Dear Lucille: Month Five

This was such a cheery and fun month! You hit a new apex of cuteness just in time for a wave of holiday party dress-up opportunities. I took easily thousands of photos of you this month.

You’re now eating food! I was fretting about the best “technique” and looking up recipes for feeding babies…when you eagerly chomped right down on some homemade guacamole and haven’t slowed down since.

You eat a lot of baby oatmeal mixed with milk and pureed vegetables or fruits. And also bites of bean soup, apple pie, carnitas, beans, mashed potatoes, tomato, apple, watermelon, banana, cranberry sauce and hummus. You love sucking on orange wedges.

When you encounter a new taste, you reel back with a little shimmer, then think about it for a second and lean in for another bite. You’re so cute in your red high chair with a dish towel tied on as a sassy bib. It seems like you’ll be a great eater.

Our system of pumping breast milk has become totally normal. I now pump three or four times a day. With hand-washing bottles and parts, I’ve got it down to less than three hours a day. Since you’ve been alive for 156 days, that averages out to about 19 days total spent pumping milk for you since August. Whoa. It has been worth it, though. You are 16 lbs, 99th percentile in height and healthy as an ox.

I’ve lost 30lbs and am wearing normal clothes in size six. It seems really strange that I won’t be pumping forever.

It’s fun to guess how your personality will develop. Right now you are a very observant girl, you like watching everything happen. You love being at a party full of lots of people talking or a crowded cafe.

Everyone notes that you are very calm and very alert. You’re pretty quiet most of the time – usually with a daily hour of vigorous talking and singing.

You are happiest when you get to spend a good amount of time outside during the day.

You are very interested in board books, especially The Going to Bed Book (“scrub, scrub, scrub”) and Bear Snores On (where the mouse “pops white corn and brews black tea”).

You are still a very good sleeper. Several times this month, you slept for more than 11 hours straight. Your most recent growth spurt has you up to eat twice a night – not bad at all for the dreaded four month sleep regression.

You continue to have the most delicate porcelain skin. We’ve found one lotion that helps keep you protected from the great wide world of laundry detergents. You now insist on sitting up in your bath and playing with toys in the water. You’ve almost lost all of the your little tuft of newborn hair on the back of your neck

Your first Christmas was a joy. We spent it in San Luis Obispo with the family.

You were a bit overwhelmed by your energetic cousins and wouldn’t eat or sleep until we took you away to a quiet room to relax first.

You were very into your Christmas presents of a set of stacking bowls and a light up rattle. You wore a couple super cute smocked party dresses with cute matching bloomers.

We also stayed with your Godfather Shane, whose earlier prediction that you would be “good friends” appears to be coming true. You loved seeing your big Ruddell cousins too!