5 months old

As of this past weekend, Theo is 5 months old! Wow! Need I mention again how quickly time is passing?? Probably not bc everyone who reads this is also a mom or at least pregnant, haha :)

Look how much he has grown!

1 week old:

5 months old:

He even puts his arm around Totoro now :) How cute!

The past couple of weeks Theo has been showing off some new skills. For one, he is just on the verge of rolling from his back to his tummy now.. he must know he is close, too, bc he keeps trying and getting stuck half-turned-over with one poor little arm still squashed underneath him. He's even taken to sleeping on his side.

He will probably figure it out any day now. As a result of this I am having to be much more careful about when and where I leave him "just for a second" to do something else. Today I caught him by his leg as he rolled himself right off the couch. I was even sitting on the couch next to him - I just turned my head for a minute to look at my laptop on my other side. Thank goodness I did catch him before his sweet little head hit our hard wood floors.. I am officially on high alert for future instances of this trick.

He has also been showing us how much stronger he is getting!! He can push himself up so high and turn his little head around so easily now! I know those are little things, but it feels like just yesterday that his head was always just bobbling around and he would get tired on his tummy so quickly. Now he looks like a pro :)

And finally he's been impressing us with his hand-eye coordination. I wish I had a picture of him with his new little buddy that I bought for him.. a little stuffed whale. They are truly buddies. Again it seems like just yesterday that Theo barely noticed toys at all or would only swat at them with mild interest.. now he is searching for toys, staring at them, grabbing them with both hands, manipulating them, and of course putting every single thing in his mouth!

It's amazing how fast it all happens!!!!!!

a new trick

Two nights in a row now, Theo has perplexed Trent and I with his new trick. (I will help you visualize with a picture from his nursery. The picture is taken from the door to his room.)



When I put him in crib around 9 o'clock (on his back), his head is toward the far side of the room where his comforter is hung, and his feet are closest to the door. But when I come in to get him in the morning, he is still on his back, but he has somehow managed to completely turn around. His head is now closest to the door, and his feet are facing his comforter. What the heck?

At what point during the night does he do it? How does he have enough room in the crib width-wise to turn around? And furthermore, how does he do it without waking us up? I would expect a feat of this magnitude to be a very loud process for Theo, with yelling and grunting galore. Yet he manages to turn himself so quietly that we have no idea. Until we come in in the morning and there he is grinning at us from the wrong end of the crib.

rollin, rollin, rollin

Theo has started rolling! Well really he did it for the first time a couple weeks ago, but now he's done it quite a few times. Still most of the time he just does a little half push up when he's on his tummy and doesn't even try to roll, but occasionally when he's in the mood..

He hasn't rolled from his back to his tummy yet, although he's starting to look like he might possibly be trying to sometimes.

He's pretty big for his age, in case you can't tell. People like to tell me looks very "healthy." He's wearing mostly 9 month clothes which blows my mind.

I have been experimenting with my new camera, since I have such an adorable subject (that would be Theo) and at the moment I have access to a beautiful backdrop (the amazing fall leaves). It's fun, and I just wish I had more time to play with it.

I have thought a lot about making Christmas cards, but I don't really feel like it. It seems like we just sent out a million birth announcements for Theo. Even though it was months ago, it doesn't feel like it. So I don't feel like going through that whole process again. We'll just have to do that next year.

easier/harder

I saw this on another blog one time and thought it was interesting. Things that are easier/harder than I expected about being a mom...




