5 Months

My baby is 5 months old already!! She’s able to sit up all by herself and she’s started eating baby food, she’s only had sweet potatoes and peas though  she’s got the grabbing thing down pat and she’ll try to scoot towards objects out of her reach. She does this little chicken flap thing with her arms when she gets excited and kicks her little legs. She loves to hear the sound of her own voice so she’ll just scream as loud as she can over and over. She especially loves it if you scream back at her. She and Brooks take turns screaming at each other. She LOVES her big brother! She will just watch him with this look of adoration, whatever he is doing and he can always make her giggle! He likes to hold her and it makes me nervous! Sometimes he’ll squeeze her really hard and I’ll get mad at him and he says but I just love her so much!! She loves it when you clap, sing, or stand her up. She likes to balance on Daddy’s hands---NOT my favorite thing. She has found her toes and likes to hang on to them when she’s lying down and she has just recently found her tongue which had got her making all kinds of new noises and she is constantly chewing on her pointer finger. I’m a little more apprehensive about getting her immunizations than I was with Brooks. This is weird because I was so over protective of Brooks with EVERYTHING. I’m way more relaxed with baby #2. I think the apprehension is because she’s not exactly on track with her shot schedule. Our pediatrician was on maternity leave when she was supposed to get her first batch of immunizations and rather than seeing a different doctor, we waited and she didn’t get them until a month later. I know there was concern about spreading them out and such. So I’ve been reading a lot more about them. I know there is a HUGE buzz about them and a link to autism; I’ve never really been worried about it but because the doctor told us there was no proof of a link to it but I never researched it myself either. So I looked into it and read up all I could on it, Now I will say I don’t have a child with autism and can't even begin to imagine how stressful and difficult that must be, but then again I don’t have a child that has had the measles or whooping cough and have had their qulity of life diminished or died because of it. Mumps and Haemophilus influenza type b cause meningitis, which can lead to deafness, epilepsy, and cognitive impairment. Measles can lead to encephalitis, blindness, and death. To me the benefits of vaccinating our children far outweigh the risks. I found on About.com: regardless of their beliefs about the nature of autism, the dangers of vaccination, and the proper target of funding, most parents recognize that immunizing children against life-threatening diseases is something worth doing. Many who get tagged as "anti-vaccine" really want to make vaccines safer, eliminating potentially damaging ingredients and amending vaccination schedules so that young immune systems are not bombarded. Parents on all sides of the debate see themselves as fighting the good fight for their own children and for all children -- and that ensures that the question "Do Vaccines Cause Autism?" will continue to be hotly debated, regardless of what science has to say on the subject. That’s pretty much how I feel. I know everyone just wants what’s best for their children. For me, I choose to vaccinate mine. (After I wrote this the scientist that claimed the link to autism came out that the whole thing was fraud?) What's your take? Here's my baby at 5 months :)





She was crawling backwards and getting stuck under the pack n' play