Project 857- July 11

This Saturday.... Daddy and Austin were away so BoBo and I had lots of time to play!

It was Neal's annual boy's golf trip weekend, so we had Austin go down to my parent's for the weekend since we thought it would be good timing for him to spend some time down there. If you all have forgotten, Gramma and Grampa's is the Land of Popsicles, Chocolate Milk, and Marshmallows.

He has been very vocal in the fact that he NEVER wants to leave there. :-)

So it was just me and the babe all weekend and it was really nice.

Definitely one of the hardest things about having more than one kid is being able to spend quality time with each kid. Owen gets carried around a lot, or just left to wander the house and play a lot... so having a whole weekend to just cuddle him, talk to him, bond with him... was amazing.

I think he really liked having Mommy all to himself too.

We didn't leave the house... we played, watched Shark Week (yes!!! I love Shark Week!!!) and talked about "oohhh... that's a big shark!!" and ate lots of food.

We spent some time being naked (ok, him not me) and going through brother's stuff since he wasn't there to say "no Baby Owen!!!!"

Brother's stuff is just so much fun...

I just love my little munchkin... he's such a funny, curious, affectionate little guy...

Saturday night Auntie Sarah and Auntie Kenzie came over for pizza and salad and wine! It was a great little lowkey girl's night after Owen went to bed!

We definitely missed Daddy and brother though, and were so happy to see them Sunday!!

Baby Owen- 11 months

We are closing in on the first year!!!

Craziness...

Here is Owen at 11 months!

Growing

-Weighs about 23lbs (this is a guess)

-Has 2 1/2 teeth! His 2 bottom, then 1 top tooth is just a bit poked through!

-Wears 12 month clothes.. not quite into 18 month yet. I haven't noticed a ton of difference in growth in the last month. He still fits into the same clothes and feels the same when you hold him. 

-He has said "Mama"!!!! He was in his highchair eating one morning and I was upstairs and Neal took him out of his chair and said he looked around going "Mama? Mama?" Super cute!!! 

-He is walking! Oh man is he ever walking. He never crawls anymore, and is just all over the place. Chasing big brother, or the dog, or just doing laps around the house. 

-He can kinda sign "more" when eating.. he flaps his hands together and I'm counting that. He also claps for himself, and points to things. He isn't waving yet, but when we say "wave bye bye" he'll put an arm out toward that person. So not quite.. but close. 

-Owen is a climber. Tries to climb on the couch, on tables, on chairs, the fireplace at my parent's house.. he is all about trying to climb on and over things. 

-Started throwing tantrums!!! Austin started around this age too. Yesterday he was in the pantry and I picked him up and set him down and closed the pantry door. Oh man... he started kicking his legs and flailing his arms and crying!! Oh boy.. here we go!!!!

-Is still easily congested and we have to use his nebulizer occasionally. Nothing scary since that one trip to Urgent Care, but hearing him cough or be congested is just part of him now. 

Eating

-Food is still his #1. He is completely off purees, and will probably be off bottles soon too. His teachers tell me often that he has little interest in his bottles and only wants food. We rarely give him a bottle at home too, mostly we make formula in his sippy cup and give it to him that way. Really his only sit-down bottle is at bedtime. 

-Still loves anything and everything we give him.. even lemons and pickles, but he is a fruit kid for sure. He'll gobble up his berries first and then want more and more and more. 

-He likes crackers too, and loves to wander around with them.. usually dunking them in the dog's water bowl before eating them. Kids are so gross sometimes. 

Sleeping

-I think we are on the verge of a sleep transition.. probably to 1 nap a day. He will be in the Wobbler room soon at school and those older babies are 1 nap a day. His morning nap is usually the big nap, and an afternoon nap doesn't always happen, or it will be much shorter. 

-We started putting him to bed later.. between 7:30-8:00. He was waking up REALLY early.. like 4:30am and babbling in his crib. "bah! Blah bah!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" We'd leave him in there and sometimes he'd fall back asleep, but other times he wouldn't. I'm thinking on days he does get 2 solid naps.. he wasn't needing as much night sleep so he'd pop awake really early. So on those days we put him down later and he sleeps until we get him up at 6:30. MUCH nicer. 

