Calan Turns Five Months and Other Updates

Calan celebrated his five-month birthday this week. He’s also developing some new skills and continues to work on sleeping.

As Calan finished up his fifth month, we noticed he was waking up more during the night, needing to eat. It was a sign that the little guy just needed more food in general. Time to add some rice cereal to his diet! This meant trying out his first ever spoon-fed “solid” food. After mixing up a slurry of milk and rice cereal powder, Calan gave it his best shot. He’ll learn (just like we all did) how to accept and swallow such a funny texture off of a spoon, but for now we just cheat a little and dissolve the cereal in a bottle of milk so he can suck it – he doesn’t suspect a thing…and is sleeping through the night again. 😉

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Up until recently Calan took most of his daytime naps in the swing we keep in the family room. The swing was great at soothing and lulling  Calan. We started to notice though that he was having trouble going down in his crib for evening bedtime. So, with a bit of tough love and bravery, we started putting Calan down in his crib exclusively. We had some rough moments over a week and half, but little by little Calan is getting better at falling asleep by himself, without the extra comfort of his swing. This should help Calan become a better sleeper in the long run. Also of note, Calan began sleeping completely without the help of a swaddle blanket. He officially graduated when we stopped wrapping just one of his arms and let him go totally free.

Calan has never been a big fan of tummy time. He usually grunts and groans after a few minutes before we relieve him. As such, we haven’t done a lot of tummy time over the last couple  months. We’re getting better, and Calan even discovered that he can relax his head and rest on his belly to make things easier.

We’ve also  noticed over the last couple weeks that Calan is starting to pick up small objects on his own. It should be lots of fun watching him get better and better at this new skill. We also started putting him in his jumper, where he has a chance to play standing up. His legs are actually a little short for it, but nothing a box can’t solve for now.