Owen is 8 months old! He's grown so much this month. He seems more like a little boy than a baby. He is WAY into grabbing stuff, reaching for things and exploring textures, flavors, and sounds. From a sitting position he leans waaaaaay over to get something out of his reach. Sometimes he goes a bit too far. There have been many head-bumps in the last couple of weeks. Today, he reached for a new favorite toy and ended up on his hands and one knee.
The Montessori learning approach suggests that children have their own small play space in every room of the house, so we have set up a little play mat for him in several different rooms. Since crawling is just around the corner, we also started to babyproof, though much work remains to be done.
It is no mystery how he is getting so big. He eats and eats. New foods this month included strawberries, blueberries, oatmeal, egg yolks, pancakes (well, one tiny pancake), ice cream (well, one little lick of ice cream) and chicken. His favorite new food, however, is Cherrios. He loves to pick them up, one at a time or in handfuls. He palms them and scrapes his hand into his mouth, then he crunches them up with his gums. Sometimes he says AYE AYE AYE AYE with every chomp. He also eats little bits of carrots, sweet potatoes, avocados, and peas with his fingers.
I left Owen overnight for the first time this month. I went away to the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in DC, leaving him in the capable hands of Noah, Granma, and Gramps. This seemed to go fine, except that a) PAA was not the magical oasis of blissful sleep that I had imagined thanks to a busy meeting, the 3-hour time difference (meaning I had to be in meetings at 5:30 am LA time) and staying up too late with friends.
And b) since I returned, Owen and I have had some trouble getting back in sync with breastfeeding. He's showing a very distinct preference for the bottle over the breast. If he's calm and relaxed everything is fine, but if he's worked up at all, then he gets frustrated that nothing is coming out right away and gives up. And can't be coaxed back. He is also taking bottles much, much larger than what I could produce in a sitting (9 oz at times) so he is coming away from the breast still hungry, which is frustrating for him. We're trying to be patient and work it out. But basically he's getting a lot of bottles. Honestly it is a lot easier to do a bottle these days, unless its the middle of the night and he is half asleep. He's so easily distracted that any tiny sound or new environment makes it impossible to breastfeed, and he never ends up getting a full tummy. Then he's hungry again just a little bit later, gets too hungry to nap, etc etc... it really becomes a vicious circle.
Nighttime sleep continues to be somewhat challenging, although I think he is actually pretty easy in the grand scheme of babies. He wakes up once every night around 3am and is hungry. Our real problems are with naps. He fights every single nap, and when he finally goes down it is usually for only 25 minutes. It makes everyone miserable. He spends more time crying about getting to sleep than sleeping and ends up really overtired. Meanwhile I spend half my day trying to put him to sleep and I never get a break. Many of the other babies I know take 2 hour afternoon naps. This sounds like such a delicious luxury to me... imagine what I could get done in 2 whole hours! I could cook myself lunch and eat it! Or work out and shower! In any case, it is a real problem and one I hope we can find a solution to.
Owen is starting to communicate with us using some basic baby signs. He reaches to be picked up, which I think is the cutest thing ever. And last week he started to wave, sometimes, when he feels like it. Not the dainty little hand opening-and-closing wave that most babies perform, but a great big whole-arm flap. I'm not sure he understands that it's related to hello and goodbye yet. But he clearly understands that all the adults love it.
Granma and Gramps returned home to France last week, after 10 weeks in LA. It's hard to believe how much we all achieved in the time they were there. We will be forever thankful that they were able to come and be so helpful in these critical weeks! Owen misses them very much and so do Noah and I.
I took last week off from work to regroup and get ready for the next big thing. Owen's first day of "school" is tomorrow. He's going to start at a small in-home day care center three days per week. There are just 4 other kids and 3 of them are toddlers, so he will have plenty of mentors as he develops new skills. He loves to hang out with other kids, and he responded very well to the caregivers when we visited (Ozie and Nana). I am hopeful that he'll find it very fun and rewarding!
-- Photos this month credited to Marsha Jones --
