The Schuchards: Little Lila-pie at 5 months

As of last Saturday, Lila is five months old!!!! This is particularly wonderful because Daddy will get to see her at this age. He'll be back home in about 12 days! After Ross left in November to go back overseas, I kept thinking about what Lila would be like when Ross came home. At first, we didn't think he'd be back until she was seven months old (June), so the fact that he'll be back when she's only five months old is the greatest thing EVER. He is absolutely going to fall in love with his little girl!

At five months old, Lila is SO fun and SO easy. Even though she's been in full-fledged teething mode the past few weeks (see above photo), she smiles constantly and is usually happy to play on her own with one of her many toys. Truly, as long as we keep her on schedule with her feedings and naps and give her Oragel for her teething pain, Lila basically takes care of herself! We are so blessed to have such a good-natured baby for our second.

Physical facts: At her five-month doctor's appointment on Monday, Lila weighed 14 pounds, 8 ounces and measured 25.5 inches long, which means she is up about three-quarters of a pound and one-half inch from last month's visit. Dr. Rubin showed me on the growth charts that her measurements still put her exactly in the 50th percentile. I couldn't be happier about our "average" baby girl!

Lila's hair is really getting thick now -- it's about the same thickness as John's at this age but slightly darker in color. She looks so pretty with her dark hair and blue eyes! Her eyes haven't changed since last month's post. There is still a tiny little speck of golden brown in her left eye, but you can't see it unless you're really close to her.

Her skin color is much lighter than John's was when he was a baby. She definitely has her Daddy's skin color! You can really tell the difference in skin color between the siblings by looking at the lead photo on our blog.

Lila is wearing 3-6 month and 6-month clothing now. She's outgrowing a lot of her 0-6month socks, and some of her newborn-size shoes only fit her if she's wearing tights (as opposed to socks). This past week, I started washing all her 6-12 month clothing in anticipation of warmer weather. I'd say 90% of the clothing she has in this size range is for summer, so if she's still in this size come September, we'll need to get her a few fall items. She is totally set for summer though. I think she could almost wear a different outfit every day and still not wear all of the outfits she has for summer -- it's crazy!

Teething: I think Lila is getting close to cutting her first tooth. Technically, she's been teething for a couple of months already, but now she is starting to develop even more of the symptoms associated with teething, including not wanting to nurse at times and having a really runny nose. (Early on she just had the excess saliva and the rash on her fingers where she sticks them in her mouth. Oh, and the urge to put everything else in addition to her fingers in her mouth. )

I would say Lila's teething has been a little worse than John's so far. Maybe I just don't remember going through it with John. I definitely don't remember needing to give him Oragel very often -- maybe only a few times EVER. We've had to give Lila a little bit of Oragel on her bottom gums every night before bedtime just to make sure she won't wake up an hour later.

I still can't feel anything along the gums, but when she lets me look in her mouth, I can see the faintest outlines of the two bottom center teeth. John got his first tooth a few days after he turned six months, so I'll be interested to see how much longer Lila goes before her first one erupts. She is going to look so cute with a snaggle tooth!

Solids? Lila has met nearly all of the milestones that the baby books say a baby should meet before beginning solids -- she holds her head up on her own, has more than doubled her birth weight of 6 pounds, 7 ounces and is becoming more interested in watching me when I eat. But I don't think she's quite ready yet, even though last week she started waking up at night more than usual and nursing at each of these wakings. What looks like hunger might actually be symptoms of teething, as we found out with John.

When John started this exact same pattern of night wakings (just after he had turned four months old), we thought he wasn't getting enough to eat and that we'd better start him on rice cereal right away. So we ran out to Target to buy some and mixed some up that night to try. Turns out he wasn't ready -- he pushed everything we put on his tongue right back out again and made the funniest faces. In hindsight (the kind you have with your second child), I think teething was to blame for his night wakings. I'm pretty sure that's the main thing that's bothering Lila at night, and I'm pretty sure that she would have the same tongue reflex that John had if we were to try solids right now, so we are going to wait at least two more weeks. That way, Daddy will be home and he can see one of her "firsts."

