Five Month Birthday Pictures

*Disclosure: I wrote this post before I took the Birthday Pictures. As soon as I started taking them I realized that my son now knows what food is and instinctively knows that food covered in thick green icing must be very, very good. I immediately had a foot in the cupcake. I tried to take the pictures on his Boppy, in his Bumbo and in a chair. None of them worked. I had to place the cupcake out of reach and try to get both the cupcake and the boy in the picture without the boy ending up in the cupcake. In most of the pictures you can't even see the cupcake, you can just see Aaron lunging toward something. That would be the cupcake. This is actually a milestone listed in What to Expect the First Year: Working to get something that's out of reach. Mastered. Excellent. I finally put Aaron in his Walker and precariously put the cupcake on the feeding tray for seconds at a time to snap a quick picture. Sometimes I just held the cupcake in front of him which really made him mad. At one point Aaron bested me and got two fists in the icing. I was trying to keep the fists out of his mouth and clean up a monumental mess (what do they make that icing out of?) when a thought came to me, "what if he puts his hands in his mouth and he's allergic to eggs? Or dairy? Or sugar. Can you be allergic to sugar? PEANUTS! Oh my gosh! The cupcake could have been made near peanuts!" I grabbed Aaron, ran to the kitchen, threw him in the sink and turned on the faucet. Yes, I did. I then settled down. At that point, Aaron and everything he was wearing was soaked. His hands somehow were not wet. Let's not go there. I turned off the water, took him to the changing table and calmly used a baby wipe (three) to get the icing off of his fists. I then re-dressed him and put him in his bouncy. I went and attempted to reconstruct the cupcake. I then snuck up behind Aaron and placed the cupcake where I could get it in the picture with the boy, but the boy could not see the cupcake. Within two pictures he must have smelled the thing. You can see him crawling over the side of the bouncy trying to get the cupcake. I gave up.

Here's the Birthday Boy! I always focus on his outfits and I thought I'd change it up a bit today and focus on his bibs. He's got A LOT of really cute bibs. These came in a package from Grandma Sheri last night and I just laughed out loud. Aren't they great?

He's 27 inches long and 17 pounds. At five months old he is the weight of an average six month old and the height of an average seven month old. So we are moving into his 6-9 month clothes now and I, of course, love having the new wardrobe. I am trying to hold on to some of his 3-6 month outfits as long as possible, but it's getting trickier. Developmentally, he's on a 5-6 month level.

Aaron is sitting up some on his own now, but he prefers standing to either sitting or laying. Give him something to pull on and he'll pop right up. Happy as he can be. If you let him hold your hands for balance he can walk pretty well. A little scary, but that's definitely coming more naturally to him than crawling. He still gets frustrated on his stomach. He also gets frustrated in the Bumbo now. He doesn't like being that confined. He is loving his bouncy still, though, and loving his jumper the most.

Aaron is no longer being swaddled. I actually read in Parents magazine that many babies need to be swaddled until they are 6-8 months old and most of my friends swaddled theirs until about 7 months. But it's pretty universally accepted that once he rolls over in the swaddle it's time to wean, so that's what we did. It actually wasn't bad. We swaddled him with one arm out for several days and that was just fine with him. Then we went to both arms out. That was not fine and it took a day of pretty torturous naps to get it done, but by Day Two things were much better. He now sleeps in a Sleep Sack. We've tried to let him just sleep without anything, but he's not interested in that and the Sleep Sack gives him mobility.

He laughs out loud when he's tickled and it is just the greatest sound in the world!

Oh! But don't ask him to do any of these things when you see him. He does not perform on demand. He's stubborn like that and I know he thinks its funny.

Right now he is incredibly fascinated by the sight of someone drinking something. We are not sure what this is about, but put a water bottle to your mouth and he will stop what he's doing and stare at you completely entranced. In fact, it will cause him to stop crying right in the middle of a fit. The other day he took my water bottle from me and put it to his mouth just like he sees me do. And then this horrible liquid with absolutely no taste came into his mouth and he pushed the water bottle away and glared at it as if it had done something unthinkable. He has not reached for my bottle any more, but he still loves to watch me drink from it.