"F" is for five months

How in hell did five months pass so quickly? I'm particularly amazed at how fast it's gone since I've been awake for so much of it. Nah, I really can't bitch too much. We do have friends who have better sleeping babies, ones that only wake once a night, but when Alexander keeps to his twice a night schedule, and takes his nice long daily naps, I'm about as well rested as any parent can expect to be.

Anyway, he turned 5 months old on the 14th of June, and we had his checkup just last week. He got a booster for one of the shots he got last time (the bundled one, I don't remember all the crap that's in it and since he didn't react to it before, I didn't give it much thought this time around) and his vet weighed and measured him. He's packing it on nicely and has grown to a respectable 16.5lbs/7.5kilos and is 28.3inches/72cm tall.

It gets interesting when I plug those numbers into the height and weight charts here in Estonia and then in the US. Both here and in the US he's at a 40-something percentile (44ish I think?) for weight, but the height differs dramatically. By Estonian standards, he's a tad bit taller than average, about the 52 or 53rd percentile, but the US charts place him at the 96th! Quite a large difference.

We talked about his development in other matters (sitting!) and his vet gave the okay to either start with solids now, or to wait till six months as we'd planned before. I know that all these numbers are arbitrary, and it's best to just watch him and start when he seems ready, but I'm sort of dragging my feet on the solids right now. I've got the 6mo thing so stuck in my head, and I'm a bit sad at the idea of no longer being his only source of nutrition (I know, I know, so little of the food will go into his mouth for the first months that nothing will really change) so I think we'll wait and make it a big ole half-year birthday milestone thing. Or maybe we'll give in and attempt this weekend, when Pappa is home and we have a new high chair to try out. The jury is still out on this one.

I realized I have no photos of me breastfeeding him, so I've asked Goran to try and take some in the next weeks. I'm already feeling nostalgic, how pathetic!

The other side of the coin, of course, is that I'm excited to introduce him to all kinds of new tastes and textures, and I love the idea of us sitting at the table together. I've been doing far too much reading about solids and feeding kids (wouldn't be me if I didn't over think and over-research every damn thing I do) so the next big thing is to decide what we'll give him for his first food.

My book(s) and baby vet and online invisible friends have all contributed to my mindfuckery and so I've made this little poll. These are the options, have your say. And I know that you are out there reading this, my little tracker tells me how many people have visited, so vote, dammit!

poll by twiigs.com