Why, because not five minutes before, she rolled over from her front to her back all by herself. And then fifteen minutes after the photo, she decided it would be a good day to start sitting up on her own, too. No pictures or video of that; I was too busy having a quiet conniption behind her. She was shaky, but she reached for toys with zero concern, even when she started listing. Then she discovered her feet (finally), and fell over trying to pick the right one up.

It’s been a busy week on the developmental front.

We started solids, as noted in the last Owlet update. Rice cereal is the best thing ever, and she eats two tablespoons for lunch and supper, along with a dessert or side of some kind. We tried the avocado, but poor avocado; its crime was that it was not rice cereal. She was very definite about not liking it at this point, so I’ll try again later. Last Monday I gave her a tablespoon of banana “pudding” (which is a fancy name for mashed banana thinned with a bit of boiled and cooled water) and that was much better. She’s been wolfing that down quite happily after her rice. A couple of days ago she finished off the banana I’d bought so I steamed a couple of slices of sweet potato for her. She didn’t think much of it mashed, but chomped away at it when I held a whole slice for her. We can’t mash carrots enough and she won’t take a whole steamed baby carrot, but applesauce is another hit. I’m going to pick up one of the mesh-nets-on-a-handle (LATER: aha, they’re called teething feeders) that someone brilliant invented for babies, so I can put steamed chunks of stuff in there and let her hold it herself. And this week I’ll try a different cereal, too, so it’s not all rice all the time. I’m sure she’d be happy with nothing but rice, but for my peace of mind variety is good.

I figured eating at the table would be a social thing for her, but she’s become quite vocal and adamant about the actual consumption part of it. When we get her in the high chair to sit at table with us, if food does not appear within what she considers an acceptable length of time she gets very squawky, even if I’ve nursed her beforehand. She loves the experience. She holds her hands out toward the spoon and bowl and quivers. She grabs the hand of whoever is feeding her and pulls it towards her open mouth, guiding the spoon in. I tried giving her a spoon of her own to distract her, but she enthusiastically jabs it at her face and came close to gouging her eye a few times, so I stopped that. When the food is all gone she gets quite upset. I’d give her more, but she’s already eating quite a bit and she needs the room for milk. She grabs at anything people eat, and does the same with glasses and mugs. I can’t eat my own meals while nursing her any more, because she constantly pops off and tries to snatch whatever I’ve got. (She managed to throw her hand up and behind her to curl around the rim of the bowl I was holding and land her fingers right in my oatmeal the other day, splat. She kept nursing through the whole thing; didn’t miss a beat.)

For what it’s worth, there has been no difference in her sleeping habits since she started wolfing down cereal and bananas. And this is after her solid meal, nursing for twenty to thirty minutes, and then taking a three-ounce bottle of expressed milk, which is one of her major sleep cues. She still has all-too-brief naps (it’s looking like four thirty-minute naps these days, which is rather problematic for me and accomplishing the stuff I need to do without her, like pumping), and she still wakes up three or more times at night, settling really badly after the last one around four AM (in other words, not really going back to sleep but complaining and whining a lot interspersed with nursing and drowsing).

The few clothes from the 6-9 month box that I pulled have mostly been put back. Yesterday I sorted through the 9-12 months box for onesies and pants that fit. We’ve given up on sleepers and are going solely with two-piece pyjamas now, because the sleeper legs are either too short, or the torso doesn’t fit from shoulder to crotch over the cloth diaper. The good thing is a couple of people gave us two-piece jammies in a 12-month size, and I found a set among the boy’s old clothes, too, so we’re good. There was a nightgown in a box someone passed along to us as well.

This baby is going to slow down, though, thank goodness. Breastfed babies gain approximately one to two pounds a month for the first six months, on average doubling their birth weight by five or six months, so she’s right on track for that, and then a pound a month between six and twelve months, generally tripling their birth weight by one year old. Lengthwise, they grow 1.5 to 2.5 cm per month between birth and six months, then about 1 cm a month between six months and a year. I suspect Owlet has a stretching growth spurt coming up, though, as that’s kind of what happens after babies chub up as she has.

