Five Months Old

Much like Little Miss Mathilde and her non-stop movement, month number five has zoomed by... 

Can you believe that at only five months old my little baby is almost crawling? Crazy, right? After a few weeks of rolling to get around, then a week of perfecting her plank position, Mathilde has progressed to the pre-crawl "hands and knees belly-flop" technique. Ok, I have no idea what to call her method of movement! It's almost a crawl but not quite as her legs move together. You can see it on Instagram here. I can see that she's trying to work out how to move them individually but she hasn't quite got there. Judging by the way she's zooming through babyhood I imagine that she'll have crawling down pat within a week. And then be walking the next!



Let's hope I haven't jinxed myself with that last bit!

So what else has been happening over the last month?

Mathilde has been having fun practicing her noises. She makes lots of "bababababa" and "dadadadada" noises and likes to blow raspberries. She also makes lots of chewing noises when she's not actually eating. These chewing noises, combined with her taking a major interest in everything that goes in my mouth, tell me that she's ready to start trying solid food. Not sure I'm ready for it though! I can no longer eat or drink while I'm nursing her as she gets completely distracted watching me and makes a big milky mess. She also tries to steal my food at every chance she gets. And she's obsessed with putting straws, spoons and coffee cups in her mouth. We'll give baby rice a try this weekend.

Mathilde has made the move from her bassinet in our bedroom into her crib in the girls' bedroom. Now that she's more active she likes to roll onto her belly to sleep. The bassinet doesn't give her enough room to roll over properly so she gets upset when I put her in it (I still put her down on her back even though I know she'll roll onto her belly). When she does try to roll in the bassinet she ends up with an arm and leg hanging over the side. I'm a little freaked out that she might manage to tip it over. The crib, on the other hand, has lots of room for rolling around and she sleeps much more soundly in it. Last night she slept the whole night, although that still doesn't happen often so I'm not getting my hopes up just yet!

In a totally unexpected development over the last month I've noticed that Mathilde's eyes are turning brown! This shouldn't really be unexpected given that Kim has brown eyes (mine are green) but both Ava and Lola have blue eyes so it feels weird to me that Mathilde's eyes are not the same. Along with her brownish eyes (they sometimes still look kind of blue) Mathilde seems to have more olive toned skin than her sisters. In fact, this little one has the most tanned legs out of the whole family! 

Now that Mathilde is moving around so much she's getting into everything. I've got to seriously start thinking about baby proofing - which isn't the easiest when you live in a small apartment with an open plan living area. Blocking off areas or entire rooms doesn't really work so well and we don't have the space for a playpen like we did when Ava and Lola were babies. I'd love to hear suggestions from anyone in a similar situation.

Speaking of which, there's a little monkey sitting under my desk ripping up paper and drooling on the scanner. Off to find her some more suitable "toys"...