Stella's 5th Month

I'm getting bigger!

This month brought warm weather, some more firsts, another trip for Dad, and the biggest thing on our agenda... HOUSES!  Stella started out the month with her four month check-up.  As of March 5, Stella now weighs thirteen pounds, four ounces, and is twenty-four and one-half inches long.  As her doctor says, she is "fifty, fifty, fifty"- meaning that she is in the fiftieth percentile across the board.  I could have sworn that she was bigger, but it is still nice to hear that she is progressing.  I have to remind myself that this is the little peanut that the doctors were concerned about gaining weight.

Mmmm... rice cereal!

The trip to the doctors also brought the green light to start Stella on eating food!  This is something that both Steve and I were really excited to start.  We wondered which foods she would like, how much of a mess she would make, and of course, what funny faces would the poor child make as she tried the new tastes and textures.  I promised Steve I would wait, so we did not try anything new until he came to visit the day after her doctor appointment.  To start, we went with the tried and true: rice cereal.  To say the least, we were both impressed that Stella did not spit everything out and make a huge mess.  Mixed with milk, the cereal was nothing too magical, but it was a very different idea from how she had been eating.  We stuck with the cereal and kept coaxing her to enjoy her timeouts from her liquid diet.



Steve's visit was not all about baby food; it was all about house hunting!  We both realized that we were getting closer to Steve officially living in Reno and no longer visiting, so this meant that we needed to get serious about looking for a house.  This meant that his trip to visit his girls ended up turning into a business trip.  Steve was only here for four days, so we tried to squeeze in as many viewing as we could.  This meant that every minute I was not at work, we were scouting out potential homes.  We were determined to find a house that Stella could grow in, that we could have another baby in, that was in a location that we liked, that had the right features; the list went on and on.  Let's just say that by the end of Steve's visit, we were both discouraged.  We could not find a house that fit the description we were looking for in the location we wanted.  In a stroke of luck, we did find a house we were willing to buy on the last day of Steve's visit!  We literally viewed the house and took him to the airport!  But, he left happy because we had found a house.  We put in a bid and crossed out fingers for good news.

Learning about trees with Dad

Go Rebels!

The viewing of houses, stress and strain of choosing and losing them, and a mixture of odd weather brought a delightful treat- I got sick.  This in turn only meant one thing- so did Stella!  Thus, we were hit with Baby's 1st Cold.  It is the saddest thing to have a little baby sick because there is nothing you can really do for them.  I had a happy, sweet, little baby with a snotty nose and a cough.  It was amazing what good spirits she was in for not feeling well.  But, to say the least, neither of us were getting much sleep.  In addition to this, Stella's teething hit an all-time low, so she was definitely struggling through every night. 

Ohhh... can I have some?

Speaking of teething, we found out a new trend for Stella.  On St. Patrick's Day, I decided to have a Guinness to celebrate the holiday.  I could see little eyes following my every move I made with the glass.  I held the glass out to her to let her feel it, and the next thing I knew she was itching her gums on the rim of my beer glass!  This started Stella's new thing- sharing glasses!  If you had water, beer, anything in a glass... she wanted it!  You could actually see her little teeth when she would itch them on our glasses.

And the gums are on ice :)

Between her cold and the teething, I decided that something had to give.  I finally broke down and bought her an amber necklace.  I don't know if this cute little accessory truly does work, but her drooling has gone down and she seemed to be sleeping easier, so I won't question it! Unfortunately, with one success came a failure.  We heard that we had been outbid on the house.  After looking at the appraisal, there was not reason to go any higher than our original bid, so it was time to move on.  And so, we were now onto house hunting for Stella and Mommy, without Daddy :(.  We decided to open up the areas of the city we were looking to try and find the type of house we were looking for.  Stella and I were just starting to recover from our colds, so we got back to searching the internet.

Morning, Mom!

Just as Stella started to feel better, she also started to expand on a previous skill- rolling over!  In the past, I had only see her roll over on her play mat.  She would roll over from her tummy time to get back on her back, but this only happened a few times a week.  Then, she started to look at me or the dogs and roll from her back to her stomach, but again it was something that she only did a few times a week.  However, all of the sudden Stella decided that she loved being on her stomach!  I discovered this new love one night in the midst of our cold recovery.  I was hearing Stella in the monitor, but she sounded a bit off.  Upon entering her room, I found her rolled over, just looking up at me smiling.  It's a bit unnerving to find her in this position when you check in on her, but she sure did look cute!  This became her new thing during the month; every time you came into her nursery, she would be looking up at you from her stomach! 


As the month went on, so did our trials with food.  Let's just say that Stella was not a fan!  Rice cereal was still our main sampler, but she was stomaching it because it was mixed with milk.  The only place to go was into actual baby food.  After doing my research, I found out that we had quite a few foods to choose from.  I decided to start with something that I personally adore and that is fairly bland- avocados!  I figured it would be easy to mash and a taste that wouldn't be too shocking, so I had high hopes.  Stella had other thoughts about one of her mom's favorite foods.  She made faces and sounds I had never seen or heard from my little girl, and it was quite clear that she was not a fan.  The next food we tried were carrots.  I steamed and blended them, but again Stella was less than impressed.

We repeated these two foods, but nothing improved; I decided that I would call in an expert.  One of my coworkers has a daughter that is about ten months, so I figured that he might have some insight.  He suggested that I should mix the foods into the cereal/milk mix that Stella seemed to like.  So, with high hopes I headed down to the grocery store to buy a sweet potato.  I also decided to purchase a Baby Bullet to help me get a texture that I think Stella would be more likely to eat.  After making my first batch of "sweet potato surprise," it was time to see what our tiny critic thought.  Bless my coworker for his advice because it did the trick- Stella ate!  She ate more than I had ever seen, and she actually seemed to enjoy it!

Beautiful day for a run with my beautiful girl!

Stella final change came throughout the month; her little voice started to really come into its own.  We had all heard Stella babble and make little noises, but all of the sudden she was actually repeating us!  Stella would hear tones and repeat the sounds we were making.  The words that she really took to were "hello" and "doggy."  I can't say that either of these would be considered her first word, but man were they close!  She started by mimicking the tone that we used when we said words, then she started forming them into words.  As the month closed, she would even say "doggy" when Gwen and Trigger came into the room!  On a side note, she also became a HUGE fan of both of these dogs :). 





The month ended with excellent news- we got a house!  On a whim, I went looking at three houses on the twenty-second of the month.  By a complete stroke of luck, the first house I went into was perfect!  It was everything we were looking for in a house (minus Steve's three-car garage request) and it reminded us of the houses we loved back in Vegas.  Unlike the last house, we decided to look a bit further away from my parents and branch out to a new area in Reno called Damonte Ranch.  We loved the area and the new development coming up around the house, so we decided that the longer drive to Nonna and Grandpa's house was worth it!  We put in a bid on Friday and heard back on Saturday that it was ours!  It was a bit of an adventure because I had picked out the house and put in a bid without Steve even stepping foot inside.  But, he said that between the video I took and the pictures online, he was definitely on board.

And so, we ended March with many big successes: Stella was eating, talking, and rolling over with ease, and Mom and Dad had found her her first home!  We all felt blessed that she had survived her first cold, and that our hunt for our first home was over.  This meant that we were one step closer to the half-way point in Stella's first year, and one step closer to her dad being with us for good!  Here is our beautiful little giraffe at five months:

March 28, 2012