Almost 5 Months!

Cooper trying rice cereal.

In 9 days, Cooper will be 5 months old!  A few days after he turned 4 months, we decided to trial some rice cereal.  He kept thrusting his tongue out, so we decided to wait a little bit before trying it again.  This week, Cooper has been eating a few spoonfuls of rice cereal for 4 days now.  Some days he likes it better than others.  I think, it depends on the consistency.  If I make the cereal too thick, he tends to shy away from eating it and so I have been trying to make thinner.  So far, he has had no allergic reactions.  But boy, is it a mess!  Cooper likes to grab the spoon and thus, cereal flies all over the place...mostly on him and me.  He also likes to suck his thumb or fingers after taking a spoonful which then gets all over his face, up his nose and on his eyelids!!  I can't imagine what mess we'll make when he gets to try other foods.  For right now, we're sticking to rice cereal once a day and then make try some other solids in a few more weeks.  I bought a book on making homemade baby food and am excited to try a few recipes.

We are also trying to develop a sleep schedule.  I'm trying to get him to take a couple naps during the day and sleep longer (and earlier) at night.  So far, he has been sleeping 7-8 hours at night, maybe rousing once to eat; but then immediately goes back to sleep.  I guess that's typical for breastfed babies to wake up during the night to feed.  The hardest thing has been to get him to sleep earlier as well as to fall asleep.  He gets so fussy when he's tired and wants you to help him fall asleep.  But I'm trying not to help him, but have him learn self-soothing.  He was able to get himself to sleep for a nap today with crying (really hard!) for only four minutes!  So hopefully, we'll reach another goal tonight:  getting to bed early, at least by 8 p.m. as he's been getting to bed between 9-10 pm.  Usually, if we try to put him down earlier, he tends to wake up frequently. Hopefully, we'll get him to have healthy sleeping habits soon!!

One thing that makes me nervous about his sleep is he likes to roll over onto his tummy and sleep!!  But there's nothing we can do about that...I just check on him during naps a few times.  

Anyways, things are going great and we can't wait to spend the holidays with family.  Except my parents who will be in the Philippines for Cooper's first Thanksgiving!  Oh well, at least we have Christmas with both sets of grandparents.