Owen's BFF & Girlfriend, Ella

As of April 1, Owen is out of full-time day care. I was trying to find a way so I didn't have to use the day care at all and it turned out that my good friend, Camilla was willing to watch him. Camilla and I shared our pregnancy journeys together. It was SO amazing to have a good friend understand everything I was going through and to be able to ask each other questions. I will always think fondly of our time together as pregnant mommies. ]Anyhow, Camilla gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Ella. Ella and Owen are a week apart. In fact, I went into labor the day Ella was due. I think Owen knew he'd want to be the older one in the relationship, so he demanded to come out earlier than Ella. :) We decided to let Owen stay with Camilla because we knew she'd love him just like her own and also because Owen LOVES babies. I was actually really sad to pull him from his day care because he LOVED playing with other babies. But NOW…he gets his very own playmate ALL to himself!! It is SO FREAKING cute watching them play with each other. They talk and grab at each other - I see a TON of funny play dates in our future!! Owen is definitely a little handsy…we'll have to work on that. :) Here are pictures of their few days together during my first week of part time work!

Sleep Training

Owen started to sleep longer stretches right on his 7 week birthday. It was smooth sailing with a few hiccups that I can count on one hand up until his 4 month birthday. We were SHOCKED at how well he adjusted to sleeping through the night. Well, his 4 month well-check came around and I found out he was only 13% in weight. Mind you, the pediatrician told me I had NOTHING to worry about, but I was so upset that our baby was only in the 13% in weight! I was determined to change that. So I started to give him a "dream feed" at 10:30. Basically waking him up before I went to bed to give him a feed. Unfortunately, Owen is NOT happy when he is woken up and it didn't always result in a good feeding. This feeding also started to give him trouble with staying dry in his normal diaper. And then it started…our baby that slept through the night…all of a sudden….STOPPED SLEEPING. Period. He woke up every 2 hours screaming and even hungrier than he was before I put him down. It was almost like the dream feed was making him even hungrier and he was trying to tell us he was NOT going to sleep through the night if I was going to offer this feeding at 10:30. Those 2-3 weeks were ROUGH. Tommy and I were at a loss of what to do and could NOT figure it out. We just assumed he was going through a growth spurt and had no clue how to really handle it. No rocking or soothing of any kind would make Owen go back to sleep! I also should mention that we still had Owen's crib in our room at this point - yes we are horrific parents in that respect. It was still cold and I didn't want to put him a drafty room and make his day care cold worse! I had a reason!! Anyways, needless to say, we were getting NO sleep with him crying in our bedroom. We were literally zombies for those weeks. Then my good friend Camilla (mother of Owen's girlfriend, Ella - a post dedicated to her is coming up!) told me she was sleep training her baby because she had been having trouble getting her to sleep through the night. I was shocked at how well it was working out for her, so I decided then and there I would sleep train Owen. I went home completely prepared to do this sleep training business and letting Owen CRY IT OUT. I had enough of not getting any sleep and dealing with him waking up every 2 hours. I started his bedtime routine with giving him a bath and then feeding him. Then I put him in his sleep sack, kissed him goodnight and said "If Ella can do it, so can you." Turns out, all it took was Owen to hear that Ella was being a good baby. He fell asleep that night without a peep. I was SHOCKED. I figured it was a fluke and he just had a long day and was extra tired, so we tried it the next night. Once again, he went down with NO PROBLEM!!! We joke that Ella told him to not cry because it sucked for her. Haha. We've been doing the sleep training for a few weeks now and we officially have a baby that sleeps 9-10.5 hour stretches. On good days, Owen will sleep until 6:30. The earliest he's gotten up since our "sleep training boot camp" is 5:00. Hooray!! Now I'm just waiting for the teething to start up and ruin all of it! :)

5 Months

5 months!!! I have to say…this is by far the most fun month yet! I thought the first month of having a baby and "new toy" would be the most fun, but holy cow…it keeps getting better. Owen is like a little PERSON now! We love it! He is the sweetest baby on the planet!

