Don't talk to me 'til I get my Coffee

Not much to say here. Just a good bed-head shot. Guess the boy needs ANOTHER hair cut.

Owen babbles again.

Owen's been eerily quiet the last few weeks. Hardly babbling at all. We were happy to hear his little voice again yesterday as he prattled on about who knows what.

On Friday we adopted a cute little black lab named Cesar. He's 4, so not a puppy. So far he's really sweet and GREAT with Owen. He doesn't know SQUAT in terms of commands and training, but he seems to be learning quickly. I've been obsessed with the Dog Whisperer, so I've been trying to show him I'm the pack leader. This means you're not supposed to shower them with too much affection at first. Unfortunately, nobody told Owen the plan. He kept running up to him to give him a pat all day Friday.

Here are a few random pictures from this weekend.

This is Cesar. I don't have any great pictures of him yet.
Owen and Daddy looking at a plane at the park.

The next three are Grandpa Ken and Owen reading one of Owen's favorite pop up books.

Grandma and Grandpa are coming to town!

Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Bob came to visit this weekend. Unfortunately, they met Mr. Grumpy Crabbypants. Owen woke up at 5:30am (as opposed to 8ish) on Saturday, which means he was a BEAR for the rest of the day. I also think he was teething. Fortunately, Grandma Ruth didn't seem to mind, and still thinks Owen hangs the moon.

Here are a few pictures from this weekend. Also, please oh and ahhh over the new camera. We'll be getting some terrible shots for a while due to the learning curve with more manual options, but hopefully they'll be better in the long run.

Here's Owen clapping for the kitty. He LOVES the kitties still. Kizmet's ok with it. Renly, not so much. He avoids Owen like the plague.
Here's Daddy chasing Owen through the tunnel that connects his tents.

Here's a shot of Owen in the tent. I tried to crop it, but it got kind of screwed up. I need to get some good photo software.

Here's a nice closeup shot.


Here's Owen with the world's most amazing balloon. Dad got this at King Soopers about 3 weeks ago. They put something in it to make it last longer and HOLY CRAP! This balloon may go to Kindergarten with the boy!

Here's Grammy Ruth, Dad and Owen after our fake Thanksgiving Dinner. Despite a few dry-run issues, it was GOOD! Ruth made chicken enchiladas the night before, and we polished off WAY more tasty calories than we should have. Owen was headed towards bed by this point, as evidenced by the thumb sucking and head rubbing.

Here's Owen climbing on his jungle gym, I mean, Grandpa Ken.

Owen's thoughts on snow...

All was well until he tried to go up the stairs on the deck and touched the snow with his hands. "Why didn't his parents put mittens on that boy!?!" Well, his parents haven't gotten around to buying him a snowsuit, boots or mittens. Guess it's time, huh? We squeezed him into this outfit from last year, but it's not waterproof and isn't going to last for long. Of course, given Owen's thoughts on snow, a snowsuit might not be necessary. We did try to put booties on his hands (same idea as mittens, right?) He pulled them right off.

ps- Who reads this?

You see below each post where it says "comments?" If you click on that, you can add comments, and then I know that somebody's actually reading this. It motivates me to post more when I know somebody's checking it out :)

Haloween!

Last year Owen was a pea. It was very cute:
It was also the most ill-conceived costume ever. He had ripped those peas off within 2 minutes, and the costume had no leg holes. Plus, you had to put him in it through the neck, which made it a total pain in the butt to get on and off to put him in the car seat.

Not this year, I thought! I'm going to pass up on the store-bought costumes and just think of something at home. I spiked up Owen's hair, bought a stuffed tiger, found the right clothes, and VIOLA! Calvin and Hobbes. Only problem is, he hates the tiger. Won't touch it. Throws it to the ground when you try to give it to him. Plus, he mostly looks like a kid with funky hair. Oh well! Still cute!

We went to the pumpkin festival at the Botanic Gardens at Chatfield and found some pumpkins for Owen. All the kids were in costume, but Owen's just didn't look like a "costume." Hmmm... Maybe I'll scour the town for a cute baby costume. Everything seems to be sold out this time of year, though. Need something cute for pictures!

Note how Owen is completely ignoring the vital part of his costume (Hobbes):This was cute, I thought! Ben's trying to hold up all 23 lbs of boy to the hole. That's why his head's wonky.

The problem with blocks...

