7 Months

Owen's 7 month birthday technically happened while we were in LA, so the pictures taken were a little late. I also thought his bangs were getting too long and took it upon myself to cut it WITHOUT Tommy around. WORST MISTAKE EVER. Poor guy has such a botched haircut and you can CLEARLY see it in his pictures. I'm sorry buddy! Mommy will NEVER EVER attempt another haircut on you again!! We will definitely get professional hair cuts from here on out! I did his first hair cut and it was a success and I was silly to think I could do it just as well the second time around!

At 7 months, Owen is FULL OF ENERGY and ALL BOY. He is SO much fun!! We have a schedule down for him and it works beautifully. He goes down some time between 7-7:30pm and wakes up between 6:30-7am. On good days, he even sleeps in until 7:30 and I thank the baby Gods for such a good sleeper on those days. :) We've been trying to get him to take only 2 naps each day, but he can't quite kick that third nap. He usually naps at 9am, 1pm and again around 4pm. He doesn't need rocking to go to sleep anymore and will play in his crib all by himself until he falls asleep. It makes our job of putting him down for naps and at night sooooo easy. He goes down with a smile and wakes up cooing and talking. Talk about the happiest baby EVER!!

Owen eats like a crazy baby. I tell Tommy this all the time, but boy am I glad that I decided to make Owen's baby food. It would have become REALLY expensive without this commitment of mine. This baby will eat anything. We have tried bananas, apples, pears, avocados, zucchini, peaches, mangos, carrots, green beans and sweet potatoes. I'm sure I'm missing more too. He always makes a face the first time he tries something and is kind of confused by the taste, but will eventually down the entire container. He will eat about 3-4 ounces of baby food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I always pour in a ton of rice cereal to the baby food to thicken everything up too. He also still nurses 5 times a day. I do NOT know where the food is going. He never seems to be full. I also don't feel like he's really getting any chubbier from all the solids. He just keeps getting longer. I keep waiting for more rolls to form, but we still have a long and lean baby. My dreams of a chubby monster are so not happening!

Owen is officially MOBILE!! For awhile he was just spinning on his tummy and rolling around to get places. He is now army crawling. Very slowly, but it is definitely happening. SCARY!! If you put something far away from him, he will find his way to it! He basically never sits still now. He is an EXPERT at his walker. He can steer that bad boy ALL over our kitchen. It's pretty funny watching him run around with it. You can tell he is so proud of his accomplishments. He knows the certain areas in the kitchen he will get stuck in and will avoid those places. Poor Hurley hates the walker and tries to steer clear of the kitchen when Owen is on his war path.

Owen still hasn't developed stranger anxiety. He will still willingly go to anyone and I am enjoying this time. I hope it stays this way. He is always all smiles no matter who offers to hold him! We love it! I don't know if I've ever blogged about this, but ever since I went part time at my job, Owen stays with his nanny Taylor. She mainly comes to our house, but sometimes I take him to her house to shake things up. Taylor's Mom and I work together, so it really worked out perfectly for us. Taylor is a student at UNC and has been such a HUGE help to us over the summer. I love that Owen has someone's undivided attention while I'm at work and I always know he's in good hands when I go to work those 3-days a week. Owen loves Taylor and always gives her the biggest smile when she comes over in the morning. On the days he goes over to Taylor's house, he gives Taylor and Meredyth (Taylor's Mom) the biggest flirty smiles as well. We'll be getting a new nanny for Owen when Taylor goes back to school in the Fall, so hopefully he doesn't get too attached. :(

I can't believe we are in the second half Owen's first year. I better start thinking of what I'm going to do for his first birthday because it is going to be here before we know it! :)

California Vacation

Ahhh…vacation bliss. This week long vacation in California was the most well deserved vacation for us. More deserved than ANY OTHER vacation in either of our lives. After our crazy and exhausting move to our new house, we got onto the plane exhausted and ready to not think about anything at all. I forgot to mention that Tommy passed his oral boards (of course!). He found out the day before we left for California and seemed so relieved to finally know that he had passed. Of course I knew from the beginning that he had passed! ;) So we were both mentally prepared to unwind and really and truly relax!! 

