This One’s For Daddy

This post is dedicated to Daddy, who is away this weekend on business. As it is always nice to get a little break from parenting, once you are actually gone you always miss your kid. Omer, just want you to know your son misses you too and we worked on this during dinner. As you will see he really liked the part he got to say Daddy, but I think he got the gist of the message. I will say he has never wanted to keep doing something so much, he kept coming back to try again.

A Message to His Daddy

It’s All in the Outfit

Today I had Owen is a cute button-up shirt which I rarely put him in, I looked at him and saw this little boy. I was amazed at how much older he looked just by his outfit. So later I put him in a romper, which once again he rarely wears, and he looked about 3 months younger to me. I thought it was humorous the difference and outfit could make.

My Little Boy

My Little Baby

And this is just an extra picture I thought was adorable and had to share. Owen just walked over and laid his head on his table, still not sure why.

My Little Cutie

Boys Do Play Differently

Omer plays much differently with Owen than I do with him, and of course that is expected. I always enjoy walking in on their play time to see what fun games Omer has created. He is very creative. Last night when I got back from walking the pups, I go downstairs and assumed they were playing with trains again but nope they had created a new game. The house down there as a mailbox with a door that opens and closes. Owen would close the door, Omer would put some toy in the mailbox and then Owen would open it back up and switch his toy with the new one, and would keep repeating this. They were having a great time.

Owen has been waking a little earlier than normal, so usually he chills in our room while I get ready. This morning, the boys were hanging out on the bed and I heard lots of giggles. I come in to find of course another new game. Omer lays down and Owen kneels on one side and then Omer rolls over so Owen lands on the other side. Owen thought is was hilarious and kept “resetting” the game. Owen also kept requesting “upside down!” and then Omer would obviously hold him upside down.

I know I have said it before, but I love watching them play together; they are truly two boys! Last weekend Omer picked up a book called The Dangerous Book for Boys, he was so excited about all the stuff in there. I can’t wait to watch my two boys building a playhouse or making bow and arrows out of sticks or excavating for bones, etc. The little joys of being a parent.

First Step in Reading

After Owen was able to recite several words of a couple songs, I thought I would try it while reading. Well it was a success. I read Dinosaur, Dinosaur with him and he said every last word or very close to it. This included a lot of words I didn’t even knew he could say. I just read the line and then he says the last word. We did this with several books in the past two days and he loves it. In A Kitten Tale, the fourth kitten always says “I can’t wait!”, Owen gets a lot of joy out of saying this line. Owen has always enjoyed pointing and telling me things in books but never had participated in “reading” a story with me. I guess this is why the experts say it is good that a child wants to read the same book over and over, enables them to memorize the story and participate in reading. As I am by no means an expert in this, I would assume this is the first step in reading.

Time with Friends

We met Kim and Caitlyn at Caribou Coffee this morning. This is a great place because they have a toy box for the kids to keep busy while Kim and I actually got to sit back, have a drink and catch up. More places need to have this set-up. It was great to chat with Kim uninterrupted (for the most part). We then walked down to Tree Top Toys, so the kids could play with the train table and of course some cars and animals. We found a great book with the main character are cats, A Kitten Tale. I am always searching for a good cat book being that Owen loves cats, and this book has been a hit. I have read it more than 10 times in the past 2 days. As recommended by Kim, we also bought Fiddle-I-Fee, and Owen LOVES this book as well. He brings it to me and says “fee fee”. While I was checking out, the lady asked Owen if he wanted a balloon and he came a running. He kept it with him the whole ride home. And this morning, he was excited to see it still around.

He likes to make the balloon bounce. He’s in mid-bounce.

Owen and his Balloon

Acting like he’s Floating Away (not really, he’s in mid-run)

The result of static electricity, Owen didn’t even know it was stuck on him.

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Owen has always loved Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star but today he helped sing along. He will come over and ask me to sing it by saying “Tinkle Tinkle Star”. He kept asking me to sing it with him all through lunch, so afterwards I wanted to get it on video. Of course he was playing his cars but he joined in. And don’t judge my singing.

Owen and I Singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Visit From Family

Yep, more visitors this weekend. My mom, Jenni (my sister), Alice (my step-sister-in-law) and Emma (her 12 mo old) came for a visit this morning. It was great to hang out with family and to watch Emma and Owen play again.

Owen and Emma Building Blocks

Owen Then Climbed in the Wagon (this was a first)

Getting a Ride from Jenni

After lunch we went downstairs where Owen showed Grammy the alphabet and his trains. Owen and Grammy pointing out letters.

