Five months old

Dear Leo,

Today you are five months old (already!) Not a lot of major developments to report, by some subtle progressions have been made. You can now purposefully grasp things in your hands and pass them from hand to hand. You can take your pacifier out and put it in again with minimal difficultly. You do like to play with it, turning it this way and that in your hands, trying to chew on it from various angles, before plopping it in your mouth with a satisfied smack.

You are enjoying tummy time more and more and can really hold your whole chest up with your arms. You've almost figured out that turning over will be much easier from this position than from on your back, but you're not in any hurry to get there (mama is a bit relieved by this, she's not ready for the flipping-->crawling progression yet). If we sit you up you can stay up for about 30 seconds before you topple over, which you usually find to be great fun.

You've decided that if you can get out of taking a nap you will--since naps are for babies and you're a big boy. You'd rather play and be with mama and papa until you're so tired you can't see straight (doesn't affect your ability to whine about it though). You are doing pretty well at sleeping at night--we're experimenting with cutting down on the 10pm bottle to see if we can eliminate it all together. But you often still wake up one or two times, but if we put your pacifier back in you go right back to sleep. Why oh why does the loss of pacifier bother you some nights and not at all others?! I'd worry that we were spoiling you by putting it back in, but since you are able to sleep without it we know you have the ability to get yourself back to sleep.

You've discovered the joy of bathtime with ducky, and would like to stay and splash with him until the water is cold.

You tried rice cereal for the first time yesterday and did not like it at all thank you very much. Grandma Marge laughed when I recounted the story to her--apparently your mama was not too thrilled with rice cereal either. Well who could blame us, it's hardly cereal at all! But, eventually you will want more than formula, and when you do we'll be ready. More than ready actually, since you are still a champion spitter.

We've decided that you would medal in the baby olympics (or the Babylympics as papa calls them) if the categories were something like 'precision drooling' and 'volume spitting.' One night mama had to change her clothes twice after you decorated her profusely with formula. Hopefully the transition to solid food will at least be messy in a different way.

You have discovered the toy bugs hanging from
the handle of your car seat. You grab them and pull hard, examining them intently. You play with each of your toys intently, especially the ones that crinkle or rattle. You don't show any inclination to have a security toy/blanket yet--your stuffed lion is more fun to chew on than hug in your estimation, same thing goes for burp cloths. You also like to chew on mama and papa's fingers and our shoulders. And you like to examine and chew on your own hands. You haven't discovered your feet yet though.

Keep on doing what you are doing, we love you!

Mama (and Papa)