Every month, I take a picture of Owen next to a stuffed Bevo. The Bevo was one of the first things we bought Owen when we found out we were pregnant. I figured it would give a good collage of pictures to show his growth. As you can see he went from being almost the same size as Bevo to doubling Bevo in size. It is insane how quickly babies grow!!

This month Owen has seriously changed overnight! He took his 5 month milestones and decided to do them all in a 24 hour period. Ok…total exaggeration, but it felt like that. Owen is a PRO at tummy time now. In FACT, he PREFERS to be on his tummy over being on his back. It's funny to watch him play on his tummy because he grunts the entire time. I always feel like he's straining to stay on his elbows and tummy, but he just spends most of his time like that these days! He also sleeps exclusively on his tummy. Well, I wouldn't actually call his sleep position "tummy" because he sleeps with his knees curled up under him and every morning when I change his diaper, his knees are BRIGHT red! It's because he has slept on them all night!! Silly boy!! 

Owen is also mobile via rolling and spinning on his tummy. His day care teacher wrote the cutest note about him rolling all around. He will literally see a toy and roll to get it or somehow army crawl or scoot to get near it. It TOTALLY freaked me out to watch it happen because we are FAR from ready to have a baby that is capable of reaching for things!! We are also mastering the tripod sit. He can stay in that position for quite some time if he manages to sit still (which is rare). He got a little chubbier this month, so his thighs could support the tripod sit. Haha! :)

Owen LOVES the TV. He will literally watch it all day long if you let him. I'm trying to decide if I care that he loves tv or not and we are honestly one of those parents who think everything in moderation is OK. So if Owen is a 1 year old watching tv every few hours a week, I'm OK with that. I just can not believe how much he enjoys it! I know some babies could care LESS about tv, but Owen will watch it non stop! It can basically be ANYTHING and he will zone in on that pretty flat screen tv! Another thing Owen loves these days is Hurley. It's like he woke up one day and realized there was a dog in our house. He will look around for Hurley and literally smile at him. It's the funniest thing!!

We also cut Owen's hair this month. He had these awful "wings" on the sides of his head that I hated. He had rubbed off practically ALL of his hair on the back of his head and only the sides and top of his hair grew in. If he were a girl, I would have literally given him ponytails with the wings he had. I kept begging Tommy to let me cut it and refused and eventually it started to look so bad that he caved. I took three snips, one on each side of his head and one on top and he looked so adorable afterwards that we were so mad we didn't do it sooner!!

We have also started rice cereal! Owen's pediatrician told us to start somewhere between 5 and 6 months when we thought he seemed interested. He started to watch us eat and I figured that was a sign. He wasn't that big of a fan initially. I don't think he really understood the texture of it all and seemed confused. I also used formula to mix in with the rice cereal because the pediatrician told me to not waste my breast milk on it in case he wouldn't eat it all. Well we tried it for maybe a week and a half and he just wasn't really interested. I got lazy one day and instead of making a bottle of formula, I warmed up breast milk to put in his cereal and he DEVOURED that cereal feeding. Since then, we have used breast milk only in his cereal and he LOVES it.

All in all, these past few weeks have been SO much fun! We love to watch Owen grow before our very eyes. Please slow down, sweet Owen.

