Almost Five Months!

Wow, this seems very strange to me.  Strange to write that Dakota is almost 5 months old.  She is still such an angel, and I am grateful every day that she is a part of our family.

I love how when Mason wakes up in the morning, he says, "Where's Kota?"  And then when he sees her, he says, "Hi baby girl, Mason's awake!"  And Dakota gets the biggest smile on her face when she sees him.  They are total buddies and I love it!

In the mornings, Mason likes to read Dakota books.  She likes to watch and listen, but she especially likes to grab his arm and try to eat it.

When that happens, Mason keeps reading and just pulls his arm away.  :o)

I feel horrible because I didn't write down the day of her first laugh!  But she is laughing now - it is sooo cute!  I think it was like May 6th or something.

She laughs when... Daddy bites her belly, Mommy tickles her armpits, or Mason jumps, runs, talks or laughs!

She found her feet!  I love when babies do this.  She is not as limber as Mason was.  We were always able to stick Mason's feet over his head with no problem, but she isn't as flexible, so I wondered when she would be able to see those little feet.  Well, she found em, and they are sooo interesting to her!  :o)

She is eating rice cereal!  Her doctor said I could try feeding her some and the first three times she didn't want to have anything to do with it.  But now she loves it!  Well, not as much as Mason loved it - he would laugh at almost every bite!  But she at least willingly eats it and enjoys it.  :o)

She loves to wake up at night!  This isn't one of my favorite characteristics of Dakota - ha!  At about a month and a half she was sleeping until 5 or 6am.  And gradually she keeps waking up earlier.  Now she will wake up before I even go to sleep (which unfortunately is usually not until midnight or after), and then she wakes up every two hours.  So..... I was thinking she was going through a growth spurt so I would just feed her and hope she would start sleeping for longer stretches again.  Hasn't happened!  The hard part is that she is still in our room in the cradle.  Her crib isn't set up yet (which I told Scott we had to do this week)!  So to let her cry it out for a little while just feels like precious sleep time spent lying awake in bed.  But I'm sure in the long run it would help her sleep longer.  Hopefully next week I will post a follow-up to this current issue and I can say that she is in her own room!