Schedule: Lila's schedule is the same as last month's:

Wake-up: around 7:00 a.m.
1st nap: around 9:00 a.m.
2nd nap: around 1:00 p.m.
3rd nap: around 5:00 p.m.
Bedtime: around 8:00 p.m.

Lila nurses when she first wakes up and then again after every nap. She usually doesn't nurse at bedtime because she has just nursed an hour or two prior. Her major nighttime feeding is sometime between 10 and midnight. Sometimes she will also nurse around 4:00 a.m.

It's interesting to compare the way John nursed with the way Lila nurses. With John, I only ever nursed him from one side at each feeding. At first I did that to make sure he was getting all of the hindmilk, but I kept doing it because he got used to it and never seemed to want the other side when I tried giving it to him. He would get very cozy on the one side and didn't want to be bothered with a move! He nursed roughly every 3 hours during the day.

Lila is totally different. She is a very quick, efficient nurser, taking all she wants from one side in 7-8 minutes. I always wait a little while and then try giving her the other side just in case she's still hungry. Most of the time she only nurses from the second side for 4-5 minutes. She goes a good 3.5-4 hours between feedings during the day. If I try feeding her before then, she isn't interested. (My theory is that John's feedings were closer together because he wasn't getting as much milk at each feeding since he was so leisurely about the whole process and never got around to the second side.)

Lila is just now getting to the stage where she's very easily distracted when she's nursing (a stage I vividly remember from John). She pulls away from me at the least little noise: the metal tags of Halley's dog collar clinking as she walks; John talking to me from across the room; the phone ringing; Grandma turning a page of the newspaper. It's frustrating, especially when I need to get a feeding in as quickly as possible, but it's endearing too. It just means she's a more active participant in our world!

Lila is still taking a third nap, but I'd like to be able to drop it soon. Juding by the results of yesterday's test run, she does not seem ready to do so yet. I let her sleep longer in the morning, until about 8:30, and then put her down for her first two naps at the normal intervals of time (10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.). Then I put her down for the night at 6:30 p.m. She was up an hour and a half later, ready to play! I should probably try again before I give up on dropping the third nap, but I don't want a repeat of yesterday's messed-up schedule!

Playtime: It's amazing to me how much more physical Lila is during playtime now. When she's on her jungle mat, in her car seat or one of her "reclining chairs," she flings her arms and legs with a lot of force, sending the toys hanging above her flying. She loves to throw both legs down simultaneously, which makes a thump so loud it scares me silly! All of these motions enable her to rotate her body from one position to another when she's on her back, and she often rotates in a complete circle. (She started doing this in her crib, too. I'll put her to bed with her head on the side by the closet and when I go in to get her later, her head is on the side by the windows. Sometimes she'll be completely diagonal, or worse, her head and feet will be touching either side of the short part of the crib.) Interestingly, Lila hasn't done much rolling over since first rolling over on March 3rd (maybe two or three times the entire month of March).

This past month, I finally decided to try using my Jeep carrier again to see if I could get Lila interested in riding in it facing out (now that she could hold her head up on her own really well). It worked. She's been riding in it that way ever since. I think she didn't like either of the carriers before (the Jeep or the Ergo) because she wasn't comfortable with her legs straddling me. (With the Ergo, I could never get the infant insert to work right -- I don't know if I got a faulty one or if I just can't read instructions.) Maybe she didn't like not being able to see anything either. In any case, she is so content to ride around with me, no matter what I'm doing. She waves her arms and kicks her legs just like she does while she's on her jungle mat, so I consider it a playtime activity of sorts.

I bought Lila the Sophie the Giraffe teething toy about a month ago in the hopes that she would use it as a teething device instead of her poor fingers, but she has yet to take a shine to it. Whenever I put it to her gums, she crinkles her nose and sticks out her tongue, which to me means that she doesn't like the smell or taste of it. It's made of natural rubber, so I'm not sure what she finds so icky about it. She does seem to like the squeaky sound it makes though.

I've made quite a few other playtime purchases recently, including a tummy-time mat that was $12 on clearance at TJ Maxx. I got the tummy-time mat a few days before she turned five months, and she seems to enjoy it so far. She likes being propped up a little by the pillow part of it. I like the mat because it's portable and lightweight and you can attach toys to it using the loops it has. It also rolls up really easily -- there's a velcro patch to keep it together.