Easier

• Childbirth: I don't know any women who would use the word easy in their description of childbirth, but I was scared to the point of nausea at the idea of the whole thing. I couldn't even read the chapters in my pregnancy books about it bc it freaked me out so much. So the fact that I survived, means it was easier than I expected. I would even go so far as to say that I had a really good experience. But everyone told me that as soon as I saw the baby I would forget all about the pain, which I didn't find to be true. I remember the pain clearly and am not looking forward to the next time around.
• Lack of sleep: Not that it's easy by any means, but it really wasn't as hard as I expected. I have always been one who needs my 8 full, uninterrupted hours of sleep in order to have a good day, but I learned rather quickly to function without them. God just gives new moms the strength to survive I guess. But I must admit that now that Theo is sleeping through the night, I am really enjoying my 8 hours again :)
• Tolerating Messes: I remember seeing my friends with kids always being covered in bodily fluids and wondering how they could stand not to change clothes as soon as their kid puked (or worse) on them! But now I understand. My shirt is not dirty enough to change unless it's really dirty! Because it's like, what's the point? If I change shirts every time Theo makes a mess then I will run out of clothes really fast! And I think it's true: when it's your kid's bodily fluids, it's just not as bad.
• Staying at Home: I guess I didn't expect this to be hard exactly since I've never been one who really wanted a career or anything, but I did wonder if I would be bored or feel lonely or caged in. But so far I really don't. I love being home with Theo and us just doing our own thing. I'm sure there will be times when I crave adult interaction, but so far I'm enjoying the change of pace. Theo is my biggest fan, and who doesn't want to hang out with someone who adores you all day?

Harder

• Recovering from Childbirth: Who knew that after the "hard" part of birthing the baby was over that you're still going to feel so crappy for so long? I remember the morning after Theo was born that my legs were still shaking. It took weeks for me to feel normal. It even took weeks for all the broken blood vessels on my face to go away. I guess I thought recovery was only hard if you had a C-section, but no.
• Nursing: It was news to me that babies have to learn to breastfeed. I always just assumed that babies were born knowing just what to do. NOT the case! Really I am glad that I was determined to breastfeed Theo bc if I had been ambivalent about it, I think I would have quit. It was so hard at first! Especially since Theo was a little premature and sooo sleepy, it was just really frustrating at first. But after about 6 weeks it got soooo much easier, and now I'm so happy I stuck with it.
• Laundry: Omgosh does Theo go through clothes! Lately we are going through bibs almost as frequently as diapers! And don't even get me started on burp rags! Truly, you can never have enough burp rags. Luckily Theo's clothes are small so even when there are lots of them, it only takes one load of laundry. But still I am amazed at how quickly his hamper fills up. Babies are MESSY little creatures!
• Keeping a Clean House: Speaking of messy.. everything is messy these days. I really do like everything in it's place all the time. I used to not go to bed at night until I had straightened everything in every room so that I could wake up to a clean house. Now I just don't have time. Especially with the move, it's hard to find the time to do everything that needs to be done. I keep telling myself that as soon as we're fully unpacked I will be able to keep things neat again.. right..
• Going Anywhere: Ahh leaving the house is just not as easy as it once was. I imagined that I would just tuck Theo into his sling and be out and about whenever I needed to be, but it's not as easy as I imagined at all. It pretty much wears me out to even run one errand with Theo in tow. Everything is more complicated and takes much longer.

So that's my list. Some things have been easier, others harder. But overall I must say that I love being Theo's mom more than I dreamed possible and it's worth all the challenges and adjustments that it brings.

playing catch up

Yeah, I know I am not doing so great at keeping this up. What can I say, we've had a lot going on :) Allow me to catch you up on the past 2 months...

Theo is more than 3 months old now! Time has really flown. It's AMAZING how much he's changed already! Just look at the difference in these 2 pictures. In the first he is less than a week old; in the second he is 3 months.


I have to admit that I already miss his precious little "newborn-ness", but it's also soooo cool seeing his personality develop! It's like all of a sudden in the past 2 weeks he has just woken up and is SO much more aware of the world! And of us, for that matter. All of a sudden he interacts with us so much more! It's really fun :)

Theo looooves to talk!
He has discovered his thumb!

When Trent does this, Theo laughs EVERY TIME!

Theo LOVES the animals on his bouncy seat! He also loves the animals on his crib bumpers - I'll have to get a video of that eventually!

Anyway in other news, we moved to Chicago! We're in our apartment and almost done setting up. Whenever it starts looking decent, I'll post some pictures. Theo enjoyed his first plane ride on our way here:

And he was an absolute ANGEL while we moved in!

AND the greatest news of all...

He is sleeping through the night :)