-After all the sleepless nights and months of waking many times... this kid has turned into an awesome sleeper. He goes right down at night and doesn't cry.. hardly ever wakes, and is good at putting himself back to sleep. Now if only I could get those 7 months of sleep deprivation back.. 

Playing

-Owen loves the water. LOVES. It's been great that the summer is so hot since we've had the pool out a lot. He is eager to get in, doesn't care how cold it is... he is ALL ABOUT it. 

"I'm going swimming!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Outta my way.. heading to the pool!!!"

-Really, he just loves to be outside, period. If he's stuck inside and brother and Daddy are outside, he stands and bangs on the door, wanting to be out with them!

-He is really into handing you things. In the morning he'll sweetly hand me his binky, once he put it in my mouth... and he hands you food, toys, his bottle, tissues, whatever. One day I told him to go hand a shoe to Daddy, so he walked over to Neal, handed it to him, then turned around and pointed back at me like "dis came from Mommy." Then Neal told him to bring it back to me, so he did and pointed back at Neal when he got to me. 

-He even brought me his dirty diaper that was laying on the floor one day. How sweet. 

"Here Mommy, you need a tissue??"

"Lady, throw dis thing away!!!"

-He loves music and any toy that plays music, or if we ever sing a song, he will bob his head and groove and move his little body!

-He is really into putting things into things, and then dumping them out, and putting them back in. So boxes, and bins are great toys for him because he will fill them up with blocks or small toys.. dump them out.. and then put them all back in again. He also can sit for quite awhile and pull apart blocks that connect together. You stick them together and then he's happy to pull them all apart. Repeat. 

"Dis Elmo container is empty.. I'll fix that!"

Put the blocks in, dump them out.. 

-This one.. this one is Trouble. With a capital "T." He's busy like Austin was.. but with a side of naughty. He's into the dog food, the dog water, he keeps opening the lid to the trash, trying to open cupboards, he pulled a doily on a side table at my parents that had a lamp on it and sent the lamp flying. He grabs at anything that he can reach, grabs and rips paper, tries to get into the recycling.. he's just mischievous.  

-He is still really into me and grabs my face, pulls my hair.... he gets fussy if it's been awhile since I've held him. He also pinches the back of my left arm since I hold him on that side and has left a big bruise. Anytime I pick him up, he starts pinching the back of my arm. 

-We are working really hard on being gentle since he's pretty aggressive in his affections toward me, Daddy, brother, the dog... smacks and scratches are his love language. 

Overall, this kid is amazing. Funny, smart, full of big smiles... a little naughty but still wants to be held and put his head on you for cuddles. We really can't imagine life without him!

Project 857- July 4th!!!!

Well, we had quite the fun 4th of July!

Not my most favorite holiday since having kids... the loud booming at night and disrupted/crappy/non-existent sleep when you have little ones just sucks the fun out of the holiday for me.

We waited until the 11th hour to make plans.. and frankly we didn't have any so we went over to Neal's parents for a BBQ and to let Austin do some fireworks.

We had the whole day to waste before we went over there... so we went to the firework stand and picked out some goodies...

Such a haul!!!!

In fact I think we bought like 6 fireworks.. but he acted like it was quite the bag of loot!

Then the boys played "train" on the couch with Daddy. Which means Austin makes everyone sit on the couch.

Then we took some silly selfies..

Then we had lunch and sat in really small chairs..

Then we looked for bugs that we saw crawl in between the slats of the deck..

Then we actually got Austin down for a nap!!! He never naps on the weekends anymore... but we told him doing fireworks meant staying up late, and that meant we needed a nap. Owen went down for his afternoon nap, and Austin and Neal and I laid in our bed and we all fell asleep.

#glorious

And the whole house napping at once??? I'm sure that will never happen again.

Then we were off to Poppa and Pete's... we BBQ'd sausages and had salad and corn and cherry pie for dessert. Pretty American, huh?

The kiddie pool was filled up and not surprisingly, Owen was the first one in. Fully clothed. And Austin went in naked. Also not surprised about that one... he seems to find swimsuits personally offensive.

The nakedness continued into the house and Austin decided to do some naked yoga while wearing velcro paddle ball mitts on his feet.