Changes

Before we had Owen, I always said I wanted to work regardless of the situation after children. This was still the case after Owen arrived, but I was having trouble juggling a job that required more than the standard 40 hours in a work week PLUS getting enough time with Owen. I was completely overwhelmed and burned out from shuttling Owen to daycare, trying to keep up with work and adjusting to everything in general. Tommy and I finally came to the decision that I would work part time. I was really concerned about how it would all work out, but I devised a plan and I was so fortunate that work allowed me to follow through with everything. As of April 1, I will be a part time employee at a job that I have learned so much at for almost 4 years. I was so excited to be able to stay at the company and still play a role in my job. Additionally, I am able to take on a few passion projects to really get my creative juices going. We got a really nice Mac desktop so that I could work from home and our guest bedroom is set up so that Owen can play next to me while I work. It all seemed to fall together so easily. Then the bomb hit…our apartment complex that we have been living at for FOUR years decided to raise our rent an astronomical amount. Ok, astronomical is exaggerating, but we always said we would move if for some reason the raise in rent was more than the cost of getting movers. Well the raise was significant and there was NO way we could swallow the price. I was LITERALLY at my wits end of stress when this fell into our lap. Luckily, my good friend Kristi sent me a few really great listings and we found a house that we instantly fell in love with. It's bigger than our town home now and the bedrooms are gigantic. Best of all, Owen will have a real room (his nursery now is just an odd room off the master bedroom) and I will have a GIANT office to work out of. I am so excited about these changes and can not wait to spend more time with my little man. We have worked out things so that Owen will either be with a sitter or at the day care as a "drop off" baby indefinitely and I think it will really work out. I initially hated the idea of having him in day care, but I grew to love the facility we had him enrolled him. I could tell he was learning so much from the older babies in the classroom and teachers were so great with him. Of course these feelings only appeared AFTER I gave the daycare notice of us leaving full-time care, but at least I know we can drop him off to play with his friends still! Looking forward to new beginnings!!

Go Blue Devils!!

Back in Texas, basketball season was great and all, but football was the sport we were obsessed about. Here in North Carolina, we have had to adjust to realizing that basketball is the obsession. Since Tommy is a Duke resident, our alliance towards the Blue Devils started as soon as we moved here. March Madness is like a state holiday around here. Offices shut down…meetings are cancelled….all to watch a little bit of college basketball!! Much to our disappointment, the Blue Devils lost in the first round of the tournament, but we still had fun dressing Owen up as a cute little Duke fan! :)

4 Months

Our dear, sweet Owen. Please slow down from growing up so fast. I can not believe the milestones you've reached at 4 months!!! Parenthood is by far the most rewarding job any person could ever experience. Though it is the most difficult job, the learning curve is the best part! At 4 months, Owen is the happiest baby ever. All the teachers at day care constantly tell me how sweet and adorable he is. They tell me he talks to everyone and has no problem breaking out into the sweetest smile that could melt any heart.

At some point in the last month, Owen started to turn over. I'd like to think he turned over for us for the first time when we saw it, but I know that is not the case. Having him in day care means you miss a few milestones, but the teachers never let on that it's happening. Owen USED to hate tummy time, but he suddenly learned he can QUIT and turn to his back!! Tummy time isn't so bad these days because he has great head control and doesn't have any issues keeping his head up to look around. He is also turning from back to front. At first he did it by accident while he was crying and arched his back and somehow would wind up on his tummy. In the last week or two, I've actually laid him down in his crib, only to find him turned onto his tummy when I check on him. It scared us in the beginning and even prompted us to look it up in our handy "how to" guide about parenting we purchased. Turns out, once babies learn they can turn, it's much less likely we have to worry about the tummy sleeping!

Speaking of crib - we are FINALLY sleeping in the crib...but we are cheating...because the crib is in our bedroom. We have good reason to have it there though. The nursery we set up for Owen is a room that actually connects to the master bedroom in our townhome. It was set up to be more of a study and doesn't have a closet. Two of the walls in the room are actually doors to the upstairs patio and a huge window that almost goes floor to ceiling. With that said, the room is SUPER cold in the winter time. We moved his crib into the bedroom for the time being until the temperatures start to warm up. He sleeps great in the crib though! In fact, the first few times we put him in there, he slept a solid 9 hour stretch! We had a few days in between where we had to cheat and put him in the bassinet because he was sick and it was easier to have him within an arm's reach of me. On those nights, I very quickly realized he was getting WAY too big for it and needed more room to turn and move around.

Sleep is great in the Gebhard house! Owen typically goes down between 8:30-9 and on good nights sleeps until 6. Every few days he will wake up around 4:30-5 and I will just put a pacifier in his mouth and he will usually go back to sleep until a reasonable hour. I don't know how we got so lucky with a baby that can sleep so well. Don't get me wrong, we have nights where he won't go down easy and wakes up multiple times, but for the most part, he is a SOLID sleeper.

