Precious Moments

More language ability means more adorableness in general. Unfortunately I forget to jot down a note about most of the cute episodes, but here are a few recent ones.

Owen loves sledding. When we're outside he'll plop himself down on the sled onto his belly and say, "Fas! (fast)". Daddy taught him this...Reuel proceeds to run, pulling the sled behind him, and then stops and whips the sled around 180 degrees and Owen feels some G's...he's learned to hold on (rather than getting thrown off as happened the first two times!) and he shrieks in excitement. He loves it! Once the sled stops Owen says, "Good! Good!" and braces himself for the next round.

Sometimes when Owen puts on a hat, his kid-sized work earmuffs, a pair of googles or glasses (he loves dressing up in all of these things), he'll look at me and say, "Cool." As in...Mom, I am so cool.

Owen is better able to answer yes/no questions now about what he wants/doesn't want and this sometimes helps to evade potential tantrums. Lately, whenever his answer to a question is yes, he says, 'Mmmm' or 'Nnnn' while modulating the tone of his voice quite dramatically. Owen, would you like to go to the library? 'nnNNNnn' Did you have fun playing with your friend? 'MMMmmmMMM!' It's time for a bath. 'No WAY!!' Would you like to have a bubble bath? 'nnNNNN!' It's hard to write the sounds, but you can imagine.

I found Owen in the kitchen yesterday, up on his stool, butter knife in hand, standing in front of the butter dish and surrounded by the shreds of a wrapper from a stick of butter. He had fished a new stick out of the fridge, unpeeled every last bit of paper, put the stick on the butter dish, and had thoroughly stabbed it with the butter knife. When I found him he looked up at me and shouted, 'Buh-ber! Owen!', while poking himself in the chest with his greasy fingers. Yep.


In the crib today for a nap, and soon without pants, Owen spent the majority of his 'naptime' talking. At one point he sounded a lot like an airline stewardess saying, 'Hi! Hiyee! Hiya! Hi! Hello! Helloooow! Hi! Hi! Hiiiiyee!' followed by 'No way! No! No! No Wayyyyy! Hi! Bye! Bye Bye! Hi! Nope! See ya!' and then a round of counting from 1 to 9. It's tough to be stuck in your crib with no toys.

Today I had my first experience with my child sharing a little bit about his day with me, unprompted. We went to our mom's program at a local church, where Owen spends about 1.5 hrs in the toddler nursery. He dislikes going very much, but lately seems to have had a fair time once I go to pick him up. I told him how proud I was of him for playing like a big boy, and asked if he had a good time, sang some songs, played with toys, etc., then we got in the car. About 15 minutes into our trip home, having been quiet the whole time just listening to a CD, Owen starts to talk...

Owen: "Guhl (girl)"
Amy: Girl. Was there a girl in the nursery today? Did you play with the girls and boys, Owen? It's fun to play with friends.
Owen: "nnnNNN. Guhl. [pause] Pull."
Amy: Pull? Did you play with toys? Did you throw some balls?
Owen: "Pull. Pull. Eya (hair)"
Amy: [looks in rear view and sees Owen gently tugging his own hair] Did you pull the girl's hair, Owen?
Owen: "nnNNNnn."
Amy: [restraining snickers; normally horrified, but amused by this retelling] Owen, that's a no-no. Remember we can give hugs, or kisses or high fives or we can share toys together but no pulling hair. You gave her an ouchie and made her cry! We need to play nice with the girl!
Owen: "Pull! Guhl."

Aye, aye, aye. The saga continues. I was just beginning to think that he only did this around me and it was about getting my attention. I guess it's bigger than that. Little girl hair is especially appealing, but Owen is fairly equal opportunity about his victims. Sigh. In any case, I was thoroughly amused and in love with my little man sharing his experiences with me. Now begins the struggle to restrain my instantaneously reactionary nature!

Owen is providing plenty of midday entertainment as usual up in his crib via video monitor. Right now he is pulling his hands in and out of his sleeves saying 'in! out!' and then making himself laugh when he waves hello with his hands in the sleeves. That is funny stuff! Next it appears he is moving onto pooh bear lovey kissing dumbo lovey (they have a history of such brazen PDA) and Mr. Big Bear getting put down in the crib corner and told to take a nap.

