Here you go, Grandma Ruth!

Cutest school picture ever. We have copies for you when you come in November.

Owen's evil genius laugh

We bought Owen "Monsters vs Aliens" last week, and he's been practicing his evil genius laugh since seeing it for the first time. He also keeps taking imaginary trips to Fresno. We don't have the heart to explain to him what Fresno's really like.

Here's a little video of the laugh:

One more...

"I don't have sunscreen on. I'm a boy."

Not sure I understand the logic there. :)

Words of wisdom

Owen has been cracking me up lately with the funny things he says. Kids just see the world so innocently and concretly.

He was flapping his arms like a bird (Ben had been talking about birds), so I asked him if he could fly. He said, "No. I'm a boy. I have two arms." If only everybody took me as seriously as Owen!

He has also decided that the remote control for our digital frame is a cell phone. The frame works fine without it, fortunately, because he seems to find it no matter where I hide it (and store it in the "trunk" of his tricycle.) He had this "conversation" on his "phone" in one breath with zero pauses. "HelloMr.TophamHattWhatchaDoing?UmIDon'tKnowByeBye"

Mr. TophamHatt= Sir Topham Hatt of Thomas the Train fame.

This morning Owen wanted to jump on the bed in the guest room. We've let him do this on occassion (more like Ben throws him on the bed), but Ben was bringing him downstairs for breakfast. When Owen said he wanted to jump on the bed and Ben said no, Owen said, "Grandma said yes." So it begins...

And that is just a taste of Owen's brain of late.

Chit-chat

I haven't talked much about Owen's speech lately, so I thought I'd do an update on where we're at with it.

If you lived with us, you might almost wonder if Owen is even delayed any more. He talks all day long, sometimes to us, sometimes to the dog, sometimes yells at the cats to get off the table. So he's definitely catching up! There are a few things even at home that he has problems with still, though. He still tends to use one word utterences to get what he wants (ie he'll just say "milk" instead of "I want Milk.") If we prompt him or withold his request, he'll bust out the longer sentence, but it's not always spontaneous. We understand him pretty well, but strangers may only get ~50% of what he's saying, if not less, which is still a little low for his age.

Now if you've seen him in public, I'm sure you still wonder what the heck is going on with this kid. Even at daycare, where he spends 3 days a week, when we walk in the door and I ask him to say "hi," he'll just wave instead of talking. He is more comfortable there than he used to and they say he's been talking quite a bit more. He is still unsure (or shy?) of talking much in public, though. For instance, about 2 weeks ago he came home with a HUGE, purple goose egg on his head. They have no idea how he bumped his head. Possibly when they were outside, he fell and they didn't see it? They're not sure. He never came over to show them. Never told them he was hurt. Nothing. We also can't get a straight story out of him about how it happened (though I don't think that is terribly unusual for 3.)

So what does all of this mean? FREE PRESCHOOL! :) (By qualifying for services, we won't have to pay tuition for the district preschool) Seriously, though, while I think he's caught up (or close to it) quantitively in terms of the number of words he strings together, etc, he still needs support to learn to USE his language. A kid can't go through school never talking to a teacher or other students, right? So, we had another assessment done. They basically take us into a room and play with Owen trying to evaluate his motor, social, and language skills while he plays. Owen had a blast. He "fished" for words. He played in their "kitchen." He went down the slide and climbed the stairs. He ran down the hall, etc. True to form, he used mostly single word utterences with them and they had a hell of a time pulling the 4-word phrases I know he can do out of him.

Now Owen has turned into a teenage girl lately. He LOVES to talk on the phone and insists that we call somebody at least once a day. It's pretty cute because he's starting to have real interactive conversations on the phone (especially if the person on the phone is asking him lots of concrete questions like "what are you doing?" "What did you have for breakfast?") This was a little problematic when I was called for a reference check on a friend who is applying for teaching jobs, but I THINK the person was understanding about it.

No picture, but etched in my mind

Owen has really done wonderfully with potty training. We have occassional accidents (mostly during naps), but I can live with that. It has taken him a while to figure out pulling up his pants, though. I get it. There's a lot to think about: pull underwear up; try not to mush penis; pull pants up; again watch out for boy parts. I mentioned the issue of getting the back of his pants up before, which can still be hard. Well, despite mostly getting the hang of it, he still misses a step. Yesterday it was vital step #2. He pulled his underwear and pants up but came out of the bathroom with his penis sticking completely out of the top of his pants. he he he he.... I tried to help him, but he said "No help me! I got it!" I pointed out the problem and he said "OH!"

