5 Months

We can't believe it but Josh is five months old!  No doctors appointment this month so we don't have official stats but we believe Josh is now around 17.5 lbs.  He's still putting on lots of weight but now he's getting more active so we hope the weight gain will slow down.  This past month he rolled over from his back to his stomach for the first time.  Now he does it very quickly and almost every time we put him down.  He is also rolling multiple times so the days of us putting Josh down and him still being where we left him are over.  He has also been scooching around with his arms, and looking like he wants to crawl. He's playing with toys much more and able to reach and grab for them.  His scooching allows him to get some of his toys he used to not be able to reach.

We were worried Josh would have a four month sleep regression but so far it hasn't been an issue.  We are now consistently putting him to bed at 7:30 and he will sleep until at least 5am (sometimes as late as 7!).   He seems to have an alarm hidden somewhere in his room to wake him each morning even when he does get to sleep a bit later.

Aside from constant drooling and chewing on everything, we haven't seen any real signs of teething but we are keeping an eye out.

At our four month appointment the doctor recommended a new body lotion to help with his eczema which has improved it greatly. For those interested it is Curel Itch-Defense with ceremide. It is not completely gone but it is getting much better.

On Friday we gave Josh solid foods for the first time (the term solid is very relative here)!  We gave him rice cereal mixed with breastmilk which formed a slightly thicker substance.  Josh didn't seem to mind the taste of it but he didn't get the idea that he needed to swallow the food.  He was very excited about the spoon and kept grabbing it and pulling it to his mouth. He got lots of food in his mouth and even more on his face.  We are going to try again and see how it goes.

Josh continues to be smiley and playful, always happy to get attention.  We can't wait to see what this next month of his life brings us!

Yummy!

Enjoying the spoon more than the food

Beware electronics near Josh!

Back to work

Sorry for the blog silence this week, but both Julian and I are back to work full time now. We hired a college student to nanny for us for the summer so that I can finish my thesis. We decided to go with a more "temporary" child care solution while I decide what I want to do next with my career. She has worked a few days a week the past few weeks, but this was the first full week for us all. So far things are going far better than I had feared! I worked from home the first week to make sure the transition went smoothly. Josh was very difficult about taking a bottle at first, but has finally adjusted nicely. It has been more difficult than I realized to find childcare in our area, so I'm glad this seems to be working out. For now Julian has been going into work early, while I wait for the nanny to arrive. Then Julian is home by 4:30, and I get home a bit later. I am also trying to work from home or the library when I can, so that I don't have to waste 2 hrs commuting. It has certainly been tough for me to leave him each day, but this is all the more motivation to finish my thesis quickly :-)

Back in the swing of things

Margaret's cousin gave us a baby swing when they moved away from Maryland and it has been a necessity.  Josh sleeps great at night but he has not been the best at napping except in his swing.  He will not nap more than 40 minutes in his crib but he will go 1-2 hours in the swing.

Then this past Monday the unthinkable happened.  We put Josh in the swing and it wouldn't start.  I had just replaced the batteries so I knew that was not the problem and I couldn't hear anything from the motor so I knew we were in trouble.

My first instinct was to run to the store and buy a new one but we decided against that.  We've been getting worried that Josh will get too big for his swing and we don't have the swing available when we travel.  A new swing would cost $150-200 and Josh is about to outgrow them anyway.

Mark and Ellie were already coming over so Mark and I took the swing apart to diagnose the problem.  As I expected, the problem seemed to be with the motor.  We got the model number and I found a website that sold the motor for only $2 (plus shipping) so I immediately ordered it.

Unfortunately this still meant we had to go several days without the swing.  Our nanny who started a few weeks ago (more about her in a post coming soon) would have to deal with Josh and no swing.  I was very concerned about this but the nanny survived and said Josh did nap in the pack-and-play.  She also took him on several walks during the week to get him to nap.

Yesterday the new motor arrived and Margaret and I installed it and put the swing back together (no small feat considering it had 5 different sizes of screws).  Amazingly the swing worked and we are back in business.  Josh took a 1.5 hour nap in the swing today and we all appreciate its return.  We do still need to get Josh to nap better outside of the swing but it is good to have it back.

Very upset about the swing!

Despite what the picture looks like, I am actually helping

Putting Humpty Dumpty back together

Happy to back in the swing

First time in the swing, 6 days old

A few more pictures :-)

We'll try and post more content later in the week...but for now, some more cute pictures from our photo shoot with Emily Rose Portraits :-)

Rollin' with the homies

We have been waiting patiently for Josh to roll from back to front. He did front to back a month ago, and keeps looking close but won't quite go the whole way around. Well today I came in to get him up and found this:

Julian and I are a little sad we missed the first time, but we will have to get used to that. And the second (and sixth) time were still petty exciting :-)

We did finally get a video of Josh rolling over from later in the day.

PS - can you guess what episode we were watching?

Professional Pictures!

We decided to get some professional portraits done so that we would have some good pictures of Josh as a baby. I went to grade school with Emily (she was in Ellie's grade) who has done portraits for lots of my facebook friends. A friend of mine let me know that she would be in town to do photo shoots in Maryland (she is normally based in Florida), so we decided to do a photo shoot. Josh has had a lot of skin and behavior problems so I had been nervous about booking in advance. Fortunately Emily was able to fit us in with late notice. She did a great job! You can't even tell that Josh spent most of the time screaming :-P I would highly recommend Emily Rose Portraits to anyone looking to do photos :-) Her facebook page has updates about when she will be in the Maryland area. Here are a few of her great pictures:

She even made his unhappy face look great!

Faces of Josh 4 months

I put together another faces of Josh video.  This one goes through his first four months.