Owen Is Three!!!!

Oh man... it happened. My "baby" officially left the baby phase, and even the toddler phase behind... he's officially a "kid" now!!! 

Weight- 34lbs (only 1lb up... doctor was a bit concerned and we need to focus on getting him to eat more!)

Height- just under 3.5ft.

(Pictures are from his birthday!! Tidbits are observations from all throughout the year)

-So.. his weight. A few things factored in and we think he lost weight over the summer due to... 1) getting his back molars and his mouth hurting 2) getting HFM and going almost a week barely eating anything other than applesauce and ice cream and 3) Austin eating really fast and being done with his meals, which makes Owen (a slow eater) want to be done too so they can go play. He went from our little piglet who ate ALL THE FOOD to barely eating anything. We need to work on getting him to eat more. 

-We enrolled him in cooking class at daycare, which will hopefully help him be more interested in a bigger variety of food. 

-His talking is better, but if you aren't used to how he talks, he can still be a bit confusing. He mixes up his consonants, mostly. "Cooking" is "tooking" and "again" is "a-den".... the "d" sound gets substituted for a lot of letters when he talks. 

-He loves talking though, and hardly ever stops. He is starting to get the sequence of things, and how things work and are connected in life, and likes to tell you about those things... "first we do this, then we do that" type scenarios. He also repeats everything that comes out of Austin's mouth. 

-He is surprisingly great with numbers already (did NOT get that from me) and can count to 10, can count to almost 20, and does basic math. He counts on his fingers to 3, then on his other hand to 3, then says "Mommy! Free and free make six!!" Maybe he has just a natural ease with numbers. 

-He sings a lot, which Austin never did. Owen is always singing songs to himself, or making up songs, or just making singing-type sounds. 

-He will lip sync to songs in the car and he closes his eyes and scrunches his nose and lip syncs so passionately, moving his head back and forth.. it's the cutest thing.

-He is still a bit pigeon-toed and is clumsy. We call him our drunken fly because he can literally fall over, tripping on his own feet, while standing still. Not joking. He's super clumsy and falls down ALL THE TIME. He also hits his head constantly. At least once a day he's hitting his head on something. A chair, a table, the wall, the floor, his brother, the bed, a toy, something... His body/spacial awareness isn't that great apparently and he just doesn't "get" where his body is. 

-He is emotional and our snuggler. He'll come up and say "Mommy, I wan nuggle" and he'll just want to be in your lap and watch TV, or read a book, or lay against you. 

-He is very touchy feely too. The nights I put him to bed (Neal and I alternate nights) after his lights are out, I'll lay on his bed for a bit with his glow-worm toy lit up and he'll look at me and touch my face... running his hands on my cheek, over my forehead, down my nose. It is the sweetest thing. He just likes to touch and be touched. 

-He ADORES his big brother and MUST do everything the exact same, all the time. We have a lot of talks about how he can do something else, he can find something he's interested in, and how he doesn't have to copy Austin... but so far, to no avail. If Austin is doing it, Owen is too. If you've seen the movie The Sandlot, the two brothers... Timmy and Tommy... where one repeats exactly what the other just said... that's my kids to a "t". 

Austin: hurry Mom we have to go get the bus!

Owen: hurry Mom we have to doe det da bus!

Austin: Mom, is it raining?

Owen: Mom, is it waining?

etc, etc, etc, etc, etc,

-These two fight like cats and dogs, yet love each other to death and never want to NOT be around each other. They always want to play together, or just be around each other. 

-Owen is the pestiest pest of a little brother though, and quite the instigator. He'll poke and tease and annoy Austin to get a reaction out of him, and then laugh and run away. 

-Owen likes sports, but not quite as much as Austin seems to. He's definitely left-handed in every aspect of his life... eating, writing, sports. He gets a little frustrated because he'll try and mimic whatever sports-thing Austin is doing (like playing baseball) but doesn't get that he needs to mirror him and do it with the other hand. 

-When Owen is on his own, he is the sweetest little guy, and plays so well on his own. He talks and uses his imagination and loves to build things. 

-He loves to dress up in costumes too, and play pretend that way. He also likes to play with the play food and make us all dinners and take our orders. 

