This last weekend was Helen Jeanette’s 5 month birthday. The day after we had some people over for Chris’s 26th birthday including 2 babies younger then Helen Jeanette and weighing around 9-10 pounds. Helen Jeanette looked huge compared to them and it was so hard to believe that it’s only been a few months since she was that size, we can hardly remember her being that tiny.

So what is going on in a 5 month old’s world? We don’t have any weight/height statistics because she only goes to the doctor every other month these days, but here are a couple things going on.

*She’s sitting! If we sit her up she can hold herself pretty steady and remain upright while she grabs at and plays with toys.

*She’s really refining her grabbing skills and can confidently reach for and grab items. She’s started watching her hands again and I think she’s discovering her fingers because she’s mostly making pinching motions when she does this.

*Her sleep is still not great, and we’re thinking fondly back to the days when she was sleeping through the night. These days there are usually 2 night wakings where she’s hungry, eats, and goes right back to sleep. I’ve considered letting her cry but when she eats it’s clear that she was hungry so for now I’m just hoping that introducing solids at 6 months will help her sleep through again.

*She loves reading books and wants to grab, grab, grab whatever we’re reading to her.

*She can play quietly for long periods of time and sometimes we just put her stuffed doggy in the crib and let her play for 10-20 minutes.

*She’s started squirming so much in her crib that the back of her head is a tangled, frizzy, bird’s nest. She’s also getting a lot more hair, although the length isn’t changing much.

*She’s super social and lights up when people come to visit her in the nursery at work.

*It’s becoming much more difficult to take her pictures in the rocker, since she now wants to play with the toys instead of sweetly sitting there stationary.