This is the post I’ve been trying to publish for two weeks now. I’ve been adding things to it, so I’m just calling it her five-month post, as she officially hits that age in four days anyway.

Owlet has outgrown the Moses basket. I retired it the day after Christmas, taking it out of the crib and laying her cushy blanket there instead. She really should have been out of it before, as she was just barely fitting in it for her naps, but she looked so cosy.

Important milestone in our house: Owlet turned her first book pages this past month! And it was the Squishy Turtle cloth book that Sparky loved and first turned, too.

Big development: I actually managed to get out of bed after putting her down to sleep for the night, halfway through December. Her habit was to wake up and scream when I crept out of bed, so I was effectively stuck there with her from about seven at night till seven in the morning, even once we began using the sidecar crib; she’s a really light sleeper. This has stuck HRH with all the house and family-related stuff at night. But one night I managed to slip away, and for the first time in months I had time to myself in the evening. Of course, I discovered that the sound of feet on the stairs woke her up, so for a week I was stuck in the basement at night… but at least I was out of the bedroom! We rearranged the bedroom so her mini crib wasn’t right against the wall under the stairs, and she doesn’t react as much to the feet on the staircase any more. We’ve come a long way from the wee birdie who would only sleep in someone’s arms, and we’ve worked really hard for this.

Her lower incisors are bothering her. We can feel them right under the gum, but that’s no guarantee that they’ll will break through any time soon. We have the red cheeks indicative of increased blood flow off and on, and the chewing of fingers at that spot happening.

She rolled from her back to her front on the bed halfway through December! But then she started to cry in frustration because her arm was stuck under her. It was partially a result of how soft the bed was, and therefore somewhat of a surprise to her. She’s come close to rolling over on the floor, but again, her arm was in the way, stopping her. The other morning she managed to balance in the tripod sitting position for a few moments before she started slumping a bit too far forward. In the bath, when HRH holds her in the deep water, she often makes froggy-style kicks with her legs.

She has mastered holding her soother, putting it in and taking it out of her mouth. In fact, she has taken it out and offered it to HRH, who has thanked her nicely but passed on the experience. She smiled and put it back in her own mouth.

She’s in 6-month size clothes. I have no idea how that happened. She seems to have jumped over most of her 3-6 month stuff somehow. I don’t know; maybe the 0-3 months clothes we had were on the large side and the 6-month stuff is on the small side? I know the cloth diapers add a bit of bulk, but honestly. It’s mostly the length that’s the issue. And I tried to put a pair of 0-6 month Mary Jane shoes on her for the first time at Christmas and was frustrated to discover that they didn’t fit her feet at all.

She can say something that sounds very much like hi (or, rather, “Ha-ai!”), which is what we say to her all the time, and she has started sporadically returning waves. We have achieved big, sloppy, open-mouth baby kisses on a cheek, too, and it’s fun to exchange them slowly and carefully for about five minutes at a time.

The poor wee thing is currently in the throes of her first awful cold/flu thing, and she’s miserable. She was her usual cheerful self through the first seven days when it was a head cold, but yesterday it moved down into her chest and now she’s a sad, wheezy, hoarse baby who sounds just pitiful when she cries. She’s taking two naps morning and afternoon, one in her crib, one on someone (usually me), and clinging a lot.

She ate her first solid food between Christmas and New Year’s. She was on my lap, whacking around with her hands while I ate breakfast, and she grabbed a piece of pancake and brought it to her mouth, where she eagerly gummed it. It started falling apart quite soon afterwards, so I had to kind of cup it in my hand for her while she went to town on it. (This photo is an iPhone shot taken by Sparky.)

Something not as pleasant that happened this past month was both of us received some backhanded (and also some pretty direct) comments regarding not keeping up with stuff involving other people. I’m pretty darn annoyed that people are demanding more time and energy from us than we can supply when they know perfectly well that we have a baby in the house on top of the regular stuff that exhausts us, especially when everyone has been warned that we’d be operating at sub-efficient levels for at least six months. For us, the order of energy to commitments has always been family, home, self, then everything else if there’s energy or money left over. The people making remarks are in different life situations, so their context is different, but it doesn’t mitigate the pique. At least we’re grateful that most people with families and houses to take care of understand where we’re coming from.