Andrew's routine at 5 months

A baby's "routine" is ever evolving. After having stayed home with Andrew for 5 months, I'm finally feeling good about this stay at home business. Too bad I'll have to go back to work soon. I'll surely miss these days.

Andrew wakes up around 7:30am. Usually he doesn't fuss when he wakes up. He just lies there in his crib making funny noises. I get up to change and feed him. I almost always stay in my pajamas, because I'm counting on his 9am nap to catch a little more sleep. We play in his play gym for a while and read a little. Sometimes he'll play in his high chair while I wash bottles and pumping parts from the night before. He is usually in a good mood when he wakes up, so this is the time when I can leave him by himself for upwards of 5 to 10 minutes! I try to go to the bathroom, and sometimes even manage to brush my teeth.

Andrew goes down for his 9am nap. This usually involves me rocking him for a little while, or carrying him in a mei-tai while I tidy up the house. I put him down in his crib when he is sleepy, and he will nap for at least 30 minutes, sometimes an hour. I crawl back to bed. When he wakes up, we play some more, and I feed him again usually at around 11am.

Andrew takes another nap at around 12:30pm. If I need to run errands, I try to time it to this nap. Everything out of the house is easier when the baby is sleeping.

I nurse him at 2:30pm and then again at 5:30pm. Sometimes he takes another late afternoon nap; sometimes not. Mark comes home around 7pm. He likes to horse around with Andrew until 7:30pm, when Mark initiates Andrew's bedtime routine. For now, we're keeping it simple. Mark baths him, I nurse him, then in the crib Andrew goes. Usually Mark has to soothe Andrew in the crib, but we stopped picking him up to rock him about a week or two ago. Andrew usually is asleep by 8pm or 8:15pm.

I pump and try to go to bed by 11pm. Mark stays up and gives Andrew the pumped milk, usually at 2am or 3am. Mark says other than the feeding, Andrew wakes up a couple of times a night. Usually the binky is enough to put him back to sleep, but sometimes Mark has to sit there and pat him for a while.

A 5-month old is so much easier than a 3-month old, or even a 4-month old! I hope it gets easier and easier.

the Dish - Success!

I took Andrew to the Dish today. The loop took us 80 minutes. Unfortunately halfway through the walk he decided to cry non-stop, so I had to carry him in the Ergo for the second half of the walk. Nevertheless I enjoyed the weather and the beautiful scenery. I always kind of dread getting out of the house with Andrew because I have to carry twice as much stuff and everything takes twice as long. But I never regret it once I'm out and about!

Andrew - Weeks 17 and 18

For no apparent reason, Andrew's drool production facilities kicked into overdrive last week. They say that this might be because he's teething, but that really doesn't appear to be the case because he's stopped drooling just as suddenly. OK, "stopped" drooling may be a bit of an overstatement, but for about five or six days there you would've sworn he'd sprung a leak.

Andrew - Week 16

Speaking of strollers, Charity got a new toy a couple weeks ago - a Bob Revolution jogging stroller. She'd been pretty excited ever since she placed the order for it back in December. Now that it's arrived, I have to say that it's a marked improvement from what we'd been using before. It's so much zippier and yet remains very stable.

On a related note, Charity's been walking with Andrew to downtown a lot more recently...

Graco Recall

Since becoming parents, we've paid more attention to the product recalls put out by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

C: Can you believe they recalled some Graco strollers because FIVE little baby fingers have been amputated?

M: Well, 1 or 2 fingers are just bad parenting. But 5! Now that's a reason for a recall.

Lullabies

I think we all dig back to our own childhood memories when we have kids of our own. There's a Taiwanese lullaby I love, except I only know the chorus. I sang the chorus to my Mom, and she only knows the chorus too. No wonder that's the only part of the song I know!

Thanks to the great internet, I found the rest of the song. The website even has the song's history. I'd say every Taiwanese person has heard of the song and can sing the chorus. If I had to guess I'd say the song was passed down for generations. Surprisingly, the song was written in 1945. That's like only 2 generations. Heh.

Here's the first verse, the rest of the lullaby and the history can be found here: http://www.taiwan123.com.tw/main_digi.asp?id=59 (in Chinese)

搖嬰仔歌

嬰仔嬰嬰睏，一暝大一寸；
嬰仔嬰嬰惜，一暝大一尺，
搖子日落山，抱子金金看，
你是我心肝，驚你受風寒。

Andrew - Week 15

Everyone's gone and we have the house to ourselves again. It was strange going back to work on Monday after spending the past two weeks at home with Andrew 24/7.