Owen did AMAZING on the plane. We had a 2 hour layover in Chicago and he pretty much slept the entire way there from RDU. It helped that our flight was bright and early, so he was ready for a long nap. We had United Club passes that we could finally use so we sat and waited out our layover there. We even skyped everyone in California while we were there! They watched Owen eat a healthy helping of his baby food I had brought with us! The Chicago to LA leg of our flight was just as amazing and Owen slept almost the entire flight as well. I guess we were up way too early that morning and he was catching up on sleep!

We arrived to LA and thought we were in HEAVEN when we stepped off the plane. We've had pretty mild weather in NC this year and it's honestly been really pleasant, but holy cow….the LA weather was INCREDIBLE. We stepped off the plane and felt like we had just won the lottery!! Most of my Mom's family live in LA, so we knew it would be a good vacation to plan after Tommy's boards. None of the family had met Owen yet and I really wanted my 94 year old Grandmother to meet him too. We arrived to my Aunt's house after a long day of travel and Owen didn't even have a single melt down…until we got to the house! Once we got there, I handed Owen to my Mom and wanted to collapse on the couch. Unfortunately, Owen felt too many people were staring at him and passing him around and he started to cry uncontrollably. I can count on one hand how many times I've truly seen him cry with such fear. I guess he was just as exhausted as us and having crazy great aunts cooing and ahhing and acting cuckoo around him was not the best idea right off the bat!! I felt so bad! He really just wanted his Mom and afterwards settled in after a proper introduction to everyone. My mistake for thinking he remembered Grandma!!

My Aunt (also my Godmom) made an AMAZING dinner for us that night. We got to her house at 5pm (8pm East Coast time) and were starving. We had been eating like crap for the last week with the move and to have a home cooked meal upon our arrival was simply something we couldn't put into words. We ate like royalty! Amazingly Owen was FULL of energy that first night. It must have been those long naps on the plane and just the fresh air that kept him awake!!

The rest of our trip in LA consisted of relaxing outdoors and eating REALLY well. We went to Laguna Beach for brunch one day and took in the views and got some pretty cool family pictures. While we were there, we got to visit my cousin who has 4 kids and they LOVED Owen! Owen LOVES older children who can talk to him. He will straight up laugh out loud when they get down on his level and speak to him. He had such a blast! Since we had so many babysitters, Tommy and I got to escape one night to go to Griffith Observatory and watch the sun set. We also got to hang out with Tommy's cousin Anne and did a day of hiking in Malibu at Point Dume and walked around Venice Beach. Owen spent countless hours outside playing and perfecting his sitting position. 

It was one of the best vacations we have ever taken considering all that we had been through just a few days before. Thank you to our entire LA family for showing us so much love and hospitality. We had such a great time and can not wait to come back for another visit!

We Moved!

On May 24th, 2 days before we were going to leave for our week long vacation to California and 4 days after Tommy got back from Louisville from taking his oral boards, we moved. I don't know HOW we managed to do it, but we somehow did. It was the most stressful week I have ever experienced in my entire life. We had lived in our town home for 3 years and when the letter came to let us know that our rent was going up drastically, we made a rash decision to go ahead and leave. Tommy didn't think we made a smart decision at the time, but I knew in the back of my head we would have to move. For one thing, our old place wasn't laid out in a good way for a mobile baby. I also had a crappy room that was a poor excuse for an office and there was no way I could watch a baby and work at the same time in that room. I envisioned Owen scaling the bookshelf and getting into a whole lot of trouble in that room. So when that letter came, I pushed us to find a good house. We luckily found a really cute house to move to pretty quickly. 

THANK GOODNESS for MANY people who helped us that week. Without them we would not have survived. Between having someone watching Owen and not getting ahead on packing, our stress levels were at the maximum level. Thinking back, I'm not sure how I survived the week without some kind of major exhaustion or mental breakdown. Note to everyone and self: NEVER do this much with a move with a baby. EVER. We had movers move everything, but we had to pack all of our stuff that had accumulated in one place over three years. I told Tommy the next time we move, I'm not lifting a finger. We are hiring people to come in and pack and transport our belongings. NEVER again! The highlight of our move was having Owen running in his walker all over the empty apartment. He's becoming quite the expert in steering in his walker and running really fast in it. Hurley really hates this near accomplishment of Owen's and tries to steer clear. Below are pictures of our first morning post move. Owen and Dad were exhausted. I had to take a picture of it - it was too sweet not to. :)