Emma enjoyed the music talents of Jenni.

The cutest moment between Owen and Emma was when each sat on a side of the house and opened up the door to play peek-a-boo and to come visit the other one. There was lots of smiles and of course very hard to get a picture of both faces.

Owen and Emma Playing House

Owen Opening the Door – Peek-A-Boo

Emma Crawling Through to See Owen

Visit with Friends

Robb and Rebecca came over for a visit and dinner. It was great to catch up with them and Owen took them very quickly. After a couple minutes he brought over a book for Rebecca to read.

Then he wanted to play with Robb and brought him a car. Why he brings a book to a girl and cars to a boy, I don’t know. Then Robb and Owen played some basketball.

Dunking the Ball

At one point Chester was laying on the floor and Owen went over to him and said “sleeping” and then laid next to him.

He then wanted me and Chloe to play too.

Bus and Fire Truck

I was in the kitchen cleaning up when I heard a lot of “fire truck” and “bus”, I peeked around the corner to find Owen having a blast. So I quickly got the camera to get some pictures of him playing alone.

He likes to sit on his bus and fire truck.

Sitting on his bus playing with his fire truck.

Saying “CHEESE”

One of Owen’s favorite past-times is making his cars and trucks crash. He is crashing the bus into the fire truck.

Then he decided to move the stools and play behind them. I love when he gets creative.

More Crashing

He then stacked them and laughed about it.

Back to Crashing

Things That Get Left Out

There are many tiny things that Owen does that I just never seem to remember to write down. But as I want this blog to be something I and others can look back and remember the moments in Owen’s life, I wanted to get my thoughts down in writing. So I thought I would share some of the little things that seem to get left out of normal posts. (Thanks Kelly for this idea.)

Owen’s Little Things
1. He is a double Lynus. He has two blankies that are very similar. He loves both and will sometimes carry both around.
2. These blankies occasionally like to eat with Owen. He is very good about putting them on the table right next to his place-mat and not touching them until he is done.
3. Often a plastic animal will come to eat with Owen also; most often panda bear or rhinoceros. He likes when I walk the animal over to his plate and act like it is eating his food, then he will eat that piece. Has worked nicely when he is being picky.
4. Owen will make these same animals (all of them) kiss each other. He puts there mouths together and then says “mu-wa”.
5. He brushed his cats teeth last night.
6. Strangely he likes when I feed him yogurt. He has never allowed me to feed him and he knows how to use a spoon but I am more efficient in getting the yogurt in his mouth and he knows this so he hands me the spoon and says “yogurt”. Yogurt is the only food he allows me to feed him.
7. The moment Omer comes through the door (unless Owen is eating) Owen immediately goes to the gate to the basement and demands “Downstairs!”. The boys must have a lot of fun down there.
8. He counts every time he climbs stairs. He just keeps going from 1-10. If I am not around him and I hear him counting I know to go to the stairs. We also use this to get him to go up for his bath. We ask him “Do you want to go count stairs?” and off he goes.
9. More counting – he loves to count items in his books. We have pointed and counted items in his books for a long time, so he’s copying us. But the cute thing is no matter how many items are on the page he will count to 10 and just keep pointing at the same things.
10. Standing on the box. There is a Scrabble box in our bedroom (to hold the laptop when I am in the room), Owen loves to stand on this box. Why, I don’t know. He runs over to it and steps up and either just stands there or will bounce a little.
11. Owen can decipher certain books just by its bind. He will see it and say its name and then of course pull it down to be read. Some of his favorites right now are “Brown Bear” (which he calls all three of bear books), “Pookie”, “Dinosaurs”, “T-Rex” and “ISource”. (If you want to know the real titles ask me.)
12. Owen asks for praise. Even though Omer and I praise him all the time, he will ask for it if he thinks we should be clapping for him. He will look at us and clap and say “yeah” until we copy him. He also likes to clasps his hands and  shake them side to side saying “rah”. (Sorry if this was a bad description.)

Items Omer wanted added:
1. Owen never starts counting with 1, starts at 2.
2. Likes to stick the foam animals om his belly in the tub.
3. “Up please” means pick me up, put me down and help me up.
4. If Owen wants to know what something is he will hold it toward you and ask “dis is?” and wait for the answer.

Those are all the little things that I could think of in the past couple days that I love about Owen or just makes me laugh. Kids are so much fun (most of the time).