Jed and Heather: Flashback to Kara at 5 months

This was written way back in March 2015, but I never published it. Probably because of pictures. Pictures are my least favorite part of blogging ha ha. However, it's one of my favorite things to look back on, so I know I must do it. I'll add in some pictures for this though.

Now we have had our little Kara for almost 5 months. She is such a sweet baby! From the start, she does not get fussy often. She really only cries when hungry or tired. Then once in a while we won't know what she wants and don't know what to do because we rarely have to deal with fussiness! This week we have had a lot more crying and we are thinking some teeth may be coming in. She definitely acts like she's teething. (Hindsight--she wasn't teething. First tooth came at 12 months!)

The first week of her life, I actually worried about how much she slept and how little she ate. She slept pretty much all the time, and fell asleep eating or directly after eating. After the first week, I felt like she had her day and night switched. She would eat and then be up for another hour or two at night. It was awful! But that changed quickly enough.

This time around we are using the schedule from Babywise to guide us, and I simply love it. With Chris the schedule was sleep, play, eat, sleep, etc. With Kara it is eat, play, sleep, eat, etc... And it is so much better! She doesn't depend on nursing to fall asleep (which Chris did and that made life pretty difficult when I left him with Jed) which is awesome.

Unlike with Chris, we try to put her down often. Of course, being the second child I need to put her down more often than when there was only one child. With Chris, he rarely had tummy time and if I wasn't holding him, he was in his bouncer. With Kara we try to put her down on our jungle play mat instead of the bouncer and I can definitely see the difference between how quickly Kara has gained muscles and how quickly Chris did. At almost five months, she can hold her head up easily on her tummy, and can even look up at people standing while on her tummy. She's a great supported sitter and I expect her to probably be sitting up around six months.

Kara eats like a champ. It was amazing how much easier it was to nurse this second time around. I knew what was doing, and Kara was born later in the pregnancy than Chris and weighed much more than he did at birth. All these factors helped us catch on quicker. She has been pretty much exclusively breastfed, but has eaten from a bottle and eaten formula often enough. Clearly she is growing well. From the start she has been 98th percentile for weight and she stays consistent with that (currently 19 lbs 7 ounces). Her doctor was shocked that she gained a pound from birth to two weeks. I kind of am sad I didn't get the small baby phase for very long but I love her chunkiness and I love her rolls. Her chubs have meant that she is a very cuddly baby and we love that. We have fed her oatmeal once, which she did not like, and haven't since. Since she clearly doesn't need the solids for extra nutrition, and since breastfeeding is so much easier than feeing her solids, we will stick with that for now.

It was so lovely when she started smiling. Now she loves to laugh which is so fun! She laughs most often at Chris. She thinks he is hilarious and I love to see then interact so positively. He has been a wonderfully big brother. Never has he taken out any jealousy or frustration on her by hitting. He loves to give her kisses and talk baby talk with her. They are just too cute together.

I have loved seeing Jed interact with her this time around. It's no secret we both really wanted a girl, and we both love having a girl. She's a daddy's girl, too. I didn't think we would see it this young but she lights up when she sees him. She loves to be held by him and he loves to hold her.

We will end with some fun pictures from Kara 5 months and younger!