Been ignoring the blog...

I never seem to get comments on the blog, so I never know who is reading it.  It's pretty time consuming to upload pictures (and even more so for video!), so it's frustrating putting the time in when it seems to be for my own benefit.... 

BUT....

I just figured out (yes, I'm slow) how to change the settings on the blog so that you don't have to have a google account to comment.  So comment away! 

I promise I'll find some time for some new Owen pictures soon!

Can you tell I've been stuck in bed?

3 posts in a day has got to be a record! Anyway, while I was recuperating in bed from my surgery, Ben kept bringing Owen in to snuggle with me and keep me company. I was a little nervous about it at first because he's a rambunctious 2 year old and my tummy is pretty sore. I told him I had an owie on my belly and showed it to him, and he's been SOOOO gentle with me! Very cute. He lays next to me, pats my hair, and tells Ben "Daddy nap too!"

His latest favorite book is this slide already book that someone got him when he was a newborn. Lots of "woohoos!" and "aaaahhhhs!" so Owen has taken to reading it to US instead of visa versa. See if you can get the gist from this video:

Beautiful Baby

Maybe all parents think their babies are beautiful, but I seriously think Owen is just stunning. I want to kiss him all over all of the time. Since it has a giant prize, I decided to enter Owen in the Regis and Kelly Beautiful Baby Contest because.... well, why not.

If you click here, you can see some of the competition.

I was torn about which picture to submit. My all time favorite picture of Owen is this one from our 2007 X-mas card:


Unfortunately, the contest picture had to be with in the last month. So I wanted something that stuck out a little from all the other smiling cute babies (though frankly most of them just don't hold a candle to Owen :) I was torn between these two pictures.


This one is just an adorable smile and moment, but it doesn't do justice to his eyes, I don't think.This one is adorable, but did I want to send in a grumpy face?

I tried to get some other pictures, but the lighting wasn't very good, Owen wasn't being very cooperative, and I couldn't get a good head shot. The best I got was this:


I went ahead and entered the grumpus shot. I figure if a kid can look THAT cute when grumpy, they'll get how adorable he'd be when smiling. What do you think? Did I choose the right picture?

The things he suddenly loves

Grammy Ruth made this quilt for Owen before he was born. We swaddled him in it a lot when he was little, and it's been in his bed since he's had blankets in there. While he was happy to sleep under it, until recently, he's never been particularly attached to any blanket or stuffed animal.

One day he suddenly woke up and was Linus. He needed to bring it with him everywhere. He wanted to carry it in the car with him, even. Here he is dragging his new love down the stairs after waking up.

He's done the same thing with hats. It was kind of a running joke how hard it was to get him to wear a hat. All of a sudden, even if it's 70 degrees outside, he wants to wear a hat. The Elmo hat I bought for him to wear for his 2nd birthday? Completely ignored until a couple of weeks ago. We're happy about this development because his little white head needs all the protection from the sun it can get.

You'll have to excuse the partial nudity on this one, but it cracks me up. First off, he looks like such a little boy here! Gone are the chubby little legs, hello pointy Ben-like skinny joints!

So Owen's been doing a GREAT job with potty training and will mostly take care of business on his own. He struggles a little to get his underwear back up, though because he just pulls from the front, so sometimes he walks around like this:

Potty time!

Over New Year's Eve, my Mother-in-Law Ruth shared with me that she basically potty trained Ben's little brother in a weekend (out of necessity) by putting the potty in front Saturday morning cartoons. Thanks to TIVO, we've got more flexibility! We decided to try it, and it worked! Owen's been peeing on the potty all week! It's still not fool proof. If he's got no pants on, he'll run over to the potty and go. We need to work on keeping underwear and pants dry. He's also a little constipated at the moment (it's been traumatic for us all, poor guy cries in pain when he goes) We're going to work on poop after we've got peeing down. Very exciting, though!

As proof that he's clearly doesn't need Mommy anymore. Just tonight I was making dinner and heard Owen flush the toilet. He had peed on his potty in the living room (despite my swearing potties would stay in the bathroom, oh and that he'd only have a big potty...) He then picked it up, emptied it into the toilet and flushed. He was in the process of rinsing it out when I got to him. I swear I'm not a slave driver!

I guess now I just have to teach him to drive! Oh, and poop in the potty!

