The photo session started by me wanting to take a picture of Katie in another gifted 9m outfit before she outgrew it…and then it turned in a sibling love/play session. 🙂
Both entranced by Sesame Street.
Yes, Sesame Street again.
Owen: I want the spoon.
Katie: No I want the spoon.
Katie: NO, GRRR, I WANT THE SPOON. (That face kills me.)
Just a shot of Katie in a 9m outfit (a gift from a grandma) that she’ll only be wearing once… It hasn’t been warm enough up until now, and now it’s just about too small.
I have been looking on and off for YEARS to find the Christmas outfit (see here)…and I finally found it today at our new Once Upon A Child!
In the grass for the first time—and on the move!
And being closely monitored (chased!) by our friend’s daughter (and our regular babysitter)…
She’s SUCH a good girl—I took three pictures and all of them were good! This is the first one I took (and the best of the best)! (And the outfit is from Grannie Lin!)
P.S. And a photo bomb by Charlie! Bonus points if you noticed it!
It was quite warm tonight, so we broke out the big girl PJs that Gramma Jean got her… SOOO CUTE!!
Sidenotes:
When Papa and Grannie were here in February, they went shopping—and apparently my dad was adamant about finding something for Owen. This was his choice. I love it!
Today was one of the first days warm enough to break out a summer outfit…which is good, since she’s about out of 9m sizes already! And she’s SUCH a good baby that she sees the camera and smiles! This was the one and only picture I took!
“It’s cracking! I love this chick!”
(Grannie and Papa, he LOVES this thing!)
As you know, we no longer have an official guest room now that Katie is taking up the third bedroom. So, when we have overnight guests, they get the upstairs living room pullout sofa. It’s a queen—and we now have a topper—but otherwise, that’s all the sleeping space unless you wanted a plain ol’ couch. But, we rarely need more room than that. BUT, we kinda wanted to be prepared anyway.
So in the meantime, the peanut gallery (you know who you are!) has let us know that the downstairs couch was just a bit too—shall we say—plush (or comfortable!) and was a bit hard to get out of…
And then every now and again when we sat down or moved around, we’d hear something creaking. Or snapping. Or groaning. Or ripping. And then we started thinking about just how long we’ve had the couch and chair set…and came to realize it’s about eight years old! EIGHT! HOLY WAH! It certainly doesn’t seem like that long. The set is still good/comfy but is obviously breaking down…and we feel like we want to sell it as a set while it still has life.
SOOOOO…considering all of the above things, we decided that selling the set would allow us to actually scale back the furniture we currently have (by only replacing the couch and NOT the chair since we have the big leather chair that’s really out-of-place in the playroom). We thought it could be cheap—but should be comfortable since we use that couch on a daily basis. But not anything of great quality since we still have a lot of baby and kid messy stages to go through.
We bookmarked some on Amazon but I refused to buy something like that without testing seating comfort. Sam’s Club had a similar one but refused to take it down for us to try (they told us to just return it if we didn’t like it—REALLY?!). Costco was hit or miss…and again, I would hesitate ordering without testing it and they never have the same one in the stores as they do online (and if we found one in the store, how the hell would we get it home?).
And then we broke down and went to our favorite (dangerous) furniture store…and the same guy who we bought ALL of our past furniture from was still there—and remembered us! And 30 minutes and $1100 later we have a new leather sleeper couch. (It’s amazing how a moderately inexpensive $799 couch jumps up to $1100 after 5 year warranty, taxes, and delivery are added on.) But it’s a nicer quality couch than we planned on (plus it’s leather) that will last longer than we planned on. And we’ve used the warranty before on a different piece of furniture so for that extra $100 it was worth it. It should actually last quite a long time—it’s better quality than the stuff we’re replacing…so the high quality new couch should easily last that long or longer.
Owen liked this couch:
Waiting for us to do the paperwork:
Watching them bring in the couch:
REALLY enjoying the new couch:
The bonus is that the couch is a bit smaller—plus we moved Owen’s drawing table to the playroom—so the room feels quite a bit bigger. Owen AND Katie were having a blast in all the open space…but I wonder when Owen will realize his once-in-awhile eat-in-front-of-the-TV table and chairs are gone…
So now, we have room for more guests! Come on down!!
Katie learned how to zoom up stairs today at play group!
And this was about an hour before, after we first arrived at play group…Katie was being majorly loved on by both daughters of the host. 🙂
And this was shortly before leaving… New bows! I didn’t really want to start them this early, but damn if she isn’t adorable in them!
These were in the Easter stuff Grannie and Papa sent. He LOVED them.
And he loved the flashlight…
And the magic Captain America washcloth!
I had the bib sitting out to use on Easter but then I just completely forgot it so she didn’t wear it until today. Oops! Thanks, Grandma Marsha!
We were invited over to our friend’s house (Tom and Karen) for Easter lunch, and then the guys decided to take the kids to hit a bucket of balls. These are the pictures Tom texted me:
And our friend, Tom.
Today was Owen’s first honest easter egg hunt with a bunch of kids! One of the moms in my mommy group had organized a get-together with some of her neighbors and the mommy group moms. I am SOOO glad we decided to go… It was the first time Tom had seen Owen with more than a handful of kids—and it was amazing.