...is that they don't roll. Owen has this toy that we got for him after he became obsessed with it at my friend Kristi's house when we were in NYC in July. He happily pushes the balls in the holes and then watches them roll down the chute. He used to get impatient and try to reach up the hole to grab them as they came out of the 2nd to last hole, but he's learned that doesn't work very well. What he hasn't learned is that OTHER toys don't work well in there. Today he put a ball in and I went over to see why it hadn't rolled down. I wasn't surprised to find a couple of socks in the top row and some square blocks stuck in the chute. They just don't ROLL very well. Poor kid keeps trying, but it's just not working out. It is pretty funny to watch him push the balls through because he really has to muscle it to get them through the hole.

Owen likes bubbles

Owen, Grandpa Ken and I went to the art museum today to see the new annex. (FINALLY!) The building itself is very cool. We started at the top (4th floor) and peeked over the edge to the first floor, which Owen thought was cool. I held him up to the edge and he peered over. I thought for a second he was going to drool on this guy in a wheelchair, but fortunately he didn't.

They had a couple of exhibits that Owen liked. One was kind of like a giant screen saver projected on a wall. You could stand in front of it and make shadows, and Owen liked waving at the shadow boy who waved back. The other was a bubble room. They had light projected on the floor like bubble and they would "pop" if you stood on them. (Well, I think they'd actually pop randomly, but you were supposed to think you caused it. I digress...) Owen wasn't interested in the lights until I picked him up and started running from one bubble-light to another. That caused a big squeal and giggles. He WAS interested in this big plastic bubble you could bang on. He banged on it a lot. Banging is big these days.

You probably saw this coming...

Owen can now show you his belly button, his tongue, AND..... his penis. If you read the conversation below, you won't be surprised by this news. Fortunately, except for diaper changes and bath time, his new skill doesn't come into play much. (At least I hope it doesn't show up at story time at the library or something.)

Here are a few pictures from last week's trip to Gunnison.

Owen was obsessed with the rocks in the parking lot. Mommy just wanted a picture of Owen standing by himself with the mountain in the background, but he wouldn't leave the rocks alone long enough for me to get one unless Daddy or Grandpa were holding on to him. You can see how excited he was by his triumph over Mommy in the last shot.


Doesn't that just scream "Muhahaha! Foiled your plans!"

He was SOOO done with hiking by this point. Unfortunately, I dropped the camcorder on the hill so Daddy had to go back and find it while Owen took a nap. Doh!



ps- Owen has no obvious after effects from his fall last night. He still won't let me look in his mouth very easily, but he has no bruising at all, that I can tell.

Mom and Dad, on the other hand, are scarred for life.

Mommy's little heart attack...

This will be the before picture. When Owen gets up tomorrow, I'm sure he'll have a fat lip for the after picture.

So when Owen gets tired, he gets clumsy. He's walking pretty well now, but his balance is still shaky--thus, the word "toddler," I suppose. He's transitioning to taking 1 nap a day, as he did today, but that usually leaves him pretty tired by late evening. Tonight he was walking around with his sippy cup when he tripped. Ben got to him first and he looked kind of funny. Milk pouring out of his mouth...the red! After a moment of panic, and after ripping him out of Ben's arms (sorry Ben!) we realized that he hadn't lost a tooth or bit through his lip. He just tore that little flap of skin that connects your top lip to your jaw. I considered a stitch might be in order, but it's a weird place to stitch, and would probably be traumatic, plus who cares if your thingy is connected to your lip?

I had blood all over my shirt and so did Owen. I don't know how my parents watched me ride horses for so long. I'll freak EVERY time I see him get hurt, I think. In the moment, I think I was level headed and knew what to do and everything, but it was horrible not being able to make him stop hurting.

UPDATE! The child doesn't even have a bruise. His little flap thing was a little swollen and you can see where he cut it, but there are no outward signs to lead to CPS calls. I can't believe he bled that much and is completely fine!

Poop-a-pa-looza

A couple of weeks ago Owen was going for some kind of record for most poops in a day. It was making Mom and Dad grouchy (lots of poopy diapers) and giving Owen a sore red tush. My usual remedy to this is some naked time. Fresh air seems to have magical healing properties on diaper rashes.

Some of you may have already spotted the problem here...Lots of pooping + no diaper= craptacular idea.

