8 Weeks Old

(Jack & Jared Lewis)

Jackson had his 8 week appointment last week. When we got there, they weighed him and he weighed 11 lbs. That put him at the 50% for weight, he was 25% for height and 30% for head size. He has hit all of his milestones for this age such as following objects, especially his parents, with his eyes. He is smiling purposefully and he has started putting his hands in his mouth. The coolest thing is that he has started talking...cooing, gurgling and making all kinds of fun noises.

He is growing too fast and it just seems like yesterday that he was sleeping all day and eating. He now spends most of his days awake...he only naps about an hour twice a day. While this is not much he is sleeping superbly at night. He goes down around 10:00 and does not wake until about 6:00 am. He eats then goes back to sleep for 2-3 hours and occasionally after eating he sometimes goes down for another 1-2 hours. This is great for my sleeping, but it does not allow me much time to get things done during the day. The good news is that it will work well for feeding him before I go to work.

I cannot believe that I have to go back to work in 2 weeks! I am so not looking forward to it! I never thought I would be so opposed to going back to work. If we didn't have bills to pay I would definitely work part-time, unfortunately, I have to go back to work. We did hear from the day-care we wanted to get him into and he is in. They have an opening that works perfectly with when I am returning to work (October 13th). I am going to work back in slowly and will take 3 weeks to work up to full time. I am really scared to leave him somewhere. Not so much sacred that he won't be cared for, but that they won't care for him as well as I do. I don't think any mother feels that there is anyone else in the world who would be as good as she. Not only is that a worry, but I think about all the firsts I will probably miss...I don't want to miss one second of his growing up and I don't have a choice. This is just the fact of life. There are great things about day care also and I have tried to focus on those things. He will be interacting with other children on a daily basis, he will start formal pre-school learning sooner and he won't be exposed to TV all day long. I just can't even imagine the day I will have to leave him there. I will be ready with my box of tissue and I am only planning on working 4 hours that day.