How are my babies 5 months old already?! Overall, the fifth month was SO fun and flew by! I have a feeling the months from here on out will continue to be even more fun as their little personalities continue to emerge. Where to even start with details about this month? So many fun details to share – this will be a long post!

Well, first was Christmas. We traveled to my parent’s house in Iowa to celebrate, and we had so much fun. We had just finished a challenging week of sleep training, and the babies cried less and slept better than they ever had, which was a wonderful Christmas gift :) It was so fun to hear both of them use their voices more, and laugh at all their funny noises with my parents!

I recently weighed them on our scale at home by subtracting my weight, and Abram is approx. 15.5lbs and Madeline is approx. 14lbs.

They have both become SUPER expressive this month! Madeline has become a very smily baby, which makes my heart soar :) I almost always get chuckles from her when I tickle under her chin. I love making her laugh, and would more often except every time I do, she gets hiccups which  means she spits up! So strange! Abe responds to our smiles by flashing us a big grin of his own. He always lights up and giggles when I turn my face away from him and then turn back and say “boo!!” He also loves it when we blow in his face, haha!

We think Abe LOVES the sound of his voice. He’s recently quite talkative, and for a week his “thing” was sticking his lips out and together while blowing out…he looked so silly and always made us crack up! Talk about the cutest slobbery mess ever! :) When we put him down for bed, he often lays there babbling away before he eventually dozes off. I love listening to him, and wonder what he’s trying to say! Madeline goes from making noises with a really sweet, soft voice, to going on and on quite loudly :) She often gets this serious look on her face, like she really wants us to “get” what she’s saying. We love hearing their voices and are so excited for the day these two have little baby babble conversations with each other.

{Photo below: Abe making his funny lip noises to entertain us!}
Reading books to these two has become so much fun, as they become very engaged in looking at the pictures. I enjoy reading them books at the same time – I put one in our vibrating chair and hold the other, and it works perfectly! Their attention is focused on the book for quite a while!

Feeding them this month has become a breeze. Now when I feed one baby, the other one is content to play until it is their turn. Such a wonderful blessing, as this used to be the most stressful part of the day for me.

{Photo below – very normal for these two. Always chewing on their hands!}

A couple weeks ago, Madeline learned how to roll from her back to her tummy. I was so proud of her!! But then, she got so good at it and must have found it so thrilling that she began rolling over anytime she was put on her back…including nap time and nighttime. This posed quite a problem for her, because she can’t yet roll the other way and doesn’t understand that she can just lower her head and fall asleep on her tummy. She just raises her head high and then screams because she must feel “stuck”! She was swaddled when we first discovered this – I went in their room one morning and there she was on her tummy while tightly swaddled. This girl has talent! Since then, we have had many sleepless nights, as she doesn’t sleep well unswaddled. We are hoping she learns to roll the other way soon!

When Madeline is on her back and not rolling over, she often grabs her feet or does mini crunches with her head/neck. In the beginning of the month, Abe was measured for a helmet. If you know anything about baby head shape, his asymmetry measured at 15mm, which is pretty severe. The left side of his head is very flat, due to him preferring to lay on that side when he sleeps. This could be because he was stuck that way in the womb with not much room to look the other way, or it could just be his preference. There were a couple other measurements taken, but I won’t bore you with all the details. A week later, his helmet arrived and we are so thankful he doesn’t seem to care about it. I was worried he wouldn’t sleep well or would be extra fussy or something. He’s done great! Unfortunately, he’s had some skin issues recently, so after we saw a TON of progress in his head even just after 6 days (he set the record at the clinic for the most growth in such a short time!), he had to leave it off for a day and night to see if his skin would clear up. We’re still in the midst of that, and are hoping his skin is not reacting to the material of the helmet. Time will tell! Having him wear it has not been as hard on me as I thought – the hardest part is not being able to snuggle with him or kiss his head. Hopefully he will only need it for 3 months.Abe’s hair seems to be growing at an astonishing rate. I keep asking Madeline when she’s going to grow some hair of her own :) hehe!A very exciting bit of news to announce is that during this month, we were able to wean them from Puramino formula down to Nutramigen, and they seem to be doing well! This is very exciting news because of the large amount of $ it saves us each day!A phrase we often exclaim about Madeline – “she’s a nut!!”, because there are many times throughout the day when she gets so much energy, and it seems like there is just no stopping in sight for her! This has happened many times right before their bedtime, and we just have to laugh and wonder if she will even sleep at all, she gets so wound up! It’s pretty adorable :)

All these pictures were taken a couple weeks before these two turned 5 months, when two photographer friends and I all got together with our babies for a “photo play date” at Jessica’s studio. SO fun, and I LOVE this pic below. It’s priceless :)

Those are all the fun things I can think of for now; I’m sure I’m leaving out all sorts of details! For more pictures of these two in daily life, follow me on Instagram!