Little man's vocabulary has skyrocketed lately, and even more noticeably his pronunciation is really starting to improve. He is starting to self-correct words that he has mispronounced for a long time (e.g., ah-no used to be his word for all done, and now if he catches himself saying ah-no, he'll quickly say 'all [pause] Dun!'). He has also corrected his own name, which used to be oh-oh, and now says 'o-WEN!', with passion and frequency! There are still some entrenched words that don't show signs of changing soon...ee-oh for orange and ee-moh for airplane. But I would be sad if there were no more baby words, so I don't challenge him on those ;) Owen almost constantly narrates the world around him when just he and I are together...add more people and he quickly gets quiet, at least until he has warmed up to them.

Ever since nunu (Grandma Spain) sent him a pack of videos about numbers, letters, colors and shapes, Owen has really been learning a lot of preschool info. The world has come alive with letters! Wow, everywhere we go there are letters to identify! This started out (and still is) very cute behavior, but even his proud mommy tires of getting yelled at in her ear while walking into the grocery store, 'Mama! Mama! Tee! Ess! Tee! Mama! Mama!' Owen hasn't really picked up on those social rules of playing it cool in public, and is just as loud and animated as we walk down the aisle...O! M! A! Three! Four! Five! He gets some sideways glances, but mostly lots of grins from grandma-types :)

We went to the indoor playground last week, and showing off has become a major behavior-motivating factor. Owen was very pleased to sit on the bouncy-thingy and show all the other kids that he knew how to make it bounce by himself. He also wanted to play with/near other kids a lot more than he has before...as long as it didn't involve sharing. Sharing is still Not Fun around here. But knocking over blocks together or throwing balls out of the ball pit together is starting to have some appeal. At least maybe he's not a complete antisocial hair-pulling psychopath... :)

Well, this isn't very exciting material, just some notes. Pictures below of Owen's current favorite outside gear (he pretty much dresses himself and announces he wants to go outside) and dipping into the peaches covered in sugar and cinnamon before they went into the pie crust.

February Fun

Owen as beauty commando. Little man loves my hairband and wears it around the house whenever he finds it.


Showing his well-roundedness, he also adores the jr. tool belt given to us by friends, and filled with real, metallic, miniature tools. The coffee table now falls into the 'rustic' furniture category. Oops.


When it is very quiet, I can often accurately predict that Owen has made his way to the kitchen, assembled his setup of stool, bowl, flour drawer and measuring spoon, and has commenced filling the bowl with flour. He doesn't do too badly. When the fun is done, he runs for his earmuffs because he knows the dustbuster is coming out and it's 'lauwww!' He likes having his tummy dustbusted quite a bit, and it usually needs it.




Today I was doing the dishes and Owen assembled the outfit below and came to tell me he wanted to go outside. Boots, jacket (I had to help get it on right, but he had made a valiant effort), jacket hood on, and daddy's winter hat on top of it. It was 50+ degrees outside today and honestly felt like summer, no exaggeration. We spent the afternoon chipping up the melting ice off the driveway, grateful for the chance to return it to asphalt rather than skating rink status. Owen thought chipping ice with the 'wuhwel' (shovel) was the most fun he's had in a while.


I got out the camera and Owen would stop his chipping to turn around and say cheese, unsolicited :)




Depositing chipped ice/snow at my feet. Thank you!

Mischief is brewing...

Owen has always been a bit of a handful (ahem), but one thing he hasn't been too bad about is getting into things or situations we tell him are 'no-no's'. He's generally really respectful of rules, probably because he loves order and routine so much. If we tell him it's not OK to throw the coasters on the floor, he might look at them with interest now and then, but then he'll look up at us, see our confirmed disapproval of his plan, and he'll back right off. If he has gotten into something especially tempting--like my eye shadow--in the past when I walk in and catch him he startles, knows he's guilty and puts it right down and doesn't touch it again for many weeks to come. This may be starting to change...he's starting to flagrantly touch more and more no-no's in front of my face lately, and is getting pretty slow to reverse his course when he's caught. Time-outs are not new to him, and they're not very threatening to him either...he sits in his spot and sings or talk to himself rather sassily, and when I walk in to retrieve him, he puts a knowingly cheesy grin on his face. Is this working? I have no idea, but for now we're going with consistency. I was recently remembering when my Dad would spank me and I would consciously think, 'This doesn't really hurt and I don't really need to cry, but if I cry and act sad then he stops sooner.' So, maybe Owen's level of emotional devastation over a moment of discipline is not really a great measure of its effectiveness. Just a thought...

