Honeymoon Stages of an Army Wife and Irish Twins Mommy!: Jonny Milestones 5&6

Month 5&6

Around 2 months old Jonny began waking frequently after going to bed, usually an hour or so after going down. Sometimes this would happen for hours. He also began sleeping for a half hour at a time during the day. I tried keeping him on an Eat, Play, Sleep routine and scheduling out his feedings so I would know exactly when he would be eating/hungry and thus know my windows of opportunity to get out and take him with me (church, errand, etc). Also, I am an extremely structured individual, because I have always found that a schedule and knowing ahead of time what the plan is, keeps me from worrying about anything. A friend told me that her daughter also began doing that at this age and that she started giving her Tylenol before bed, because she thought it was teething. Occasionally this helped but not always. But around 5 months I finally started letting Jonny cry it out for 5-10 minutes when he would wake in the night. We also started not giving him his pacifier during naps because we realized that he had actually developed an addiction to his pacifier. This is when a baby wakes, every time their pacifier falls out of their mouth when they are entering a deep sleep, or if they hit the end of a sleep cycle, rather than turning over and going back to sleep, they need their pacifier to do so. It was a hard transition but over 1 week, one VERY hard week with lots of tears from mommy and baby, we kicked the habit.

Around this time we went to VA to visit Jonny's great aunties and I had ot start giving him his pacifier to go back to sleep. But I made a vow to never again replace it at night or at the end of a nap to help him get back to sleep. If he woke in the night I would either ignore him for several minutes and give him the chance to self-soothe or I would use the SHH/pat method by the Baby Whisperer Tracey Hogg. Because this was a relatively new thing/habit, only about a month old and he had no other issues like lack of routine or structure or the need to be pacified with a bottle to go to sleep, it was pretty easy. He learned very quickly. Occasionally he will still wake in the night at either 9ish pm and will almost always wake between 4-530 am. Sometimes I can wait it out and he will go back to sleep, other times he is up for the day. He is doing really well now that he is 6.5 months old. We moved his waketime from a rigid 2.5 hours to a more flexible time of approximately 2 hours. I watch for his tired cues and the day usually goes like this...

6am wake/eat (usually between 5 and 7) up for 1 hour and 40 minutes; solids.
7:40 Nap 1. Goes down without a peep
9:40 wake/eat- 10am
11:40 Nap 2. Again no problems.
Usually sleeps an hour and a half
1:10pm wake/ eat-2pm
Awake 2hrs and 15 minutes; solids
3:25 Nap 3. this is usually the only nap that occasionally he fights. Im aware that somewhere between now and a year old he should drop this nap.
4pm wake/ solids.
Somewhere between 2.5 and 3 hours. Sometimes he fights bedtime so when he goes to sleep is up to him.

Its a schedule I love and can easily live with. there should be any major changes soon except for maybe 15 minutes extra waketime before each nap and then dropping that third nap. Most babies keep a 3.5 hour napping amount until about 18 months. Then his 1st nap should drop out, leaving him with just a 2 hour afternoon nap around age 1.5/2 to age 3/4.

He sleeps 12 hours at night typically. And things are very easy and predictable. With this next baby it is very imperative that I relax and let the SCHEDULE be flexible for his age and once he is sleeping through the night, we will work on nap extensions if he needs it. One mistake I will NOT make again is making his waketime too long for his age. That was a big mistake. But no real harm done!

Month 5 Jonny got 2 teeth- His two bottom teeth! the first I didn't notice until he bit me! and the second was 10 days of HELL! He cried constantly, didn't want to eat or sleep, was crabby, wouldn't smile, woke a lot in the night. But luckily we are through that.

Month 6: the week he became 6 months old he began sitting up on his own. He has always been in the upper 90s, percentile-wise for his head size, so I think he took a little bit longer to build up those neck muscles! Also, on Sept 28 my Mother-in-law noticed he got an upper canine tooth! The right one. and when I looked the next day he had the other canine tooth and perhaps one of the upper front ones! That's 3 teeth in 2 days! Wow! And he never uttered one word of protest/complaint. What a tough guy! At his appointment this month, he weighed in at 19lbs and 27.5 in. He also got his 4 vaccines, and he didn't even cry!! What a tough guy, again!!