-So far, he doesn't respond well to discipline. We've tried everything and he just laughs through it all, or runs away from us, or pretends he doesn't  hear us. We are still trying to figure out how to really make him understand when we have to discipline him. He's had his hearing checked and all is fine there, so he CAN hear, he just chooses not to. Ha. 

-He can be very pensive and a bit withdrawn sometimes. I'll catch him "zoning out" or staring out a window deep in thought sometimes. I'm so excited to see what kind of kid he'll grow into. Maybe he'll be really introspective and thoughtful. He definitely has ingrained sympathy, and immediately says he's sorry if he did something wrong, or if he hurts someone. He's cried at sad parts of movies, and calls out if a character in a book or TV show is sad. One day on the way home from school he was in tears and crying while telling me about how I left him in a house alone in his dream. It took me awhile to make him feel better, and convince him dreams aren't true and that I'd never leave him alone like that. It was so heartbreaking.

-He loves sweets, but not as much at Austin. He'd only eat half a popsicle over the summer, or part of an ice cream. He still loves fruit most of all, and then carby things like popcorn. He's not a huge fan of meat or dairy, but loves spaghetti and tacos. 

-His favorite shows are Blaze and the Monster Machines, Team UmiZoomi, and PJ Masks. For books he loves I Love You, Stink Face, his pop-up Christmas book, and The Mitten.

-His favorite superheroes change a lot.. but he seems to gravitate to Superman a lot, or Batman. 

-For movies, he loves Moana, Finding Nemo, and Sing (he likes to pretend he's the gorilla named Johnny and every time Johnny is in the movie Owen will say "dere me! Dere me, a-den!)

-His nicknames continue to be BoBo, DoDo (not sure how that came to be) and BooBoo (because he's constantly getting hurt)

-He's just the funniest, naughtiest, sweetest little kid. The perfect baby of our family. He tugs at a special place in my heart, and I just couldn't love him more. 

Happy 3rd Year Owen!

Life Lately- Middle of Summer 2017

In continuing to play catch-up here... we are on to the middle part of our summer!! The weather got hot, and lots of stuff happened... so here we go!!

I am really not a fan of fireworks (of any kind, really) but it's so cute to see how excited little kids get about them. Even when you buy the silly little ones at the grocery store that just shoot up sparks. It's still a very, very exciting thing... and that makes the whole hassle worth it!

Watching the ummmmm "big" show. Haha. 

One of these years we'll go watch a big fireworks show.. but this year, we still had a 2-year-old that couldn't wait up until it was dark. He crashed hard and had to go to bed, while Austin stayed up for more of the Glynn's "big show"

Our cheap blow-up pool popped, so we decided to get a pool that stays up once it's set up. It came with a filter and everything! It was a good decision because it provided hours of entertainment for the kiddos, and was big enough for Neal and I to get in too!

The boys spent a weekend down at Gramma's and they went to a Lavender Festival and got their face (and arm) painted!! The Flash and Batman looked pretty good!

Well, the time finally came. Austin's last week of daycare was full of a lot of "lasts" for us. He came over to my office for a potluck/party for the last time, and had to take a spin in my big chair. 

Austin's last week was also the last week for his teacher, Miss Rebecca. He was with Miss Rebecca for a long time, and connected with her more than any other teacher at his daycare. I had to take a picture of the lady he adored so much! Thankfully Miss Rebecca was off for just a long summer break and she is now back and will hopefully still be there when it's Owen's turn in the pre-K room!

Just more proof that my kids are angels when we aren't home. Neal and I had a date night and these two colored nicely for Aunt Patty! If Neal and I were home.. they'd be stabbing each other with the crayons and ripping coloring books out of each other's hands and screaming. 

Date night in our cool little town! The historic elevator is so fun to go up and catch a view of the river! Don't mind my wild hair, or weird face. Neal doesn't usually take pictures so I was alarmed and then asked him what the heck was wrong with him, Haha. 

We got to spend a Sunday at our friend Loree's pool! Loree is our realtor, and her parents have a very big awesome pool, that we swam in a few years ago. We didn't make it over there last summer so we had to make sure we did this summer! The boys had a blast and swam themselves exhausted!