Mother's Day

My first Mother's Day was absolutely amazing. As the months fly by with Owen, I forget how grateful I am to actually experience being a Mom to this wonderful baby boy. He is truly the easiest baby and such a joy. As a mother, I had no idea how much love my heart could hold for another person. Despite all the hardships of pregnancy, my labor and being constantly tired, I know I would NEVER EVER change anything. Thank you Owen for teaching me all about how to be a Mommy. I am so lucky to have you as my son and to have Tommy as my husband and Baby Daddy.

On Mother's Day, I woke up to flower and my favorite candy. Tommy always knows what makes me smile in the morning. He also made me an amazing breakfast! We had dinner over at Jeff and Meg's house with Jenn and Danny and took lots of great family pictures on our first Mother's Day. Thank you to our NC Gebhard family for making my Mother's Day so amazing. I couldn't ask for a better family!

San Antonio & Austin Trip

On May 3rd, we took Owen to the capital of the good state of Texas for one of my best friend's, Courtney's wedding. We decided to make a long weekend of it so that we could spend some time with various friends. This was a really special trip because we introduced Owen to Austin (the city in which his Mommy and Daddy fell in love in) and also because he had to learn that he had no other choice but be a Longhorn. :) We got to see so many special friends on this trip. We flew in to Austin on a Thursday morning and I wish I could say that Owen was great on this flight. Unfortunately he was EXTREMELY tired, hot and hungry as we boarded the plane in Houston for our layover. We were so embarrassed, but we boarded that small plane with him SCREAMING at the top of his lungs. He is not a crabby baby in general, but if he's hungry or tired, he will LET YOU KNOW. Well, it was about 20 minutes too late on all things and he was NOT having it. I apologized to every seated passenger as we made our way to the BACK of the plane to our seats. Thankfully he settled down after I fed him and we had a pleasant 45 minute flight to Austin.

Once we landed in Austin, we went to have lunch with friends. We met up with Monica who is a college friend of both Tommy and I's and FINALLY got to see her sweet baby boy Harry in person. Owen and Harry LOVED each other and it was so cute to finally see them next to each other. After all, they cyber stalk each other via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram ALL DAY LONG. :) We also got to see the bride for a quick lunch. Owen also decided to DROOL on poor Courtney and left a mark on her new spray tan. Sorry Court!! Luckily the glowing bride was a good sport about it and didn't mind!

We had decided we would go and visit our good friends, the Shermans, during this visit. Johnny and Adrianna are good friends of ours and have three adorable kids. They used to live in DC (in fact they were the first people we visited when we moved to NC) and we've even vacationed with them in Hawaii! Tommy and Johnny have known each other since grade school and we just so happen to have babies only 2 months apart. We joke that their 4 month old is going to be Owen's future roommate at UT since Johnny and Tommy were roommates. They are the new generation Tommy and Johnny!! We had such a nice stay with the Shermans and loved catching up with them! On Saturday morning, they took us to story time and Owen was mesmerized by the lady reading the books. She did all kinds of funny voices and Owen could NOT take his eyes off of her! We loved visiting with the Shermans and really hope we can spend more time with them soon! Thanks for the hospitality guys!!

The rest of the weekend was dedicated to the wedding. Going into the weekend, I wasn't sure how we were going to handle everything. Owen had a good schedule finally and was sleeping through the night amazingly and I had no idea how we could make it work. Luckily everything was easy going…just like our child! I mean he seriously just went with the flow and had no issues at the rehearsal dinner or the wedding itself. I'd step away the day of the wedding to nurse him and everything was easy as can be. I was shocked. The wedding was BEAUTIFUL. I was SO happy to see my best friend so delighted on her special day. I could not be happier for her to marry such a wonderful guy. Owen also got to meet a few of my college friends at the wedding before he zoned out and became too entirely exhausted. I loved bringing him to the wedding and introducing him to everyone. I wasn't sure when we'd get that chance again, so we were lucky to be able to bring him with us. Thank you so much to Court and James for letting us be a part of your most memorable day of your lives. We wish you all the best!!