Many of my original potty training thoughts have gone down the toilet (so to speak) this week. One is that I wasn't going to bribe with candy. HA! He gets one M&M for sitting, two for peeing, and 3 for pooping. We've kind of done away with one for sitting, but we're still making a big deal of two for peeing! Every time he pees, we say something like "Good job Owen! You get 2 M&Ms for putting your pee in the potty!" He says "uh, no. One."

Way to be hardcore, buddy!

This post actually mentions New Year's AND the Western Slope!

I have a lot of catching up to do, and I guess I didn't get there last time!

This time I'm starting at the more recent pictures and working my way backwards.

I'll starting with convincing Owen to play outside today!
Owen hates wearing his snow boots and snow pants, but I'm not going to send him out there to freeze his ass off. Usually going outside in the snow sounds something like this.
"Owen, do you want to go outside to play in the snow!"
"Uh, YUP!"
"Ok, let's put our snow clothes on! Come on, here are your snow pants!"
"Uh, no. Outside!"
"Ok, then I guess we can't go outside. How sad!"
[he comes over to put his snow pants on.]
"Great, let's put your boots on!"
"Uh, no. Shoes!"
"No, we wear boots in the snow to keep our feet warm."
"Uh, no. Shoes!"
"Ok, then I guess we can't go outside. How sad!"
[he whines, then he comes over and puts his boots on.]
We continue until we get the rest of his clothes on.

We finally get outside, and then he wants me to carry him everywhere, so he doesn't have to walk in his boots.



I left him standing on the deck while I built a snow man and he FINALLY decided he could come check it out if I held his hand.

Good Lord. I thought kids LIKED to play and fall down in the snow!

Maybe, just MAYBE falling in the snow would be less traumatic if you'd keep gloves on for more than 30 seconds, kid.

So speaking of New Year's.... on New Year's Day we met up with Ben's Mom and Dad in Olathe and spent a couple of days in a hotel mostly hanging out, swimming, eating, and seeing the Fletchers.

Here's Owen playing with Great Grandma Lukie:

Here's Owen and Ben playing in the pool at the hotel. Owen insisted on running back and forth from the freezing pool to the hot tub. I think he was trying to give Ben a heart attack! Sadly he bumped his head, but not until he got to jump in the pool a few times!



New Year's EVE (remember, I'm going backwards here), we spent at Blue Mesa. I unfortunately had the stomach flu (which I passed on to Gary and Steph), but we all had a good time nonetheless.

Here's Owen's cousin (and my first niece, woot!), Goldie, in all her chubby cuteness. I thought Owen was laid back as a baby, but I think Goldie takes the award! She's as laid back as Owen was PLUS, she'll got to anyone! (Unless she's hungry or tired :)




This picture came out decently (pretty mountains anyway!) despite Owen's tantrum over wearing boots.


Steph and Goldie:

Owen was a little wary of Goldie. He didn't want her to touch his toys, for one. I think he secretly liked her, though, see?


All was fine until she dared look at his toys. After that he was OUTTA THERE! Goldie looks strangely satisfied about it!

New Year's on the Western Slope

In 1988, my parents and good family friends bought this cabin together outside of Estes Park. It's rustic--no running water, an outhouse out back, really just one big room with a lean-to kitchen, an enclosed porch, and a loft. Since 1988 when we stuffed the cracks in the walls with newspaper for insulation, we've spent a LOT of Thanksgivings up there. Then all of the younger generation got married, had kids, and it just got a lot more complicated. Well this year we braved it again and had Thanksgiving at the Cabin. There were 15 people in that little cabin over Thanksgiving weekend. Fortunately there was some rotation so we weren't all staying there at once, and it turned out really well. Owen is generally a TERRIBLE sleeper when we travel, so I had been worried about the cramped quarters for about a month before going, but it was fun! He miraculously slept pretty well (could it be he's getting older?), and we had a great time. :) Here's all of the Keller half of the gathering.


I don't remember what we were making here. Brownies, maybe? Anyway, I let Owen lick the bowl for the first time, and he LOVED it.... as you can see from the evidence!

Here are a few pictures of fun playing in the back yard with the no-longer-raked-into-a-pile leaves. I love how the second picture makes it look like there's a ceiling of leaves over his head (we were throwing them on each other, much to Owen's delight.)




Ok, blogger is incredibly slow tonight, so I'll have to leave the update back in November. Check back soon for Christmas and New Years pictures!