5 Months

An abbreviated 5 month post:

• Elizabeth is eating solid foods like a champ.  She has had just about every 1st stage food and while orange veggies are her favorites, she'll eat just about everything.  We have started her on puffs in the last few days and the first couple times she gagged a little but she now has figured it out.  It is sometimes the only way to keep her from attacking OUR food. 
• She may have finally really figured out rolling over.  After doing it a few times a couple months ago and having a span where she was really trying, she basically gave up interest until this past week.  She has now been doing it off and on all week both back to front and front to back and it seems much more intentional. We'll see.
• She can sit up remarkably well, although is not reliable.  Meaning she has the trunk strength but not great balance and even more of a problem is that she doesn't understand that she can't just lean over.  She is always so surprised when she falls.
• She is a very smiley and easygoing baby overall.  The exceptions are when she is hungry or overtired.  Which of course means that she is often a cranky pants whenever anyone comes to visit because she is entirely out of her routine and too stimulated to either eat or sleep regularly.  Her worst time of day is 6-7pm because she really just wants to snuggle and eat and go to sleep and we ask her to put up with our routine.
• She adores her big brother.  Adores.
• She has a bit of stranger anxiety.  A month ago she wouldn't have cared if I handed her to a stranger as long as she wasn't hungry.  A couple weeks ago we went to a work function and everyone wanted to hold her but every time I passed her off, her lower lip would start to quiver and then she'd cry.
• She is still waking up every 2 hours at night pretty reliably.  Every once in awhile she'll do a longer stretch first thing.  The only way we can get her to sleep for a longer stretch after 11pm is if she is asleep in her carseat, bouncy chair, or swing.  It is something about the comfort of the sides around her, I guess.  I haven't gotten desperate enough to put her in one of these just to get more sleep but we've noticed the trend when we left her in the carseat after getting home late with her asleep or when I have resorted to one after fighting to get her back to sleep for over an hour.

It is getting hard to do the block pictures because she just wanted to grab the blocks to eat them.  Here is the best one:

From 2014 April