Cali Kolbergs: 5 Months Old

I am utterly amazed by my little Madeline every day. I feel so lucky that I get to be her mom. As a SAHM I am Madeline's whole world and she is mine. I get to see her first thing in the morning when she is happy and cooing. I get to nurse her and provide her comfort and nourishment. I get to teach her and encourage her every accomplishment from rolling over to sitting up to standing and walking and everything else that will come in the future. And I get to put her to bed every night. What an important job it is to be a mom.

Our little Madsie Mads is now 5 months old. I know I say it every month but she is growing and changing so much! Our little chunky monkey is now 17 lbs and wearing 9-12 month sized clothing. She is developing a very sweet personality; she loves to smile and laugh at her silly Mommy and Daddy. Madeline can roll from her back to her tummy and she's getting really good at pushing up on her hands. She seems to be trying to move around, her arms and legs waving about, but she hasn't quite figured it out yet. Pretty soon though I know she'll be scooting around and we'll have to get to baby proofing. Yikes!

I've also been working on getting her to use the potty. What's that you say? The potty? Yep, the potty. I noticed over the last month that every time I went to change her diaper, she would pee the second I took it off. I had heard of elimination communication (a technique of learning your baby's elimination cues and even going diaper free) but I never thought that it was something I would want to try. Well I decided to try it. I'm not going to do it full time or even stress about it but I'll use it along with our cloth diapers to hopefully help her be aware of her eliminations and potty train earlier. We've been doing it for 4 days now and Mads has peed on the potty multiple times every day. Go Mads!

We've been really busy the last couple of months. January just flew by and then in February Erik went to Norway for his biannual work trip and I went back to Dallas for a couple of weeks. Madeline and I stayed with my dad at his new house in Kessler Park and we had a wonderful couple of weeks spending time with my family and friends. One of the hardest things about living out here in California is being away from my family. When I was growing up, I was so close with my grandma and my uncles and aunts and cousins. They were part of my every day life. I worry that being so far away, Madeline won't have that connection with my family and so it was really important for me to have her spend time with our family. Hopefully we will continue to go back to Dallas every 6 months when Erik takes his Norway trip and Madeline will have a chance to get to know her Mama, her Opa, her Gram, her aunts and uncles and her cousins (present and future). It'll get easier as she gets older and she can remember and look forward to seeing her Texas and her Arkansas family.