The Zorio Family: Nora Kate at 5 Months

Nora Kate is 5 months old! This has been a wonderful month for our sweet girl! She has been super happy and seems to REALLY enjoy watching her brothers play...and LOVES it when they interact with her! She has started "playing" more this month too! She loves to hold little toys and turn them in her hands just looking at them. Her brothers have learned this and enjoy giving her "baby toys" to play with-especially Carter who will usually pile about 10 toys in front of her!

She LOVES to sit up in her Bumbo seat and watch everything going on around her. I know she will be sitting up on her own before long, because she is very strong! I sit her up on the floor in front of me and she can stay upright for several seconds before beginning to lean.

Nora Kate has also started enjoying time in her exersaucer this month too! More entertaining than all of the bright colored toys on the exersaucer, are her wild brothers which she can see best from her exersaucer, and I think this is why she enjoys this toy so much!

She still likes to relax in her swing, which is wonderful because the boys didn't care too much about their swings by month 5! She likes tummy time as she can hold herself up even better. We still have to time tummy time just right though, at least an hour after a feeding or she will spit up without question. Speaking of spitting up, I had hoped she would have outgrown this already, but she still spits up several times a day. She is also the most drooly 5 month old we have ever had! We constantly keep a bib on her to keep her clothes dry from all the drool! (Thankfully we were given lots of cute bibs as baby gifts!!)

Nora Kate is definitely in the round stage-round legs, round tummy, round little face-and I just love it! We don't have an official weight for this month as there was no check-up or doctor's visit, but she has obviously grown!

We started introducing her some foods this month. She did rice cereal like a champ and quickly learned to eat from the spoon! Then we tried oatmeal cereal which she also enjoys. When we tried banana she started spitting up A LOT more! (We were also feeding her food twice a day, noon and night.) I'm not sure if it was the banana or that we were feeding her too much (quantity), but I backed off, and the spitting up is back down to its normal amount. Now she's only getting "food" at bedtime and no banana just oatmeal cereal mixed with milk. This week I plan to introduce some sweet potato, and see how that goes. Maybe I just rushed her? The first 3 nights we started giving her cereal at bedtime, SHE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT! IT WAS AWESOME!!!!! But now we're back to her going to bed around 8 or 8:15, waking once during the night around 2:30 (but sometimes not until 4:30!), then waking around 6am, and going back to sleep until 8am! Really this only involves getting up one time during the night because I stay up after her 6am feeding, so this is fantastic!

I've been attempting to get her on a nap schedule for during the day, but Nora Kate is not a great sleeper during the day. (This is SO opposite from her brothers who napped great and slept poorly during the night!) I much prefer getting rest at night, than getting chores accomplished during the day! :) The schedule she sometimes does (so I've been working to get her on it EVERY day), is a short nap around 10:15/10:30, another short nap around 2, and one more short nape around 5. All of these are super short naps though....as in 20 minutes! The other day she napped for 45 minutes, and I was amazed! She's just not a napper! Hopefully this will change as she gets older though!

Nora Kate has started doing a lot more "baby talk" this month, making sweet and loud sounds! I love to hear her sweet voice.

It's hard to believe that as I type this Nora Kate is 5 months old and just a year ago we hadn't even shared the news that we were expecting her with family and friends yet....but it's already nearly impossible to remember what life felt like before she was a part of our family. We love our precious baby girl!!