Scourge of the Sea Monster!

I'm currently giving Joey a bath. Right now, "giving Joey a bath" typically means "fill the tub with water and let Joey burn off energy by playing" and if I'm lucky I can hit him with some shampoo and soap when he's too busy to notice. The difference in baths between the two boys is amusing. I love it for both though. Joey at Noah's age was content to sit there and either suck on a washcloth or fall asleep, but Noah absolutely LOVES kicking all the water out of the baby tub! He's not still a minute when it's his turn for a bath! I've abandoned the froggy bath buddy because he doesn't need it to keep warm anymore, he's constantly kicking warm water up onto himself!

Joey likes splashing too, but much differently. He also loves screaming, that's not limited to baths though, he screams/yells all the time. I think it's a toddler thing, but it could just be a Joey thing.

Noah is now 5 months old and I'm still trying to figure out how these months have flown by so quickly! He is rolling all over the place, and prefers to sleep on his side or tummy because that's how I typically find him sleeping now! He can push himself up 90 degrees (a milestone we check off at pedi appointments) and Dan even caught him up on hands and knees once so far! He fell right down but at least Dan saw him do it! The two bottom teeth have poked through and the drooling has started back up again so I've got my eye on his top gums. I am counting my blessings that teething has not changed his sleep patterns/habits like it did with Joey. Noah is definitely more in line with other babies when it comes to teething symptoms, he's a little extra fussy sometimes, drooling a lot, and chewing on everything. Joey just chewed on everything and his sleep was disrupted (not to mention he wanted to nurse all. night. long.). Of my two, Noah is the better sleeper so far *knock on wood*. He is approaching the age where Joey stopped sleeping well, so we'll see what happens over the next few weeks. 5 months is an age where they start building "sleep associations" that can take a long time to change if you fall into habits that you aren't always going to want to maintain. I don't want to say "bad habits" because nursing to sleep is a nice way to unwind and reconnect and I don't mind nursing either of them to sleep, but if you want to be able to rock them and just put them down and you're not there yet, around 5 months is the time you want to start moving.

Joey's sleep associations are better than they used to be for sure. We're still co-sleeping (which I don't mind so much since I'm working full time, I get all my snuggles in while I can) and there are nights where Joey wakes up while I'm nursing Noah and has to wait. Sometimes he just lies back down and that's it, other times he fusses, still other times he fusses and gets himself really worked up to the point where Dan has to take him out before he wakes up Noah. There used to be nights where if he didn't nurse the he didn't go back down (and there was almost always a meltdown), so forward progress has definitely been made. We're using our upcoming trip to Georgia to see how well he does in his own bed. I'm not sure how well this will work since his routines will be thrown completely off in addition to already being in a not normal place. I'm thinking if he does well, then great! If not, then I won't completely blame being in his own bed since there are plenty of other factors that could contribute to a wakeful night.

Joey says so many words now! He's in a "parrot" phase where he will repeat things we say but he will also initiate words as well. About 90% of his words we only know what he means because of context because he doesn't say them very clearly but I know that will come with time and practice. Still no real sentences (besides things like "bye daddy") and he has yet to call me anything specifically. He says "Daddy" to Dan and in reference to Dan all the time, but he hasn't said "Mama" or "Mom" or "Mommy" or anything for me. Nada. We have no idea if it's on purpose because I'm at work all day or what. The "M" sound isn't one of his more frequent sounds, but I know he CAN do it (he points to my boobs and sometimes will say "oms" because we call them "nom-noms", he will also say "me" when he wants something). My favorite things he says are things we've been coaching him on and he FINALLY will say now! He does a lot of the typical "what does a cow say?"/"moo!" stuff, so for months I've been saying, "What does a zombie say?" and trying to get him to say "Brains!" in response. He only recently actually started responding to that one, he used to just smile when we said "brains" because he thought it was funny. I will also ask "What does a pirate say?" and he'll say, "Arrr!" because there was an episode of the Backyardigans about pirates and they literally spent the whole episode singing "A pirate says 'arrr'" so Joey learned that one pretty quick.