Reaching and Grabbing

Nate has been reaching and grabbing for things quite a bit. He isn't grabbing at things so much that I feel like I have to move things out of his way but when he lays on his play mat he grabs the animals hanging overhead and pushes them around or into his mouth. He also grabs our shirts when we hold him or when I'm feeding him. The cutest thing is that he now rubs my side with his hand as he's eating and sometimes rubs my chest with his other hand, usually only at night though.

We had our first 9 hour stretch of sleep but it only happened once. In the last five weeks or so Nate's slept 8-9 hours about four or five times. I'm looking forward to when this will become more consistent. Unfortunately my body didn't cooperate the two times Nate slept longer than usual this week. I woke up around his "usual" time, 1:50 am, and couldn't fall back to sleep. I've also been having a difficult time getting back to sleep once Nate wakes and goes back to sleep. This had been happening off and on before he was in his crib but it's worse now that I'm going upstairs to feed him. I sure hope that this doesn't happen when I go back to work but I have a feeling the first few nights will actually be worse because my mind will be racing.

I have been relishing the mornings lately, knowing that I won't be able to enjoy them as much in about a week. I haven't quite figured out how mornings are going to work when I'm back at work. I think that I will feel most comfortable dropping Nate off at daycare on the first few days so that I can see him in the environment. I also don't want his first feeding of the day to be a bottle, at least until he gets more comfortable with the bottle. So the question is, do I wake him up so that I can feed him and drop him off? When things are "normal", he goes to bed around 7:30-7:40 pm, wakes around 1:50 am and then again at 6 or 6:30 am, and then sometimes goes back to sleep for a few hours. This would actually be a pretty perfect schedule because I'll need to leave around 7 or 7:15 am. I guess I'm just going to have to play it by ear and decide depending on what happens each night and morning.