This was his slam dunk:
Tom trying to show Owen how to hit the ball:
He did, but then that was it and he was off to the next thing:
The start of the egg race, which was taking place to keep the kids out of the back yard while the older kids were hiding the eggs:
Slow but steady…
Race over, no one cared who won!
Getting ready to go hunt for eggs!
Rushing in! Half the kids came in each side of the yard. Owen was just thrilled—and it was hilarious because he could see other eggs while he was picking up the ones in front of him, but had a hard time actually getting the ones in front of him because he was so enamored with seeing all the other eggs that he wasn’t close to yet!
He even braved the bouncy house (which he DOES NOT like to play in) because there were a handful of eggs inside!
His successful haul!
The entire gaggle of kids! I think the youngest was 2 and the oldest was 6.
A family shot, taken by a friend. (Then I took their family shot—she’s like me and rarely is in the photos!)
Owen torturing the girls on the trampoline with a fake snake! They were all screaming and he was just laughing and having a great time.
Swinging the snake around. All I could think of was my mom telling me how her brother did that to her WITH REAL SNAKES when they were kids…
Then he got all sneaky and shoved the snake through the opening in the side of the net. He was so proud of himself! What a stinker!
Then, right as we were getting ready to leave, they were handing out popsicles. Owen didn’t want one, but then asked a little girl if he could have a bite of hers. The mom was standing there (and knows about Owen’s food issues) so told her daughter it was okay. So Owen took a bite! He didn’t love it, but at least he tried it!
With the help of my stepsister Kathryn who went to her local (Atlanta) IKEA to pick up the shelf for me…and then hauled it to Myrtle Beach where I then picked it up at my parent’s condo…and then Tom putting it together…we now have a revamped playroom!
When I showed it to Owen for the first time, his eyes got really wide as he said “HOLY MACKEREL!” 🙂
Then I told him everything had its own basket.
Me: Cars go here.
Owen: Yeah!
Me: Trains go here.
Owen: Yeah!
Me: Animals go here.
Owen: YEAH!
Me: Puzzles are here.
Owen: YEAH!
🙂
I have to say I’m very proud of Owen. All the moms at play group today complimented me on how well-behaved and gentle he was with the other kids. 🙂
He’s such a good kid!
So we were on our way to mommy group so I told Owen to go put on some shoes, fully expecting his orange crocs like he always picks. So imagine my surprise when I saw these…shoes he’s always hated to wear.
Owen begged to get his tunnel out today (it had been hidden behind a chair that we moved). He still loves it…and Katie now does as well!
The best part of my day was watching the two of them play together…
Last night for dinner Katie ate plain noodles, noodles in spaghetti sauce, a whole Polish meatball (thanks, Gramma Jean!), and breadsticks.
Today? Scrambled eggs and pesto noodles.
I hope it continues!!
Owen said so many cute things while we’ve been on vacation, but of course I haven’t written them down immediately as they happened…so I only have a few from the last day or so.
Owen: Can we go down there? Pointing down through the floor. In the elevator? To G? To the pool?
Me, mini golfing: Owen, do you want to hit my ball in?
Owen: Sure!
Me: Owen, do you want peanut butter on your graham crackers?
Owen: Ooh! Yes! I’d like that.
Me: I might lay down and take a nap with you.
Owen: NO! You go out there with my dad.
People were shooting off fireworks on the beach that we could see from our living room and balcony.
Owen: Excuse me—excuse me! He pointed with all four fingers in a jabbing motion out towards the beach. There’s fireworks on the beach. Out there. In the sky! Come look!
Owen is pretending to sheath a sword at his side.
Owen: I’m Mike the Knight!
Me: You’re Mike the Knight?
Owen: No, I’m Owen!
Owen, carrying a square-ish toy of Katie’s to the table: Gramma Jean, I have to check my computer online!
After his bath…
Me: Owen, are you clean and snuffy?
Owen: Nooo.
Me: Are you…spiffy?
Owen: No! I’m Owen!
Skyping with Grandma Marsha:
Grandma: I hear you had a vacation.
Owen: Yes! I played with cousins and they’re far away now.
Gramma Jean came home today with these shirts for the kids…
Of course, I have 58 attempted shots of them laughing and playing together—but with one looking away or hands in the way or legs in the way. 🙂 Here’s a video of all of them…
I did get these next two, though, which I thought would look good combined…
So I googled and discovered that Microsoft Live (already on mom’s laptop!) has a feature called Photo Fuse which will let you mix and match heads from photos…so I created this picture!
And then when we left them to their own devices…
And then Katie decided she should check out a sleeping daddy…
I highly recommend this sandwich from The Grilled Cheese & Crab Cake Co. that mom and David brought back for me today!
I also found this magazine article about the restaurant.
Since the weather has been unseasonably cool and we didn’t exactly plan for that, Gramma Jean bought herself a new hoodie…and got one for Owen, too!
He was UNBELIEVABLY excited about it and was tearing around like a mad man. He HAD to have the hood up—and he told gramma she had to have hers up as well.
Sunrises with grandpa, sunsets with gramma… 🙂
It was chilly when we all went out for a walk after dinner, so Katie dressed in her jean jacket before she outgrows it!
The chilly weather certainly didn’t stop Owen from playing in the tidal pools!
