5 months

All growned up... my little man is just getting so big. This past week he has done so many new things, like wearing his first pair of shoes. He loves to stand up on his feet and step out, we play a game of "up-down", this is when I pull him from sitting to standing over and over while singing an old Winnie the Pooh song that goes, 'up, down, up, down when I up down, touch the ground..." Sam thinks is hilarious. Little Reeboks, courtesy of cousin Dennis.
We have been learning how to sit up all by ourselves. Sammy likes to try and sit, but he still needs lots of support--I call him my little weeble-wobble. He does pretty good for about 10 seconds, then he starts to lean forward and before I know it he is bent in half in some strange yoga like position, I call 'downward facing baby'. He does not enjoy it.

He is really enjoying tummy time now, and will wiggle himself in a full circle and also reach for toys on his tummy to play with. He is rolling sometimes, but he really has to push up on those little arms to get himself over. It isn't consistent yet, but I think we are pretty close to rolling from belly to back more frequently. Most of the time, when he rolls over he isn't quite sure how he did it...so he is still trying to process that.
He gets very tired on his tummy. He was pouting when I wouldn't help him turn over. This face cracks me up! One of the few times I actually see myself in him.
I started giving him a cup with water to play with and encourage drinking from it. He loves when ever I drink from a cup and is always reaching for it. I thought we'd try it. He mostly just mouths it and shakes it all over the place. I helped him tip it into his mouth, he seemed startled when the water came out.
One of the big things we have been doing is getting down to business with bedtime. Sammy started a sleep strike shortly after he turned 4 months and it was horrible. I am talking about waking 6-7 times a night, and screaming bloody murder if we tried to put him in his crib or swing. Not good, so I poured over books trying to figure out what was going on with all this nonsense...turns out we were making some pretty hefty bedtime no-nos. We are off to a much better cycle these days...he is waking up around 3 times now, midnight, four, and six. I have stopped feeding him at the midnight/one o'clock feeding. And, we put him to bed awake and stand next to the crib until he starts to drift off. This seems to be working much better than sneaking him into bed after he has drunk himself to sleep. Oh! And we are starting the breaking of the swaddle. He is currently being swaddled with one arm out, it is going well... I walked in the other day and he was sucking his fingers. I think he likes the pressure of being swaddled but not the confinement so much anymore. Here is us getting ready for bed.

We are off to San Diego for the holidays, I really should be packing right now instead of blogging but I am such a procrastinator. We will be gone for about 12 days...so won't be much to posting for awhile. Have a holly-gallolly Christmas one and all!