This week we've had lots of turning on of the TV, lots of messing with the computer mouse, lots of getting into the flour drawer with a tablespoon measure and measuring flour onto the counter, lots of putting on of brown eye shadow, lots of dental floss unrolling, lots of toy throwing, and a fair bit of kicking and screaming about getting in the high chair, resulting in far-flung food. Not too bad really, but definitely a step up in defiance level from a couple of weeks ago. I caught him a couple of days ago smeared in my dark brown eye shadow...that stuff is hard to get off! Today I came out of the bathroom to find him sitting on top of the desk in the office...had shimmied up the chair and onto the desk. He is also learning to fish food out of the pantry cabinet and refrigerator without assistance. Really overall he's still quite a sweet kid, though, with the exception of transition times between activities...he's never been adaptable, and doesn't seem to be improving all that much, but we're used to that. I can hardly remember when I didn't think 10 steps ahead of every move I make to carefully construct a series of events and bribes which will at least partially stem the all-day tantrum which results if I move forward through my day like a normal person. Example: It's 8:30 and we need to leave the house at 9. Go to the bathroom now so I don't have to leave him in the living room later once he's gotten upset after finding out we're taking a car trip. Mention to Owen that we're going to leave before heading to the bathroom. Listen to Owen scream 'No! No way! No! No way!' while going to the bathroom. Think of a way to pose our trip as something fun that Owen would want to do without lying to him (rarely works). Get coat down off hook (tantrum inducing moment) while telling Owen it's time to take his vitamin (which he loves). Put on coat while dangling the idea of the vitamin in front of him and inching toward the bottle while zipping coat. Get vitamin and lure him out the front door before giving it to him. Swipe him up and quickly get him buckled in before chewing is done. It may not sound all that bad to an outsider, but from my perspective I just long to decide to go somewhere and go on auto-pilot until I realize voila, I'm there! Instead of mapping each tiny detail of the trip...but I'm not really complaining, I have company during my day, even if there is a little price to pay. I have also often tried the 'too bad you don't like it, kick and scream all you want, we're doing things my way on my schedule' approach, but that is even more painful...much more painful.

I think we had kind of a rough day today. Looking back over what I wrote confirms this...I sound disgruntled. Tomorrow he'll be the best and cutest 20 month old there ever was; that's how it goes!

Owen counted to five this week! He's been obsessed with the 'meet the numbers' video my mom got him for Christmas, and a couple of days ago when we were putting markers away in the box, he counted them off as he put them in, all the way to five. I was REALLY impressed. This feat has not since been duplicated :) He also really seems to be getting the association of numbers and addition. I gave him one piece of candy the other day and he said, 'Mo? Mo? Two!' That accomplishment earned him a second piece, indulgent mommy that I am.

Also associated with said movie, Owen looks at his Cracklin' Oat Bran every morning now and gets a big smile and says 'We-wo! (Zero!), Ffwooo (blowing sound), Pop!' In the video, the number zero blows bubbles with a bubble wand and they pop in the air. He also knows the letter 'O', so I'm not sure how he assigns zero to the cereal instead of O.

Owen LOOOVES mediterranean curry flavor near east brand cous cous. He is a fairly picky eater, so this was a big surprise. He ate about half the box in 2 days.

We went to the Mus. of Science this morning and had a great time. We visited the tamarin monkeys first and there was a quiet classroom of ~5th graders observing the monkeys' behavior sitting in the stands. Then we walked in. Owen paid no mind to social rules that would lead one to also be quiet when walking into a room of quiet people. Instead, he started jumping up and down saying 'Bih! (Big!) Tees (Trees!) Ooh Ooh Ah Ah (monkeys!) run! run! Ala! (Water!) Hay! Ooh Ooh Ah Ah! The 5th graders were giggling quite a bit.

Well, my napless one is tiring of his crib sentence for today so I'm going to go release him. I thought sure the Museum would tire him out, but nope. I want to take a nap so badly but I can't manage to do it when he stays awake, my brain won't let me. Alas.