5 Months Old

Ella is 5 months old today!  She is such a happy baby and a joy to be around.  She smiles all the time, and now she cracks up laughing as well.  She has a big personality always smiling, yelling, talking, squealing with delight and repeating the sounds we make.  She rarely cries, and only fusses when she is very hungry or tired.

She is a great napper.  She takes three naps a day, typically 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.  She goes down easily and either talks to herself or cries for only a few minutes.  She goes to bed between 6:30 and 7 p.m. and usually falls right to sleep (so it's not true that if you rock them to sleep when they are newborns you'll have to do it forever!).  She still gets a dream feed at 11 p.m., and then vacillates between sleeping through the night to 6 or 7 a.m. and waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. for a little food.

She is eating all formula now- we just give her regular kind.  She eats about 6 ounces each bottle about 5 times a day...sometimes she eats much less.  We've tried feeding her rice cereal a few times, but she can't quite get the concept of swallowing when you aren't sucking!  

She is still pretty true to size in clothes.  She typically wears 3-6 month or 6 month sizes, except in Gymboree, which runs really big so she can still wear 0-3 months!  We are just starting to phase out Pampers size 1 diapers and move her to size 2.

Her favorite "toy" is her Baby Einstein exersaucer.  She likes to grab, hit, push, but she still doesn't hold onto rattles or toys by herself very well.  She can roll from front to back and back to front, but she doesn't do either very often.  Baths are still her favorite thing in the world.

ETA: She is 14 pounds and 24 3/4 inches.  She is in the 75th percentile for height (adjusted) and weight and 50th percentile for head (adjusted).  The doctor didn't tell us her percentiles for actual age, but I found a calculator online, and it said she's in the 22nd percentile for weight and 27th percentile for height.