10-Month Update

Owen turned 10-months old on Saturday, and it is definitely getting much harder to take a picture of him in our usual spot.  I didn't get a chance to take his picture until right before he went to bed, so he looks a bit sleepy.  

Owen's development seems to be rapidly changing by the day.  He now cruises around using anything to hold onto including kitchen cabinets, furniture, grabbing onto our legs, etc.  He loves standing and moving around the house.  He's been commando crawling the past few months, but he transitioned to a standard crawl on 9/14/13.  I think he finally figured out he could move around faster if he crawled the normal way.  This past week we started standing him up, making sure he was stable, and then letting go.  He can actually stand on his own without holding onto anything for about 5 seconds.  

We brought out the walker for our little cruiser, and he's starting to get used to it.  Sometimes it gets moving a little quick for him and he falls, but each day he gets better with it.  He can walk slowly across the room now taking very careful steps.

I've taken a few random pictures of Owen and myself recently.  The bottom pictures are two of our recent EARLY mornings.  This past Thursday night/Friday morning he woke up 4 times throughout the night and woke up for the day at 4:15am ready to play.  Thankfully the past 2 nights he has only woken up once, so it's not a consistent thing.

Jack and Owen are becoming more and more like buddies as Owen gets older.  They make each other laugh all the time, and with a little bit of guidance for Jack on sharing they can have fun playing with toys next to each other.  

They started sharing a room two weeks ago, and it is actually going really well.  I was really nervous about it, but their ability to tune the other one out is pretty amazing.  Jack normally doesn't even wake up when Owen cries at night.  There was one night where I let Owen cry for 10 minutes two different times since he was waking up so much that night, and Jack didn't even move.  If Jack does wake up he will just look at me, roll back over, and go to sleep.  There has only been one time the first night that Jack cried when I came in, but he stopped and went to sleep when I walked out.  Jack goes to bed after Owen, and Jack likes to talk and play in his bed before falling asleep.  I thought this would be a huge issue, but Owen rarely wakes up and just goes right back to sleep if he does wake up.  Jack will sometimes talk pretty loud and talk to Owen, but Owen sleeps right through it!  The hardest thing to coordinate is naps, because they have to go down at the same time for it to work.  If they aren't ready for naps at the same time I just do alternating naps, but we have had successful co-napping days!  Overall it is working great, and it is so nice to have our room back.

Jack is turning 3 in the next two months, and his abilities and interests amaze me every day.  He is a lover of pretty much any mode of transportation, and we went to a birthday party a little over a week ago at Waste Management.  Jack got to wear a hard hat and vest and sit in a garbage truck, which he was really excited about.  The party favor was a mini garbage truck that he sleeps with most nights now.

Jack's attention span for games/activities is getting really good.  He loves playing a Dr. Seuss matching game, and his memory is pretty amazing.  He is also obsessed with playing Candy Land.  I don't even know how many times a day he asks us to play.  It's become our nightly activity after Owen goes to sleep.  He gets really excited about the colors and is good with taking turns.  I included a picture of him with his sunglasses on below, because it makes me laugh every time he wears them.  He tells me he needs his sunglasses so he doesn't get sun in his eyes.

I've been trying to get Jack outside even more lately so he's tired at night and won't stay up talking in his bed too late.  We've had fun with chalk on our front walkway, the patio, and the garage.  We've also gone to our neighborhood bike park a lot.  Jack is getting so much better on his balance bike, and he's super cute with his helmet.  We have also been building a lot of forts with couch cushions.  We've gotten pretty elaborate with them, and he loves taking his flashlight in.

About 9-months ago I let Jack use the tiny cart at Trader Joe's, and it really just did not go well.  I decided that I would give it another try recently, and the difference 9-months makes is amazing.  He was such a good helper!  He follows directions on where to go and what to grab, and he didn't get in the way of other shoppers.  He also doesn't grab at things he's not supposed to.  When we got up to the line, I went to the credit card pad, and he stayed back to hand the cashier each of the items out of his cart one-by-one.  It was so cute!

I think those are most of the highlights from the past month.  I'm excited that fall has begun with some good activities planned and MOPS is getting ready to start.