His favorite words/ syllables/ things to do are:

GUG, GING, GUNG, GANG, GUH. He also loves to respond to all questions directed at him with a head shake. I think he perhaps did it by accident but we all responded with such emotion- laughing, pointing, etc- that he does it all the time now. Once when Jonathan was telling him a story (I regularly make Jonathan direct what hes saying to me, at Jonny, so he will learn participation in conversations) and after every sentence, Jonny would shake his head no. We laughed hysterically. It was so funny because Jonathan kept responded with "Yes, huh, that's what happened Jonny!" and jonny would respond with a head shake. He also began "giving kisses" to himself with a mirror in his favorite book, and to me by gently touching my face and pressing his open mouth against my face. Whenever Daddy asks for a kiss though Jonny will shake his head and/or turn his face away. Almost ALWAYS. He loves chewing on everything and he LOVES to scoot around in his walker that his Shaw grandparents gave to him a week ago! He will sometimes show up in the kitchen when I just glanced at him in the living room! Guess I gotta start watching him now! It isn't just a few inches now, its across the room!

He loves to gurgle when he lays on his back. He also will sit through a church service without making any noise. He LOVES to sit and listen to his daddy go through the English and German alphabets and the English and German numbers 1-20. He will listen intently to the English and the moment Jonathan switches to German (which we would like to teach him- because Jonathan speaks it) Jonny gets a huge smile on his face!! He just loves it. We also sign to him, simple commands like please, thank you, eat, drink, come here and a letter J for Jonny. Occasionally we will do mommy and daddy signs.

Jonny loves his grandma and she takes him outside and shows him her flower garden. He loves playing peek-a-boo with his grandpa. He also adores his baths and sits up for them now with a seat (once his sitting is perfect, we will take the seat out). He loves to drink out of cups and water bottles. He always tries to take my cups of water, glass and all and drink them exactly like I do. If only, I knew he wouldnt just poor them all over his face, I might let go!

We take him on a walk almost every evening, unless it is raining or we have to go somewhere, and he loves it. There is a park on this installation, right on a beautiful nature trail that we go to most days. They have a baby swing and he loves it! he giggles and smiles and loves with Daddy pushes him up very high! A daredevil, already! GREAT! :(

Also he eats solids at least three times a day, loves Puffs and loves Mum-mums (rice cakes, basically). Hes usually a good eater, though not the last few days, as he is teething and has little interest in eating much of anything. He absolutely loves grapes and strawberries in his mesh-feeder and will eat them til I take it away or stop refilling it. He drinks out of his sippy cup alone. His favorite solids remain: Carrots, Prunes and Apples. He also loves Pear-Spinach babyfood by Gerber. I feed him all organic at this point just for the reason of pesticides that they have found in baby food. It shouldn't surprise us but with his system being so young, I don't yet want to flood his body with poison used to kill bugs. Its hard to provide him with variety while still avoiding all things with milk.

Also, we have started introducing SOY formula with his hypoallergenic formula. We never determined if he was allergic to soy and it is a much more affordable option than Alimentum. The same can-size of Alimentum is 27.99, while Soy is 16.99. Add a 5 dollar off vendor check that Similac mails you for each can, and were looking at only 11 or so dollars per can! Not bad, for name brand formula! Being that he has suffered so much already I like keeping him on name-brand stuff just because I know I can trust it. People argue that its all the same and they all have the same restrictions and criteria to meet, but it makes ME feel better. Were doing half and half for each bottle and will wait at least 4 weeks to switch him fully over to Soy. The reason for not using Soy to begin with is that Cow's milk takes approximately 10-14 days to leave their system and Soy only takes two. So to switch him from cows to soy, would not have left me much clue as to what would be causing another canker. Was it still the cows milk that wasn't in his system? Or was it now soy? So I just did the full-on switch over to hypoallergenic. Now that he is six months old and has had no reactions to any other food and I have fed him almost all veggies and fruits, allowed at his age, as well as rice and barley cereal, and even some meat, I figured I could give Soy a chance. Worst case scenario, since he has had 2 days of Soy formula several months ago and didn't have any anaphylaxis, he would get another canker, in which case I would immediately take him off and we would wait til at least a year old. The proteins in cow's milk and soy are so similar that many babies/kids are allergic to both, rather than just one.

Also we started brushing his teeth at 6 months! They said you should practice the hygiene as soon as they get the teeth. He loves it! He constantly gets the shivers when I do it though cause it tickles!

Some highlights from these last two months!

Jonny learned he would be a big brother this month and he was excited to say the least! These are a few of his 6 month photos that we took to announce the new baby, due Feb 24!