Sure enough, Ben was following Owen around (on the hardwood, THANK GOD!), when I hear "Ugh Ugh Ugh! Owen pooped on the floor!" Sure enough, the boy had left a big steaming pile. We both ran around shrieking in disgust for a second and then got a paper towel and some kind of massive disinfectant to clean it up. Somehow, neither of us thought to corral the boy. Not 1 minute after we (who am I kidding? *I*) finished cleaning up pile #1, Owen grunts and leaves piles #2. More shrieking and cleaning ensues, and once again, nobody thinks "hey, maybe we should put a diaper on him!" I think we both thought he had already pooped 6x that day, he must be done, right? Just as it occurs to me that he might not be done and I go to grab him, Owen runs to the backdoor and poops AGAIN!

Can we really be that dumb?

As bad as that was, today takes the cake.

He dozed off in the car on the way home from the zoo, so I put him straight to bed when we got home. This doesn't always work, and sure enough, I heard him whining a few minutes later. I ignored him for a while, hoping he'd go to sleep, but eventually went up to start our nap routine from scratch. When I got in the room, I smelled poop so figured he needed a change to go back to sleep. I picked him up, carried him to the changing table and laid him down before I realized, wait a minute....

My son's not wearing a diaper! The little turd had somehow crapped his pants and removed one of the velcro tabs from his diaper and stepped out of it. He threw the stinky diaper on the floor (which THANK GOD STILL CONTAINED MOST OF THE POOP!) There was poop on my shirt, on my arm, all over him, on the crib sheets, on my SIDS safe breatheable mesh bumper, on the floor.

I cleaned all of us and the room up, read him 2 short stories and am now sitting on the couch in shock. I think I'll go make myself a drink.

Why do we buy toys?

Owen's toy de jour is an old ATM receipt. He's currently crumpling it and uncrumpling it. Then he sticks it in the hole of one of his toys and pulls it back out. Very exciting! He's concentrating on it very intensely.

I just noticed I haven't updated this in almost a month. Blech. Lots going on in Owen's world, of course. It amazes me how much he changes every day. Sometimes I look back at old pictures and don't even recognize the baby in them. Case in point:
What happened to those fat cheeks?

Owen has a new trick. If you say "Owen, where's your belly button?" he'll lift his shirt and stick his finger in it. If you say "Owen, where's your tongue?" he'll stick it out at you. He knows where his nose is, but it's not of much interest to him, so he's only about 50/50 on pointing it out. DADDY's nose, on the other hand, is great for grabbing and he'll happily show you where THAT is.

The other day in the tub, before he had mastered this new belly button skill, we had a conversation that went like this:
-Owen, where's your belly button?
-No, that's your penis.
-Where's your belly button?
-No, that's your penis...

The very next day, on Ben's bath night, I heard the following conversation:
-Owen, where's your belly button?
-No, that's your penis.
-Where's your belly button?
-No, that's your penis...

If Owen's 4th word is penis, I wouldn't be at all surprised!

They survived!

I spent my first night away from Owen this weekend when I went to Detroit for my friend Kate's wedding. Ben and Owen stayed home, and they both survived in tact! Evidently they had a good time at the company picnic and took a trip to Petsmart, just for fun. Owen enjoyed watching the dogs at doggy daycare, especially since they were on the other side of a gate and couldn't lick his face (his #1 reason that dogs make him nervous.) We THINK he's started to say "dog," but we're still waiting to hear it again a few times. He's been calling all dogs "kitty," and I've been saying "no, that's a dog." Last week when we were having dinner on the deck, the neighbors let their Great Dane out and Owen said "Dah! Dah! Dah!" over and over. Ben said he repeated it a few times at Petsmart, so we think that's word #3. If you're counting, the first word was "kitty," then "cat," and now "dog." Mama and Dada are no where to be found...you can see where his priorities lie!

It's official... He's a genius!

He's currently flipping through my AP Psychology text book while dancing to "Flight of the Bumblebee" It would be one thing to only be interested in the inner workings of the human mind, but to ponder it while multi-tasking? That's a gift.

Owen needs toy lessons

He sits and plays with the push thing you're supposed to walk behind.

He's currently pushing his STATIONARY leapfrog table around the living room.

Now he hit the rug with the table, and he's checking out what's under it.

Found a scrunchie and is back to pushing the table around (scrunchie in hand.)

