This is Home: All About Cecilia

I want to try to do an update about each of my kids, because it has been so long since I’ve found the time to do it. I’ll start with Cecilia since she is the youngest and is changing the fastest.

She is 5 and a half months old now. She started rolling over this month. She first rolled from back to front. She can roll from front to back now, but she hasn’t figured out how to get anywhere doing it. Instead of barrel-rolling to get somewhere, she mostly flip-flops back and forth in relatively the same spot. She does get around some, though. I’ve left her on a blanket to come back a minute later and find her just off the edge of it. When she sees something she wants she knows how to push with her legs as if she is crawling, but she doesn’t get her arms involved (so she doesn’t get very far).

First day rolling over.

At her check up this month, she weighed 12lbs, 13oz, and she was 25 inches long.

She’s a very alert, very expressive baby. She coos and jabbers and squeals quite a bit. She even growls; in fact, that was one of her first sounds besides crying. She must have liked the sounds we made when we played with her and decided to learn to make them herself. She isn’t as talkative when we are out and about because she likes to take everything in. She doesn’t mind being handed off to other people, but she knows her mommy and daddy really well and comforts for them more easily. Sometimes when Mommy and Daddy aren’t available, she’ll go to sleep when Eleanor walks her around the house. She isn’t quite as at ease when Phaedra and Curtis hold her, but she sure loves them and smiles for them when they talk to her.

Cece started out hating the car and was probably one of our most determined kids in length of screaming protest about being in the car, but she has gotten better about it. Now she has even been known to sleep in the car sometimes.

Cecilia is our little narwhal baby. I say that because, when you first hear that there is a whale that has a horn like a unicorn, it’s pretty hard to believe until you see real pictures or videos of it. Grant and I have had plenty of friends say their babies slept through the night early on, but it was pretty hard to believe any baby would just start sleeping through the night on their own. It was never our experience with the first three. But then we had Cecilia. I think she started sleeping through the night somewhere around 6 weeks old. Our little narwhal.

And for the majority of her 5 months of life, she has slept through the night ever since she started. Now that she’s getting more ready for solid food, she’s been waking a time or two in the night to eat. I started introducing rice cereal last week, but she had an eczema flare up which caused the doctor to recommend I wait another week or two before trying solids again, mostly just to eliminate one of the many variables that could have caused it. So we’re likely to have her waking a few times here and there until I can give her something that will keep her tummy filled longer.

She still has her sweet, baby blue eyes. I keep expecting to see them change any day, but maybe they won’t. What a surprise it would be if we end up having two blue-eyed kids! I even checked my old pictures of Curtis and Eleanor, and at this age, their eyes were substantially darker, if not completely brown.

Cece can find and grab her feet when she wants to. She’s also really close to being able to sit up on her own. When I put her in her bouncer seat, she puts her elbows back and props herself up to try to sit up. She’s actually quite past the stage for being in the bouncer seat. I’m just struggling with giving it up. I’m not sure how I’ll take a shower (and sometimes eat breakfast) without it. Cece loves to sit and rock herself forward and back. She’ll even sit on your lap and lean forward and then quickly push herself back to bonk against Mommy or Daddy’s chest. She’ll do this over and over.

Throughout her short life, she has tried various ways of sucking fingers/thumb to try to comfort herself here and there. She has usually not found it very satisfying. For a while, she was determined to make an OK sign with her fingers, smash it down and try to suck the finger and thumb. That only seemed to frustrate her. Just when I was thinking she would never suck any fingers, she settled on her first two fingers at the same time. Those seem to satisfy her the most, but she still only does it out of desperation. So far, it doesn’t look like she’ll be a dedicated sucker like Phaedra (thumb) or Curtis (2 middle fingers). Considering how we’re STILL struggling with Phaedra and the thumb (she stopped for a while, but then she started up again once school started), I don’t mind if Cecilia doesn’t get too addicted to fingers.

She has a great sense of humor and loves it when we play with her. We all love her so much and are happy she’s part of our family. Even Curtis, who might get a little frustrated at times that Mommy isn’t always quick to help him, is very protective of her. When people we know ask to hold the baby, Curtis is very adamant that they aren’t allowed to keep her, and he will tell them so.

Below is a set of my favorite pictures from the last month, the most recent first. Too many pictures by anyone’s standards except for a Grandma’s (or Grandpa’s) who might be missing having the chance to see her.