Owen at Eight Months.

Owen is getting so big! Eight months! Here is a little bit about our boy...

The day after he turned seven months, Owen starting crawling up on his knees, instead of army crawling. Now he is so much faster and seems to get from one end of the room to the other at lightening speed. In true baby fashion, he is all about power cords, random bits of fuzz and dust on the ground, and the cat's water dish. Essentially, he wants anything that he's not supposed to have. He's also pulling up on everything in sight, and is starting to cruise around while holding onto furniture. 

Owen is starting to make so many little sounds and is always babbling and squealing. Ma-ma, da-da, ja-ja, etc. are frequent sounds. He's actually starting to say ma-ma a lot more, and I'm wondering whether he is associating it with me at all. It may be too early, but I know that within a few months he will definitely be directing ma-ma toward me. Owen continues to have such a sweet, happy personality. He's still extremely smiley and gives giant open-mouthed kisses. My makeup is never safe, because it seems like as soon as my makeup is done for the day he gives my nose, cheek, or mouth a giant, slobbery kiss. And I don't mind at all- he's just too sweet.

Owen has had a difficult winter so far- he and Dylan both had croup in December and Owen is recovering from his first ear infection. Last week he started getting super fussy, especially during mealtimes and nursing, and he was not sleeping well. I was thinking that he may have been teething, so we were giving him Orajel and teething tablets and wondering why he was still so uncomfortable. My mommy gut was telling me that it might be his ears, and I'm so happy that I listened and took him in to the ped- he had an infection in his left ear. Poor boy! After 12 days on meds he is good as new! 

Owen is still happy, happy, except when you try to do either of these things: change his diaper or get him dressed. Owen does not like to lay on his back, because all he wants to do is roll over and go, go go. He's started doing what Ben and I call "the death spiral." He tries and tries to get off of his back no matter what and gets super angry when you won't let him. Sorry Owen, but you have to be on your back when I change you. There is nothing that we can do to avoid him trying to roll over- we give him fun things to hold (even non-baby items that would normally capture his attention, like hair clips, hand mirrors, etc.) and he still tries to roll. I hope that this is just a phase and he'll realize that his attempts to roll over during diaper change time are futile, and he just needs to suck it up and stay on his back. 

Owen is finally getting back to sleeping through the night- hallelujah! It seems like ever since he had croup a month and a half ago he has gotten into the habit of waking up around 2 or 3 am, but he is finally getting back to waking up around 6ish for a feeding and then going back to bed until around 7-8am. Owen usually take three 60-90 minute naps each day, although sometimes he just takes two if one of his naps is super long. 

Owen doesn't have any teeth yet, which I am perfectly ok with- I love his sweet, gummy smile, and I also enjoy nursing without worrying about teeth. Speaking of nursing, Owen still nurses about 5 times each day- when he wakes up in the morning, after each of his naps, and before bed. I don't think he's drinking as much lately, since some of his nursing sessions have been so short. The milk is there, but it seems like Owen doesn't want to waste time nursing, he just wants to be on the move. Owen is great with baby food and has loved everything that he's tried. He's also started to self feed and gets so excited about Gerber puffs or yogurt melts. I give him little bits of bread, quartered raspberries, peeled and quartered grapes... the boy loves it all. We also started using a food grinder, so that we can grind up whatever we're eating for dinner and feed it to him, as long as dinner isn't too spicy, impractical, etc. 

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the past month: