5 1/2 Months Old

I feel like Nathan has grown up and changed so much in the past couple weeks that it warrants a mid-month entry, just so that I don't forget exactly what has happened, and when.  (I reference my entries SO OFTEN.  Seriously.  I can never remember when my kids have done what in terms of development, and so I'm always looking back at Matthew and Kayla's monthly entries).

Anyways, over the past two weeks Nathan has been acting quite spoiled.  He just loves me so much that it pains him to be left on the floor.  Haha.  It's a good thing I love him 'so much' too.  He spends a lot of time on my hip, but if he's not on my hip, he can be found sitting on the ground.  He has become quite a pro at sitting.  He thinks he's a big shot now because if you try to lay him under his playmat, he cries.  He does not like to lay on the ground anymore...all he wants to do is sit.  It's almost too bad because he had just learned how to roll over...and now I haven't seen him roll over for a week or so, because he's never laying on the floor.  Oh well.

He has also started to show strange, and he dislikes gatherings where there are a lot of 'strangers'.

Nathan has a new facial expression which involves squinting his eyes and sticking his chin out.  It's the cutest thing ever.  I initially saw it when he would complain about being in his exersaucer, but now I've started to see it more often.

Over the past two weeks I have also added breakfast and lunch to Nathan's diet.  Introducing solids always stresses me out because I find there is so much (in terms of volume and selection) that a baby needs to be eating eventually, and not that much time to do it.  Meal times are the most frustrating time of the day with Matthew and Kayla (but mostly Matthew), so I often wonder if it's a nature vs nurture thing...and if it's nurture, how can I do things differently with Nathan?  Matthew and Kayla both were very picky when it came to chunky foods (and they STILL struggle with the texture of rice and ground beef), and so I've been introducing Nathan to chunkier food textures from the get-go.  Rather than feeding him pureed carrots at dinner-time, I just lightly mashed some cooked carrots leftover from last night.  He did just fine!  I'm hoping that this time around I can use less store-bought baby food and more of my own...just from what we are eating at dinner.  Maybe more of a baby-led-weaning approach.  Who knows...we'll see how things go.

Anyways, I think that's it.  Sorry for the poorly written post...it's the best I could do when I'm trying to get random thoughts out quickly so I can go to bed.  At least if I'm in bed I don't have to feel (as) guilty about wasting the latter part of my evening on Facebook rather than being productive.  Can I blame Facebook for the reason that I've once again fallen 2.5 months behind in creating my photobooks?