Another thing I'm sad about. My wonderfully fantastic $500 digital SLR camera that I got for my birthday four years ago is starting to malfunction. Something is wrong with the shutter release, and all the pictures are dark. It worked just long enough for me to get Roman's 4 month pictures taken for my last post and then gave me its "I. Just. Can't. Go. On." speech. So starting this month (or, well, last month) I'm having to use my phone to take Roman's monthly pictures, and they just aren't the same quality.
Oh well, life goes on... The chunky monster is still growing and changing whether I write it all down or not. I do keep up with his little developments throughout the month. It just takes me a while to sit and put them all in a readable format. So without further ado, here
- He started trying to roll over from his back to his stomach at the beginning of the month and then accomplished that feat at about 20 weeks, which of course disrupted his sleep and made him angry when he would wake up. Apparently, this is why I should've been doing tummy time all along. Since I never really made him do it at all, it took him FOREVER (ok, maybe more like 2 weeks) to get used to being on his belly. I love that they are compelled to roll themselves over even though they absolutely hate it and don't want to be in that position. They just have no control over their little bodies, which is irritating even to me, so I'm sure it is super frustrating to them.
- He rolled from his stomach to his back a couple of times, but couldn't really get the hang of it. I practiced with him a lot during his wake time and made him just roll back and forth until his eyeballs started looking a little dizzy (not really), and I think that helped him develop some muscle memory for it.
- Around about week 18, he started taking a long time to fall asleep; he would just lie in the crib talking to himself. One day during a nap he laid in there quietly chatting and cooing and babbling for an hour and 20 minutes. I just kept waiting and waiting for him to drift off, but he was on a roll, so finally I moved him to his swing and he instantly fell asleep. This seems to happen every few weeks or so, and I'm thinking it's probably a developmental thing because it seems he'll learn how to make certain new sounds or noises, and it's like he keeps himself awake practicing them.
- We stopped putting him in the woombie at 19 weeks since he was starting to roll and since I realized from looking back at my posts that Brock was out of it by 18 weeks. He actually did great without it! I was so nervous because he had been sleeping well, and I just knew it was going to mess all that up, but I think it actually helped him because he wanted to self-soothe by sucking his fingers. Once he was able to put his fingers in his mouth, he started sleeping longer. By the third night, he slept from 8:00-7:00.
- His routine is much more inconsistent and erratic than Brock's was at this point. Brock was an amazing sleeper and by 5 months would take several 1.5-2 hour naps every day and would sleep 11 hours at night without any waking. Roman will take great naps some days and other days be fine on just a few short catnaps. Some nights he'll sleep straight from 8:00-7:00, and other nights he will wake up early around 5 or 6 a.m. like he's starving. I would say 4 out of 7 days usually have a regular, consistent pattern, but those other 3 days he usually throws me some kind of curveball. He is going to be the child that defies my OCD, Type A, schedule-oriented personality I guess.
- He kind of, sort of reached for me a little bit at 19 weeks while Blaine was holding him. Probably, if I'm honest, it was more just like he leaned toward me and his arm automatically lifted up, but it was more than he had done up to that point, so I clapped for him.
- After we dropped the woombie, he started using his fingers as a soothing instrument. He still hasn't enjoyed a paci at all and just won't take one, but he played around with some different fingers and then seemed to finally decide he liked a combination of his middle and ring finger the best. So it always looks like he's giving the "Rock on" sign when he's self-soothing (see picture below).
- He tries to do sit-ups when he's laying at any sort of incline, and he can pull himself forward some. He's nowhere near the point of getting into a sitting position though.
- We took the newborn sling out of his bathtub this month since he's sitting up a little better and steadier now.
- He started wearing size 3 diapers sometime that month, and 3-6 month clothes are a little snug on him, but he's not quite big enough for most of the 6-9 month sizes yet.
- At 20 weeks he started nursing for only about 5-7 minutes total, which made me nervous because I feel like that can't possibly be enough. According to my scientific research (translation: many Google searches), this can be normal at his age because they are more interested in what's going on around them, and some babies become a lot more efficient nursers at this stage. I remember Brock significantly decreasing his time too, but I didn't have my precise nursing timer apps back then (how much changes in 2 years) so I wasn't aware it was such a short amount of time, I think.
- I wanted to hold Roman off until closer to 6 months to start introducing solid foods, mostly because I'm lazy and didn't want to add that component into our daily routine. I introduced foods at about 17 weeks with Brock, but I was excited to do something new with him since he was a first-born, and it's old hat this time around. I did, however, let Roman try some oatmeal cereal at 20 weeks, and he loved it. I didn't start giving it to him consistently though, just a couple of experiences with it at the end of the month.
I think that's mostly all the developments for the fifth month. And here are the pictures. This first collage I loved because it shows the progression of him sitting (kind of) to falling over and lying down. He likes to wiggle around so much that he can't stay sitting up for very long.