I just have to say this is one of my favorite pictures of Owen ever. I'm pretty sure he's saying "Dude! Am I French ? Nobody told me I'm French?"Not sure if you all heard this or not, but at about 2 weeks, Owen said "adieu." Who's laughing now? Clearly he meant it.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Owen's weekend highlight. He got up early with Ben on Saturday, and Ben put on some music. Evidently, Owen likes to dance to "Bootylicious." Dancing consists of bouncing up and down a little, but he's already got more rhythm than Ben and I. What can I say? The boy's got big butt and I cannot lie.

That boy is hot hot hot!

Poor Owen had his very first fever. I woke up at 3am when I heard him crying, and could feel that he was pretty hot. (Btw, he wakes up routinely at 3am, so I don't think he woke BECAUSE he was sick, necessarily.) I took his temperature and it was 101.3. It came down some with Tylenol, but stayed between 100-101 all day. Poor kiddo. Fortunately, it only lasted a day and he seems to be better now. I felt bad having to leave him and go to work, but Grandma Lyla took good care of him. Unfortunately the first week of work at a new job is a bad time to take a day off.

He's started walking much better and is braving trips across the room. He'll still hold on to something if he has the choice but is getting more and more adventurous.

Does anybody actually read this?

Owen, zen master...

One last deep thought for today:

Owen just walked across the room and then fell and bit his lip. Poor kid. Learning to walk is hard! He's eating an envelope now, though, so I guess he's over it. Guess I should take it from him before he has an allergic reaction to the cheap glue like on Seinfeld.

Did anyone see the movie "Knocked Up?" Remember the scene the guy's sitting there watching his daughters and says "my girls get more joy out of chasing bubbles than I get from anything in life." That's totally what Owen's like. He was laughing hysterically at lunch today because the cats were under his highchair eating the food he dropped. I should study him and learn his ways.

He's moved on to eating the remote control and a t-shirt (together. The remote's in the t-shirt.) Again, it leading to hysterical laughter. How does he do it?

Rest of 1 year portraits

Note the frequent appearance of the purple monkey in his hand. This is another of his new things. He likes to carry something around with him. One night he had a little plastic stacking cup that he held on to for at least an hour, through his bath and everything. We finally took it away when we put him to bed.

We call this the wide-mouth frog series. He was in that frantic tired happy state by the time we had waited an hour for our appointment, and he screeched through the entire sitting. (Once she stopped attacking him with the big feather duster thing, anyway.)

Up to 10 steps!

SO, last night Owen took 10 steps. Well, it was actually 5, then he paused, thought about crawling, then he took 5 more. I really thought when he started to walk it would be like when he started to crawl--he'd just take off one day. He's been much more careful than that. This is good, I think. Let him start running around when Grandma's watching him. Bwahahahaaa! Ben and I were thinking yesterday how strange it's going to be to just send him in the backyard to run around. We were also thinking we were really happy we had a backyard to send him to run around in!

I tried practicing the stairs with him yesterday again. He's got the hang of going down the one stair into the living room, but he's kind of afraid of the big stairs, I think. I suppose it has something to do with him falling down a couple of stairs when we first moved into the house.

I'm typing this while he eats breakfast. He's having ham and eggs, so the cats are gathered around the base of his highchair. He keeps dropping them pieces of food and then laughing hysterically. He LOVES the kitties. Now he's squealing "kiki kiki." Yes, in case you haven't heard, Owen's first word was kitty. Not mama. Not dada. He's been saying kiki on and off for a month, but I guess we're just not that exciting.

This blog would be a lot more exciting with pictures, but I still don't have my old computer set up in the office, and it's the one with all of the picture software. I do have Owen's 1 year portraits on CD, though, so I can at least show them off. (Grandparents, copies are on their way! Bug Ben about them!)

Welcome to Owen's world!

Since Owen has so many grandparents out of town (and general admirers), I thought I'd start this blog so people can keep up with his day to day activities.

Owen has a couple of big interests lately. One is the Little People Farm that Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Bob got him for his 1st Birthday. He loves to open and close the doors (even more so now that we put batteries in it), and he likes to chew on the farmer and animals. The chicken plays a few bars of "Old McDonald" when you move it back and forth and he's taken to dancing to it. Better yet is making the music play and watching DADDY dance to it.

Speaking of Daddy, he and Owen have a new trick. There are these plastic balls slightly larger than a golf ball that came with one of his toys. Daddy has taught Owen to bounce one of the balls off the hardwood floor while he's holding him. Then Ben catches the ball and hands it back to Owen. It's pretty amusing.