What's the point of having kids if you can't laugh at them, right?? It was a random weekend night, and Neal decided to water our lawn with the hose... with his shirt off... while drinking a beer. Yep, you can hear the banjo music playing in the background, right?? The kids started running through the hose, and they were making the best faces ever! These pictures crack me up. 

Baseball Sunday! Austin is always all over the catcher's gear, and he looks so funny in it! This day he fell up the concrete steps leading out of the dugout and scraped himself up pretty good because he was trying (unsuccessfully) to walk while wearing all of this. 

We realized we had pictures of Austin running the bases with Daddy, but didn't have pictures of Owen! Little did we know that Hand Foot Mouth was brewing inside him (he was feeling icky that day and had a slight fever, but we thought it was just a cold) but he got up enough energy to do a victory lap around the bases!

Say "baseball!!'

And by the next day... he was out for the count. HFM for the second (possibly third) time in this guy's life. The first time he "had it" we aren't sure if it really was HFM, that's why I'm not sure if he's had it twice or three times. He stayed home from school, and Daddy took good care of him. At one point he woke up crying from his nap, grabbed a puzzle piece and then fell back asleep. He was trying so hard to play, but just couldn't. 

July 24th was the big official half-birthday for this guy! We measured him and no one was shocked to find out he's just a hair under 4ft tall! He's our little giant for sure!

I took Austin to lunch at my work cafeteria one last time and we had a blast! He got his usual cheeseburger and fries and we talked and laughed. I'm going to miss our lunches so much! When Owen turns 4 I'll start taking him, which should be interesting... if he stays the little pest that he is...

On the way back to daycare after our last lunch, Austin wanted his picture taken by the fire hydrant. Ohhh-kayyyy... sure kid. Whatever you want!

Austin got a good "summer vacation" at home with Neal for the month of August! Our deal was they had to stay busy (no watching TV all day) and try not to do tons of really fun things. That sounds mean, but it would be unfair if Neal was the parent that always did really awesome fun things with the kids and I didn't get that chance since I work during the summers. I don't want them to see Neal as a fun parent and me as a boring parent. 

So they worked on Kindergarten workbooks (which Austin loved, our little Type A rule follower), cleaned around the house, ran errands, and went on a few fun adventures. 

One fun adventure was going to get Austin some school clothes. They went inside a Disney store just to look... and couldn't pass up this Star Wars pilot flight suit. As soon as they got home, the costume went on, Star Wars was popped into the DVD player.. and it was awesome. One of the most epic pictures of Austin, ever. 

Owen was fully potty trained over the summer! It always shocks me how little their butts look in underwear, once you take off the bulky diaper. It's just so cute to see the little underwear-tushy running around. 

Neal's Uncle Paul and cousin Evan came to town at the end of July, and Neal kept both boys with him to spend time with them one Friday. They went to a car museum and found the coolest cars to sit in!

Cute tushy at the train park!

My friend Jessica (seriously, if you are girl born in the 80's your name is Jessica) took me and the boys to a little train park that is nearby as Owen's birthday present from her. The park was free but asked for a donation, which is really awesome. You can sit on all the trains and go around the little park, which they have all set up to look like an old logging town. There weren't very many people there so we just got back in line over and over and kept riding!

There is a small replica Statue of Liberty near us that we drive by all the time but have never stopped to look at. Neal took Austin there on one of their summer vacation days and said it was pretty cool! 'Merica

See? They had fun in August, I promise. It wasn't all chores and Kindergarten workbooks. One morning was coffee shop cinnamon rolls! 

Amazon knows our house well, I think.... so there are almost always boxes around for the boys to play with. Austin had Neal make him a mask and then said "I always wanted to be a box!" I'm so glad he has such high aspirations. 

Neal got a flat tire while out running lessons, so Austin got to learn Flat Tire 101! Get that spare on, and get to a Les Schwab, ASAP! 

I had plans to stay home one Sunday morning and get stuff done around the house while Neal took the boys to his baseball games, and then I'd join for the second game. Owen insisted on staying home with me and we had a really awesome time. He's the SWEETEST kid ever when he's on his own, so I really enjoy our one-on-one time together. We left to meet Daddy and Austin at the second baseball game and he just snoozed so hard in the car. Sometimes he still looks like a baby and it just tugs at my heart.