His Plan, Not Ours: Owen is eight months old!

I'm eight months old!

At eight months old, Owen was (based on our scale at home):

Weight: 18 pounds, 13 ounces, 50^th percentile

Length: 27.5 inches long, 50^th percentile

He didn’t have an official doctor’s appointment this month so all measurements were done by us at home. He didn't gain much weight, but he is crawling around a ton now, so that may be part of it.

Eating:

Owen is still drinking five or six ounces of breastmilk at each feeding. He eats every three hours still until his last feeding in the evening. He eats a meal of pureed fruits or vegetables or rice cereal two times a day, in the morning and in the evening. He doesn't eat as much as the baby books suggest that he should eat at each feeding. He still enjoys apples, pears, peas, and sweet potatoes. This month he has tried butternut and acorn squash, peaches, and prunes, all of which he likes. We have started trying to give him finger foods to eat. He loves Gerber Puffs, a puffed rice cereal-like snack for babies. We have also tried Gerber Yogurt Melts, but Owen choked on them the first time we gave them to him because they apparently don’t melt as fast as the package says. It was very scary so we won't try those again for a while. One time when I was making beef vegetable soup, I gave him some cooled cubes of potato to eat, but he didn’t like them. He is still practicing chewing.

Eating Puffs for the first time.

Sleeping:

Owen has been sleeping through the night most of this month, though he has a tooth coming through now so he typically wakes up once or twice in the night because of that. We still swaddle him when we put him to sleep, but he breaks out of it during the night. Many times we put him in his crib when he is drowsy and we play the bedtime music on a stuffed animal that he has and he falls asleep before the ten minutes of music are up. Other times, we rock him to sleep. He naps twice a day now for anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours. His first nap is typically at 9:30 or 10 in the morning and his second is around 3 p.m. I generally just put him in his crib when he starts to get cranky and turn on his stuffed animal and he falls asleep on his own.

Other Things I Want to Remember:

Owen is wearing nine month and size 6-12 month clothing. He wears size 3 diapers. He still doesn’t have any shoes, but he is size 3. We have tried shoes on him in stores, but it is nearly impossible to put them on him because he keeps curling up his toes.

Owen’s hair is getting thicker and darker. Sometimes he will wake up and the hair on the top of his head is standing up and no amount of mommy saliva will keep it down. His eyes are still a beautiful dark hazel color.

Owen began teething again this month. His top left tooth has popped through, and his top right will probably not be too far behind. He has been drooling a ton and chewing on everything he can get in his mouth. He also grinds his two bottom teeth against his top tooth.

Owen has been “crawling” up a storm this month. He still doesn’t crawl in the typical hands and knees way, but he definitely manages to get around. I cannot leave him for a second unattended now or he will find his way into trouble. He has gotten very fast at his method of crawling. He also frequently gets up on his hands and toes, which we call doing planks, which is an exercise.

Owen babbles more now. He is still experimenting with the different noises he can make. He started blowing raspberries this month and in addition to the “Buh-buh-buh” noise, he has started making a “Puh” sound. He also "growls" at his toys a lot, which sounds like "Errrr...."

Owen is "growling" in this picture.

Owen is disinterested in basically every toy that he has now and prefers playing with anything else he can find around the house. I have lately been giving him various kitchen utensils to play with instead. And when I am in the kitchen cooking or doing dishes, I let him play in the Tupperware cabinet, which is the only one that doesn't have a cabinet lock on it. He is really attracted to cords from laptops, my breast pump, the lamp, etc. and will try to get them frequently. So we have to keep an eye out for that. He recently found the spring doorstoppers and enjoys playing with those so we've removed the rubber tips so he can't pull them off and choke on them. He also likes chewing on the rubber wedge doorstop that keeps our bedroom door open. (I Lysoled it). He has become interested in the electrical outlets, so we have started plugging those with the plastic protector thingies. Owen knows which things he is not allowed to play with and if he sees me coming to keep him from them, he starts crawling faster and makes frantic panting noises as he tries to get to it before I can stop him.

Owen can now recognize our faces in photographs. Whenever we hold him in the kitchen near the fridge, he will look at the photos on it and get really excited.

Owen still loves bath time and particularly enjoys playing with his two rubber duckies in the tub. I also bathed him in the sink for the first time this month, which was pretty cute, but not something I will do frequently. I have started using Aveeno bath products for Owen because I read online that there are two known carcinogens in Johnson and Johnson baby shampoos and while they have removed those chemicals in some countries, the company has yet to do it in the United States.