Owen is in size 2 diapers, 6 month clothes and eats every 3 hours during the week and on demand on the weekends. Unfortunately, I went to back to work rather early and have had trouble keeping up with my milk supply. I felt like I was a horrible mother to have to supplement with formula, but I've gotten past that and realized that I have to be comfortable with what I can offer. Owen is a solid eater, but not a big eater. He nurses when he gets up in the morning, gets two 5-ounce bottles at day care, plus a visit from me sometime during the day to feed and play with him and then nurses twice after we get home for the day. He has started to give me sweet smiles while feeding him. It's almost as if he is saying "thank you mommy" every time he looks up and gives me that big grin!

We discovered that Owen is on the skinny side - a mere 13% in weight (14lbs at 4 months), 34% in height (25 inches) and some outrageous number for the head (not really - more like 65% ish). I was really worried about his weight and started to "dream feed" him. I'd basically wake him up (breaking the cardinal rule of NEVER wake a sleeping baby) to feed him after we put him down for the night. That kind of screwed up his whole schedule and sleeping through the night really well. Still trying to work that out! It's like he was mad at us for waking him from his good schedule of sleeping through the night! It should be noted that the pediatrician was NOT concerned about Owen's weight and I basically wanted to see if I could plump up our little man by squeezing in one more small feeding in the day. It seemed to work - he gained a pound in one week from is appointment! Haha!

Owen, we fall in love with you more and more each day and can not believe you are ours to keep! You make us proud to be parents! It is so much FUN watching you grow and learn so many new things every single day!! We love you SO MUCH!

PS: I have tried to always do his monthly photo shoots on his actual monthly birthdays, but this month Tommy was working late on his 4 month birthday. With a partially mobile baby - it was near impossible to get very many good shots by myself. So we had to do a few more when Tommy was around. :)

Dallas Visit

From February 23 -26, we took Owen to Dallas to visit his extended Gebhard family! We had such a blast bringing him down and introducing him to everyone!! We squeezed in time for almost everyone we wanted to see in Dallas. We wished we could have spent more time with everyone we saw! To name a few, Owen met his Great Grandma Esther, Great Uncle Bill, Great Aunt Cathy, Cousin Michael, Great Uncle Bob, Cousin Joe, Cousin Arthur, Cousin Erin, Baby Cousin Arthur, Cousin Tim and Claire and their kids, Joseph, Paul and Lily, and several of Tommy and I's special friends. We also spent a lot of time with Annaliese and it gave Tommy and I a good idea of what things are going to be like in about a year. Basically Annaliese kept us laughing for hours! I can't wait to see a babbling Owen!!

Since we were in Texas, my parents took the opportunity to drive up from Houston to see us. My Mom was going crazy missing Owen and couldn't resist from coming to see him when he was only a few hours away. She cooked all of us her famous eggroll meal for lunch while we were in town. It was AWESOME!!!

Owen was a champ on his first plane ride. He had absolutely ZERO issues with flying. He slept almost the entire way on both flights and never had a major blow out, which was a huge accomplishment in my eyes! Haha! We somehow lucked out and got an entire 3 seats to ourselves on the flight to Dallas and back home. I figured American Airlines didn't want to piss off any of their passengers, so they just gave us an entire row round trip! It was awesome! Unfortinately, Owen only really slept well on those plane rides. His sleep schedule was completely off because of the time change and because we would be out late hanging out with family. It caused some sleepless nights for me and I don't think I caught up on sleep for several days after the trip. I did learn one thing - Owen is NOT a fan of the pack n play sleeping quarters. What baby really likes it? It is like a bad may with steel bars under you! Anyways, we will have to practice napping in it in the near future so that we can prepare for our upcoming trips to Austin and Los Angeles!!!

It was great seeing all of our family and friends in Dallas and we can't wait to come back again!!