Nathan has become quite a popular baby, probably because he spends most of his time smiling! Here’s a quick update on his milestones at 5 months.

Growth

I just weighed Nathan a few nights ago, and he has doubled his birth weight (and then some), so I think we’re on a good trajectory for weight gain. My (very arbitrary) gauge for weight is the thickness of his thighs, and his are looking nice and chunky lately. He wears mostly 6 months size clothing these days.

Likes & Dislikes

Nathan’s favorite things these days include his thumbs and his feet. He has turned into a constant thumb sucker, which will be a tough habit to break in the future, but for now I’m content to let him soothe himself that way. He also loves sucking on his toes and gets quite perturbed when he doesn’t have access to them (i.e., when he’s strapped into a carseat or has socks on). Nathan is quite responsive to music. I’ve been able to lull him out of a scream-fest on several occasions just by singing to him. Caleb participates sometimes too, by singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Eating & Sleeping

As I mentioned in this post, Nathan has gotten used to formula such that he’ll take a bottle or two per day. He takes 3 to 4 6-ounce bottles (!) at daycare most days, which seems like a lot to me, but I went back and checked our Baby Tracker app from Caleb, and he was consuming the same or larger volume of bottles at this age. Our pediatrician gave us the green light to start introducing solid foods whenever we’re ready, so we’ve casually been presenting him with applesauce every now and then. Thus far, he seems interested in eating but not to the same degree that his brother was. My plan is to do baby-led weaning again once Nathan is better able to sit up on his own. As for sleeping, not much has changed. Nathan goes down for the night at about 7:30PM, then sleeps until 3-4AM when he wakes to eat. I could try to wean him off of this middle-of-the-night feeding, but truthfully, I like having that nursing session with him. I feel like I get so little time with him in the evenings, so I seize the opportunity for some cuddles. As a side note, he’s been sleeping in his crib for months now; that transition was totally seamless!

Other Quirks:

-Nathan is NOT a good traveler. We took a road trip to Kentucky a few weeks ago for a family wedding, and it was pretty awful. Nathan cried, I cried, Caleb cried. It was the longest 6 hours of my life. We’re hoping to wait a while before attempting another trip with him.

-Baby is almost on the move. Nathan is not crawling yet, but he’s trying really hard to make that happen. He is successful in being able to “scooch” (for lack of a better term) across the room when no one is looking; sometimes he accomplishes this by rolling over multiple times.

-He’s pretty ambivalent about water so far. We introduced Nathan to a little baby pool recently, and his reaction was neither good nor bad. He’s an even-tempered kid in general, so we weren’t terribly surprised by this–hopefully it will be more exciting for him as he gets older.