - Claire's first baseball game. I made her an outfit for that too :)

She was quite the star. People were taking pictures of her (kind of creepy) and "ooo-ing" and "ahh-ing" about how cute she was. I agree. Cutest baseball fan there!
She loved being in the carrier looking around at everyone and everything. She was thrilled when she was the big huge TV screen in outfield. Then, one the stadium was packed, and the game started, it got REALLY loud. The roof was closed so that made it worse. She'd never really been around that loud of noise before. It was the sudden bursts of cheering that would startle her and she'd cry for a few seconds, get better, then another burst of cheers. Luckily, the ballpark has a "mothering room". I took her there to feed her. There was a couch with the game on TV and it was quiet. We actually ended up staying in there most of the game and I met several other moms.

The next weekend we drove to Dallas for my little cousins wedding shower and to visit Matt's family. Then the following weekend, we drove to Louisiana to see my family. Some of them had not met Claire yet so we all got together at my dad's house to shower her off and eat!