8 Months

It feels like a lot has changed from 7 to 8 months.  Owen is now on a schedule, sleeping through the night and a total mama's boy.  

As much as I was enjoying the freedom of not having a nap schedule, it became clear that Owen was ready for one.  He now sleeps from about 6 pm to between 5 and 6 am.  He wakes up in the morning, nurses, and goes back to sleep until between 7 and 8.  He is sleeping in longer than he has in quite a while.  Depending on when he wakes up, he takes a morning nap around 8 and an afternoon nap around 12.  The afternoon nap is now pretty much always 2 to 2 1/2 hours.  Being able to count on a few hours to myself in the afternoon is amazing but being home and putting him in the crib at 12 can be tough.  The problem is that if we are out in the morning and heading home close to nap time, he falls asleep in the car, which throws everything off.  That being said, now I know when he will be napping and can plan activities accordingly. 

Owen is FINALLY sleeping through the night!  I feels like such a win because he stopped waking up on his own.  We never followed through with our plan of giving him a bottle at night and I was prepared to eventually bite the bullet and sleep train, but we didn't have to.  I think establishing a nap schedule helped and apparently he was finally ready.  It was a little sad not seeing him from bedtime until morning the first few nights but now that I know what it feels like to get a full nights sleep, there is no looking back!

Gone are the days of Owen laying on his changing table and loving it.  Now is he is monster on that thing.  He is constantly flipping on his stomach and attempting to dive off of it head first.  He screams while we pin him down and wrestle his diaper and clothes on.  Somehow diaper changing quickly morphed from a way to calm him down to a way to make him mad.  

I have thought O was teething for the last few weeks but have now concluded that he is going through a developmental leap and has been needier than usual as a result.  He has all the sudden turned into a totally mama's boy and wants me to hold him ALL the time.  It's really sweet and I love that I'm his main squeeze but it's getting old quick.  My back is sore from lugging him around all the time and I can't hand him off to other people nearly as easily as before.  He often won't even let Ty hold him if I'm in the room.  My arm muscles are going to be ripped by the time this phase passes.

We are continuing to see more and more of Owen's personality and he is pretty hilarious.  He seems to like everyone and cracks up all the time.  He is the grabbiest gus there ever was and tries to get his hands on everything in sight.  We've been attempting to read to him a lot and he seems to prefer eating the books to reading them.  Hopefully that too, is just a phase.

Sadly, Rachel's last day watching Owen has come and gone.  Tomorrow he is off to the new nanny's for a full day.  You always hear about the day your first born gets on the bus to kindergarten and how emotional that day is as a mother.  But nobody warned me about the million ways you have to learn to let go before then.  We are now having a stay at home mom, with a 6 year old and 18 month old, watch Owen.  I was totally caught off guard by how much control I had to render in order for him to be cared for outside of our home.  We've left him with other people but always within our house where I can control the food he was eating, cleaning products used, presence (or absence) of dog hair for him to crawl around in, etc.  I remember reading that being a parent is a perpetual state of letting go and this is a big step for me.  Owen loves being around the other kids and Tiffany is a great mom, I have total confidence in her as a nanny.  I think it is going to work out great and I'm taking my first step in learning that as a mama I don't have control over every aspect of my little one's life, no matter how much I wish I could.