Connor: Five Months!

This kid. He just loves to smile--even in the middle of the night when we would much rather see a sleeping baby than a smiling one. Good thing he's darn cute

Height/Weight: According to our scale at home, Connor has packed on nearly two pounds since his four-month well visit, putting him close to or just over seventeen pounds. I'll be curious to see next month whether that is accurate or not, because neither of his brothers hit seventeen pounds until six months (and that would finally justify my statements that he seems bigger than his brothers). And he's grown since four months, because we've had to adjust the height on his exersaucer, although I won't even attempt to gander what his height actually is.

Wearing: Remember my mentioning in his four month post that I was needing to pull out his nine-month clothes and retire his six-month clothes? Yeah, well, I finally did that--and procrastination got the best of me. Some of it was already too small. Granted, some of his fleece pajamas are still a little big, so there's the possibility that some items have just shrunk more than others (which would also explain why he's fitting into this size sooner than his brothers), but I guess we'll have more definite stats for comparison after his six-month well-visit. And he's still going strong in size three diapers.

Eating: Well, after dealing with a cold myself the end of December/early January, it's only natural that I passed it on to Connor. Thankfully, he handled the cold pretty well, although he wanted to nurse pretty constantly while he had it, which was exhausting and made it even harder for me to completely kick the cold. He's also started to get distracted while nursing, and even though I've taken to shutting myself in the nursery, I'm pretty sure he can hear his brothers drop a Lego in the kitchen and that's all it takes for him to rip his head away from my breast. So that's fun. He generally eats every two to three hours during the day, and at night we try to make him wait at least three hours between feedings, although he's usually up more often than that (also fun. Not).

Sleep: Ever heard of the four-month sleep regression? Yeah. Waking up at four in the morning with a baby who is wanting to play is not my idea of a good time. He's waking up more than he did as a newborn--and is more difficult to get back to sleep--which is not cool. I honestly can't remember the last time he gave us a stretch of sleep longer than four hours. His naps are all over the place too; we're trying to get him in his crib as much as we can, but I think the longest he's ever napped there is thirty minutes. Maybe. Occasionally he'll give us a longer stretch if we move him to his swing, but not always. I keep thinking that we just need to find this good groove of solid daytime nursing sessions (see above distraction issues caused by older brothers) and consistent naps (pretty much impossible unless I keep the older two housebound, which would drive me crazy as much as them) and then he'll sleep better at night, but I doubt we'll ever get a chance to figure that out. Instead, we'll have to just keep powering through on mediocre sleep and hope that he eventually figures out how to be happy with whatever feeding and sleeping arrangements he gets #thirdchildlife

New Stuff: Early in February, he figured out how to roll from his back to his tummy, and ever since that has been his go-to position when he's on the ground. He's still fully capable of rolling from tummy to his back, but he is definitely more content on his tummy--although I imagine that contentedness will be short-lived, because I think he is starting to get the concept of crawling but just can't execute it yet, and that's probably going to frustrate him sooner than later. He can also sit independently for a handful of seconds, but I certainly wouldn't call him a "sitter" yet. An important milestone (maybe moreso for Grandma and Grandpa than him, but whatever) is that he--and the older two--survived the first full day of being watched by my parents while I subbed (four days after we transitioned Garrett to underwear, no less!). We've also started calling him Mr. Sticky Fingers because he is grabbing for EVERYTHING, which means you really have to be on your A game if you are holding him or he might just try to lunge out of your arms. He especially seems interested in trying to grab anything we may be eating, but (much to his disappointment, I'm sure) he has to wait another month to start solid foods. These last two things aren't exactly new, but just things I don't want to forget. Connor just loves patty-cake, and if you play it with him on your lap you are almost guaranteed to get belly laughs out of him. The other good way to get him to belly laugh? Get his brothers to do something goofy. He thinks William and Garrett are just hilarious, and they think that getting him to laugh is pretty awesome. Which generally makes the whole house pretty happy. It does seem like he has a slight preference for William's company, but we suspect that is just because Garrett is not as good as respecting Connor's personal space, so Connor tends to be a little more wary when Garrett is close. I suspect that when William is out of the house this fall at kindergarten (say what?!? Not possible) Connor will be perfectly content to have Garrett around--because honestly, he's a pretty chill and easy to please kid (expect when I refuse to feed him six times in the middle of the night. Then he gets angry. But that'll pass, right? Right?!?)