Sami @ 5 Months

This is an entry truly better suited for her baby book, that I have previously admitted I am woefully inadequate at maintaining. But I know in a few months, I myself will be fascinated to look back and reminisce upon these details... so bear with me, this one is for Sami and me...

Sami turned 5 months old weekend before last, and here is what's going on in her world right now.

She has discovered her little, dear feet. If she's upright, or lying down, her favorite pasttime is to clutch her unusally long (inherited from me) toes in her hands. No more, no less. She's perfectly satisfied just to clutch and occasionally study them. It is, of course, adorable.

Today, I made the mistake of trying to compensate for cold weather and floors by putting socks on her. First of all, infant socks are not one-size-fits-all. None of them fit her. The heel ends up mid-arch, and they won't stay on. And in addition to inheriting my hideously long toes, she also assumed my distaste for socks and shoes, apparently. She was unusually irritable all afternoon. I thought, "Gosh, she seems out of sorts." Yeah. Tried removing the socks and retrieved my good-natured baby girl.

She's monumentally frustrated by this reclined position she continually finds herself relegated to. She wants so badly to be upright and able to view the world. But if you sit her up, she has no concept of righting herself once she starts to list to one side. A faceplant is iminent. And it makes her so angry. She's just starting to make slight musculature moves that would right the leaning, but hasn't quite mastered them. I can tell she'll be so much happier and satisfied with the world once she has figured it out.

If she's awake, she's happy. Smiling, laughing. She's amazingly engaged and alert about what's going on around her. She concentrates so dutifully on whatever her dad and I are doing when we're not precisely paying attention to her. Note to self: she's a sponge right now. I'm trying to maintain constant awareness of what I'm feeding the sponge that is her. When I eat, I try to savor every bite verbally. I feel like it is all about setting an example currently.

She seems mesmerized by me singing to her. It can be a baby song, or something off one of my CDs. Regardless, she apparently adores music at this point, and seems to really appreciate and recognize the difference between my speaking voice and my singing voice.

She also seems to acknowledge that there are times I'm speaking to her and times I'm speaking in front of her, but not to her. When her daddy and I are just conversationally talking in front of her, I have caught her paying special attention. She watches our mouths so intently. Both her dad and her Aunt Terri swear she has purposely said "mama." How can that be that I haven't witnessed it? She may be enunciating it, but I am sadly but fairly certain that at this point it is inadvertant.

She loves going to sleep at night. I mean, leading up to it, she does what her dad and I call "hitting the wall." It is so blatant. She's this happy, humorous child one minute, and the next she can't be consoled. Off to bed with our bedtime rituals, and she's perfectly content within about 10 minutes, and pleased as punch to be laid to bed.

Her hair--and I'll admit I think it is due to our coaxing--sticks straight up in this adorable "do." We're so used to it and fond of it that we don't notice it anymore, but lately it has become the subject of several comments from strangers. We may need to rethink this at some point in the near future.

We're just now getting started, on occasion, trying to feed her "real" food. We tried every afternoon for a week with rice cereal. But she just isn't that fond of it. So yesterday I bought some fruits and veggies to try. We started with applesauce. I tasted it, as I have vowed to do with all of those things I will be feeding her. If it tastes horrible to me, I'm not giving it to her. Anyway, the rice cereal is pretty bland, but just ever so slightly sweet. Not horrible or anything, but not very exciting either. So we tried the applesauce yesterday. The good news is she did in fact open her mouth every time I put the spoon to her, but this applesauce had no sugar added and was in fact a little bit tart. She ate some of it, but after a few bites, the tartness must've gotten to her, because it kept making her shiver. It was cute, but I felt kind of bad for her. At least half of it came right back out of her mouth via her tongue. Oh well. We'll keep trying.