Just Jett: Five months old

Dear Jett,

Yesterday you turned 5 months old.

Yesterday you hardly napped at all, but you rallied like a super star. You kept up your smiles and giggles for Great Grandma Quigly even though you looked exhausted, and you should have been, what with all the waking up in the middle of the night.

Tonight you are still awake and it's 10:15. I just spent an hour and a half trying to put you to bed. You finally slept for a minute, laying on your side in the co-sleeper, while I laid my head next to your belly and my hand on your back. But then a butterfly in Brazil flapped its wings and woke you up. Now you're snuggling with Daddy on the couch, like that's what you wanted to do all along, and why did it take me so long to figure that out?

We don't really mind that you're still awake. It's just that we're so tired.

So much has happened. You weigh about 15 pounds now, which is perfectly average - something we like in a baby. Your eyelashes are luscious - you didn't have any when you were born.

You prefer to sleep on your side, and if we blew on you you'd finally roll over. Sometimes you try to sit up and roll over at the same time. I think if you let go of the sitting up you'd have the rolling over part, but you've got the strongest abs I've ever seen in a baby, so maybe you just can't help it. You're hair is coming in slowly, slowly. But your nails - they grow faster than we can clip them. Daddy and I are pretty proud that we haven't accidentally missed and clipped your skin instead, but we can't brag. We usually let your nails grow pretty long before we try to cut them - which explains the scratches on your forehead and belly. Sometimes I bite them off for you, which sounds really weird until you have a baby with long nails, and you try it, just this once, because somebody told you it would work, and it did, and so you try it again, and it works again. And now you're the mama who bites her baby's nails.

Unfortunately I think you're growing out of your co-sleeper, which means we either have to set up the pack-n-play in our bedroom or put you in your crib to sleep. Neither option pleases me. The pack-n-play takes up major floor space, but your crib is in your bedroom - so far away! - even though our apartment is only about 1000 square feet.

You're so strong. Everyone says so. Tummy-time (the bane of so many babies' existance) is no problem for you. Sometimes you lay on your tummy on the floor with your arms folded up under your chest, kicking your feet, eyes looking up at the TV, (until I realize that you're looking at the TV - then I turn it off) and you look just like a little kid watching an after-school special. And your hands, those good little grippers. They grab my hair, my neck, and your own shirt sleeves. You'll suck on anything you can get your hands on. Including my hands.

Your favorite place is the changing table. You love it there. You talk and talk and talk and we pretend we know what you're saying. We kiss your belly and nibble your toes and you laugh and laugh and laugh. We play games there. Like the sitting up game, where you hold on to our fingers and pull yourself up to a sitting position. There you sit, holding our fingers, smiling at the room, like "Hey! Look where I am! I'm checking out the view!"

You drool on everything. We've started putting a bib on you like it's a normal part of your outfit. You can drool through two or three bibs in one day. And your hands are constantly in your mouth and dripping with your drool. I don't know how they aren't wrinkled up like little raisins. I guess they get a chance to dry out every time you get your toes in your mouth. Your toes, which are constantly full of sock lint. It's amazing how much lint those little toes can hold. We're constantly cleaning out the lint so your toes are at least clean when you start to suck on them. The lint shows up in your bathwater: little gray flecks floating on the surface, taunting us.

Speaking of baths, you're a splasher. You usually start out by kicking the water everywhere, and by the end of the bath you've got your hands going too. We learned this the hard way. We used to put your bath tub on the kitchen counter, but it only took you a couple of big kicks to get us both soaked. That was hilarious - the water was everywhere - on the floor, on the counter, on the mail we leave laying on the counter, and all over us. So now we put your baby bathtub in the big bathtub. One of us puts on shorts and a t-shirt and gets in the bathtub behind you to hold you while the other one of us just leans over the tub and sudses you up, which you don't really seem to notice. You laugh and laugh and laugh. Sometimes after your bath we give you a massage. We thought this would be a good bedtime routine, but you have so much fun, it just gets you all hyped up.

Your bedtime routine is always the same, no matter how much we try to change it (which isn't much). You start nursing for the last time around 8:30pm. Daddy's usually doing the dishes because we just finished eating, and you and I are on the couch, nursing and talking to Daddy or watching TV. Around 9:00 I take you into the bedroom and try to rock you to sleep, which usually turns in to nursing you to sleep. When I think you're asleep, I lay you down in the co-sleeper and tiptoe out of the room. Lately you've been waking up about 2 minutes later, wanting to be held. One popular sleep theory says we shouldn't pick you up. But we can't help it. You cry, we pick you up, you feel better immediately. Works for us. Sometime between 5 and 7am you wake up. Daddy gets up and plays with you for about an hour and then brings you to me to nurse. When you're done I lay you in bed with us. You always fall right back to sleep - and stay asleep - when you're in bed with us. The only problem is that we don't sleep then. But we don't mind. We could spend hours watching you sleep. Like Daddy said, you're the best thing we've ever been a part of. Happy Birthday, Jett.