Five Months

Wow--5 months already! Merek is such a great little guy. He is doing a bit better with rice cereal and will tolerate it. We didn't get on much of a schedule with our trip to California, but I'm trying to feed him some cereal each night. The other day the boys and I bought him some veggies and fruits at the grocery store. I think we'll start trying the veggies this week.

Our trip to CA was good. It took two days to drive down and two days to drive back. The kids did so well in the car that I'm pretty sure driving will be our mode of transportation for our trips to CA from now on, as long as we have the time to drive. Flying is a bit expensive for 6 tickets, plus renting a Suburban and car seats adds up as well.

It was so nice to get some CA sunshine. I think I really need to move there . . .

Back to the baby, we let him cry last night. He was asleep when I put him down at 9, then he woke up at 11 and I fed him then. He woke up again around 2am but I let him cry himself back to sleep. It really didn't last too long. The bad thing was that it woke up Krish and Bird so they came into my room. I got up and tucked them both back into bed. Merek then slept until 5am. I fed him again and then he slept until 7am. So I'm hoping as we keep working on this I can eliminate the 11pm feeding and then the 5am feeding, eventually.

Merek is grasping at things now and will hold them for a bit. Then he flings his arm and the object goes flying. He can sit up pretty well when assisted. He loves looking at himself in the mirror. In CA, I bathed him in the big tub. I laid him in the tub with just an inch of water. He LOVED splashing around. It is nice to have a baby that doesn't scream for each bath.

He is really good at making eye contact, as DH pointed out last night. Merek will stare at you and then crack a big smile. He is totally laughing out loud now--loves to be tickled (but just a few times at once), loves "trot trot to Boston", and when we play peek-a-boo.

Merek is still in 6-12 month clothes and wearing size 3 diapers. His hair is growing in pretty well now so he has spiky parts and the long parts from when he was born.

(I wrote the above last Friday 3/27 and am now just getting back to finishing it up).

We tried carrots with Merek on Friday. He tried them and didn't seem too interested in his rice cereal after that. But the next two days he wasn't interested in food again. Yesterday I tried some bananas, which he seemed to enjoy.

We are still letting him cry at night although I'm becoming quite the softie and going in to soothe him (i.e. feed him) if the crying lasts more that 20 minutes.