The weirdness is strong in that one... I tell ya.

We convinced Austin to at least put on some shorts and we went out while it was still light and did some poppers! You know those things you throw on the ground and they snap? Snappers? Poppers? Snap-its? Something like that.

Owen was trying on Neal's hat and being fabulous!!!

We got Owen ready for bed and remembered that we wanted to take some family pics! The last time that the four of us posed together as a family was (I think) Halloween. How sad is that?? We are so bad at getting pictures of our little family unit.

And we got Poppa and Pete's little family unit too..

We decided to sleep over since we wanted to be up late for fireworks, so Owen went to bed in his Pak-n-Play and it was just getting dark enough to do the real fireworks!

Austin found a latex glove somewhere and insisted on wearing it. And called it his "safety glove" and.... again, the weirdness in that one...

This is Austin and Daddy confirming they just had the talk about firework safety! Austin had a blast running out into the street to watch Neal light the firework, then yelling "Yikes!!! Come on guys!!!!!" and running back to the curb to watch.

"wait.. it's starting!!!"

"look at it go!!!"

"whhhhaaattttt???? It did that????"

We picked the most simple little fireworks but he was just delighted! It was one of those moments where I thought "it's really fun having a kid and seeing them delight in these traditions!" Remind me to revisit that moment the next time he is stomping his feet and yelling at me because he wanted milk, not water, and in the blue cup, not the orange cup.

We did a whole package of sparklers and that went very safely, thanks to the safety glove Austin wore the whole time.

Austin stayed up until about 10:30 then crashed.. and we all got to lay in bed and listen to the booming and screeching and whistling of fireworks... sigh.

I can't wait until both kids are old enough to stay up late and really enjoy a firework show and we don't have to worry about them being a total mess the next day from the lack of sleep!

All in all.. a pretty good 4th of July though!

Project 857- June 27

Another hot sunny summer day!!!

The boys went down to Gramma and Grampa's the night before and Neal and I spent Friday night house hunting... since we were kid free we made it to 10 houses!!! A few potentials and one creepy house where the family was still home, the whole house was dark, the mom was upstairs laying in bed with music blaring and the kids were down watching movies. There was junk and crap all over the place. Sad.... and we couldn't get out of there fast enough.

So Saturday morning Neal and I woke up and got busy. Our Realtor was hosting an open house at our place that weekend, so we spent the morning cleaning and cleaning and sprucing up and cleaning and staging the house.

We took off for my parent's around 9:30 in the morning and got there right as Owen was getting up from his morning nap.

My Aunt Patty was coming in from San Diego (hence the reason why we planned a weekend down in Springfield and the open house at our place) but she didn't arrive until that evening so we had all day to have fun.

We set up our kiddie pool and spent all day in it!

We also enjoyed some Popsicles, and Neal and I obsessively checked our phones for updates from our Realtor...

It was an awesome, lazy, fun summer day... the dogs were running around, music was playing, Owen took a long afternoon nap, (the pool wore him out!!!!) and we just soaked up the sun.

Since it was so hot my Mom didn't want to cook. We headed to the Mongolian Grill because I thought Austin would like choosing his own noodles and toppings (he picked pineapple and ham- ha) and we met my Grandma there.

This picture cracks me up... my Dad looks so stoic and Austin looks terrified... I guess some of us are intimidated by the size of Mongolian Grill bowls... and some of us aren't!

Owen had some rice and chicken and noodles and veggies... but what he loved the best was Granma Darlene giving him sips of water through a straw!

And banging the rice bowl on the table. After dumping it out. And dumping out the water glass. Then banging the water glass. He loved all that too.

Needless to say, little brother made quite the mess... so big brother took it upon himself to walk over to where he saw an employee set down a broom and dustpan, and carry them over to our table and clean up the mess on the floor.

It cracked us all up! I look up from doing something with Owen and here is Austin, carrying a broom and dustpan and I was like "where did he find that???" the fact that he located them, went and got them on his own and then cleaned up while talking about how "messy" Owen was was hilarious.

Later that night I went over to my Grandma's to see my Aunt after she arrived... she is never here long enough in my opinion!!! :-)

And this picture was taken on Sunday, but it sums up a weekend at Gramma and Grampa's pretty well.