Monday, January 24, 2011

3 to 6 months old

In the last 3 months, Maya has made a lot of progress and grown quite a bit. She's now up to over twice her birth weight (now 15 lbs 1.5 oz, up from 7 lbs 6 oz at birth), and she's grown to 27 inches tall. She has her first tooth...and her second. She's getting around the living room very well and is on the verge of full fledged crawling. She got to celebrate her first Halloween (she was a butterfly) and go trick or treating with her cousins. She also had her first Thanksgiving and Christmas, and got plenty of new toys and clothes.

Just a few days after turning 3 months, Maya started rolling from her back to her belly. Soon after she became an expert at rolling and could roll both ways really well. We began finding her every morning laying in her crib on her stomach, so we had to stop using her sleep positioner and just let her be. Sleeping on her stomach became her preferred position, and she would instantly roll over as soon as we laid her down. At 4 months old she started sleeping on her tummy with her knees tucked in and her butt in the air.

At 3.5 months old, Maya discovered her feet and began grabbing them every time we changed her. A few weeks later she started sucking on her feet instead. About this time, Maya also discovered the fun of bouncing. I'd hold her in a standing position, and she would squat and then stand up like she's jumping. She's do this over and over as I bounced her and she giggled. We started putting her in her jumper so she could enjoy jumping on her own. However, we had to wrap a blanket around her (and still do today) because she was too small to fit in the seat.

At about 4 months old, Maya caught her first cold (which she must have got from me). Although she had lots of sneezing and a stuffy nose, it didn't seem to bother her all that much. We noticed a her two bottom front teeth about to break through at about 4.5 months old, and they actually came through just a few days before 5 months. She did really well with her teething so far, not really being cranky or fussy during the process.

At 5 months, she started sitting without support for brief periods (before she inevitably tipped to her side or leaned forward and folded herself in half). Now she's quite a bit better, sometimes sitting for much longer periods of time, but she still hasn't mastered it.

On new years day (just a little over 5 months old), she started to do her first deliberate crawling. I put a toy about a foot in front of her and she pulled herself to it. I moved it further away a few times and she continued moving towards it. It wasn't a full hands-and-knees crawl, but what several people have referred to as the army crawl. She swings both arms in front of her body and then drags herself forward, occasionally pulling her legs in (butt in the air) and using her feet to give a little extra push.

Soon after (about 5.5 months) she started getting up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. She does this a lot now, but she's not quite converted it into complete crawling. However, between her army crawls and rolling, she's gotten quite good at moving around the living room. She has a few areas she likes to go to play with things, and if you leave her for a while, she'll inevitably end up in one of those places. A few days ago she found her basket of toys and managed to pull/dump all of her toys out of it. Now that's one of her favorite places to go.

Just after turning 5 months old, we started feeding Maya her first baby foods. We started with carrots, then every 3 days followed with a new food: rice cereal, green beans, bananas, squash, applesauce, sweet potatoes, carrots again, peaches, and finally today apples & butternut squash. She seemed to do pretty well with her food right from the start. A few sour faces with the carrots and green beans, but she still ate it. Most everything else was fine. We did have one day with the carrots (second time around) where she stubbornly refused to open her mouth for anything after the first couple tastes. Otherwise, she's done good.

This weekend we started re-introducing her to formula. She's been drinking breast milk exclusively since she was 5 days old. Now we are starting to switch her back to formula for half her meals, and in a few weeks (once Christina is done pumping and all our frozen milk is used up) she'll be entirely on formula. We were curious how the switch would go, since breast milk is a bit sweeter than formula, but she really didn't show the slightest bit of difference from one to the other.

She's mostly continued sleeping through the night, with her typically waking up only once every couple of weeks. When she does wake up, it's usually just a diaper change and a feeding before she's back asleep. However, a few weeks ago, she woke up at 4:30 AM on a Sunday morning. After changing and feeding her, I tried to put her back to sleep several times but she was wide awake. I tried letting her lay in the crib to see if she'd get herself back to sleep, but no luck there. Finally a little before 5:30 I gave up and took her into the living room. I put her in her jumper to play, and she was happily jumping away. I tried to sleep on the couch while she did so, but didn't have much luck. Finally, shortly after 6AM, I noticed she had stopped making noises. When I looked at her, she had fallen asleep in her jumper, so I put her back in her crib and went back to bed (finally).



Showing off her first teeth












Her first bath with toys



Maya dressed up for Christmas





She learned how to get her toys









Green beans.....yuck




The above photos were just a few of my favorites from the past 3 months. You can see the rest of the photos in the following gallery:
http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/maya_3to6months

I ran out of time getting this together today, but I'll also get some more videos up in the next day or two.