Five Months Old

Elaina is such a happy baby. I love her.


She definitely prefers to kick with that right leg. I'm not quite sure why, and I just hope that she doesn't develop one huge, buff leg, while the left one wastes away with atrophy.

She demands my attention by shriek-yelling: when she wakes up from a nap, when I leave the room, or when she just thinks I'm not paying her enough attention. It's a very loud, hollering sort of beckon, and it's amusing to me that it's her "MOM, C'MERE!" noise.

I don't know what happened to her sleeping for 6 hours at night, but she's been waking up more often recently. Since she's in the bassinet next to our bed, I manage to get decent sleep even though she's waking up every 3 hours to eat. She still prefers to be swaddled at night. We didn't swaddle her last night, and she was very restless and didn't sleep as well.

She really loves her binkie. She'll holler and fuss if she's napping and accidentally spits it out. She has discovered that a finger (hers or someone else's) makes a good substitute sometimes.

Or even her own tongue and lips.

She's been drooling and chewing on stuff, but still no teeth.

We call her Tiny all the time. We really didn't intend for it to develop into a nickname, but I guess it has. Even Chloë calls her Tiny. We confuse our acquaintances, because they can't figure out what we're calling her.

But she's really not very tiny anymore. She has the best little fat rolls.

She had her 4 month appointment a couple of weeks late. She weighed in at 14.3 pounds, which was right at the 50th percentile for 4 1/2 month old babies. So I guess there must be some really chubby babies out there.

Happy, squinty eyed baby.

As long as I don't eat anything with dairy in it, she's a pretty happy baby. It's kind of amazing how obvious it is. If I cheat a little and eat something with dairy proteins, she is much more fussy, and spits up lots of chunky stuff. So as long as I exercise self-control, she's a happy camper.

Last week I figured it was about time I introduced her to the Johnny Jump Up. She loved it.




Her tongue is freakishly long. She hangs it out all the time, and reminds me of a cute puppy.

I don't even know. Not her best look.

The Beckers were over recently, and Aaron and Elaina had some play time. Elaina went a little nuts trying to impress Aaron, I think.

Aaron is only 2 1/2 months old, but quickly catching up to Elaina in size. We try not to make too many jokes about them being married someday, but it's so hard to resist.

She likes to grab her feet. Pretty much all the time.


When we were in Iowa, I noticed this picture of my sister Katie with our dear Grandfather. She must have been about 6 months old.

They must be related.