Brooke at Five Months

Brooke keeps getting cuter and more interesting by the day. The past month has been one where Brooke has really found her voice, took to daddy, then developed separation anxiety for mommy all over again. She took her first family vacation, touched sand for the first time, and took a few more dips in a pool. Let’s take a look.

• Brooke has gotten so much better at pushing buttons, making things move or make noise, and entertaining herself.
• She is food obsessed. The girl goes absolutely nuts when we are sitting down eating meals, to the point that we broke out foods for her weeks ago to appease her while we eat. So far I haven’t really found anything she doesn’t like. She has had applesauce, banana, strawberry, melon, potato, and her first actual baby puree that involved some weird combo of peas, kiwi and banana that she didn’t seem totally in love with but still ate.
• She still loves bath time, especially with big sis.
• We’ve gotten a few more giggles the past few days, usually from something her sister does.
• She has been extremely clingy and already seems to have developed object permanence and does not like it when we walk away from her or disappear. She is also a bit dependent on mom these days.
• She still loves walks and being on the move. That has not changed and she did a lot of baby wearing in Hawaii.
• She’s gotten good at pulling Reese’s hair. She also seems to always want to have her feet on Reese whenever Reese is near.
• We are officially in size 3-6M clothes now and she is finally fitting into them. She weighed 12 lbs 2 oz at this weeks doctors appointment so she’s right with her sister at 3% weight. She’s just over two feet tall so about 50% for height.
• She seems to enjoy reading but truthfully we’ve done very little of that for her. Good thing the nanny is starting.
• She loves being sung to. Our whole family really gets into the “wheels on the bus” but we need to learn some more songs too.
• She’s really gotten into touching (and scratching) at my face when I am holding her or nursing her. I remember Reese doing this too at one point.

I was going through Reese’s updates at 5 months and though they are similar, I do think Reese was physically more advanced and Brooke seems to take more to the food, books, and music more than Reese did. Reese was just starting to sit unassisted at 5 months and already getting on all fours and rocking back and forth and Brooke has a little bit to go before she is sitting. Although she wants to be, she wants to do everything her big sis can. We need to work on her on tummy time a bit more. She’s no different than her sister though in terms of poor sleep; the girl has been waking up a lot early in the night before we are even in bed ourselves.

And this week was a tough one for all of us but especially Brooke. She came down with some kind of bug Sunday night and it was touch and go all week. She was not well on Monday when Reese had the day off of school (thank goodness Reese had a playdate already scheduled for this day) and I seriously was only able to set her down for about 30 minutes total throughout the day. She only slept on me, with me holding her, through the night Monday night and then her fever seemed to break at 5 am Tuesday morning but wanting to take her to the doctor’s just in case, we got her four month vaccines which I knew meant would be another sleepless night. And I was right. She only slept with me holding her again on Tuesday night and come Wednesday I was spent. Thankfully the nanny started for us on Wednesday (after calling her off for various reasons on Monday and Tuesday) and since then Brooke has been getting better and seems in the all clear now.

Of course then Reese got the bug and stayed home yesterday school sick. Both girls were tired and had fevers but no other noticeable symptoms. This was a rare sick day for Reese that she just wanted to watch movies all day, which was A-okay but also sad to see our spunky girl out of her character. This morning she was ready and eager to go back to school so I see that as a good sign and I truly hope we don’t have anymore sicknesses in the family for quite some time!

Chelsea