Daddy did the work but Owen did the pose. 🙂
Category Archives: Owen
Maggie vs. the rototiller
Turns out Maggie has a beef with the rototiller. I haven’t heard her bark this much in ages.
Is it bedtime yet?
MSU Game Day
Well, technically, a televised scrimmage. But it was MSU and it was TV so we all wore our green and white!
Bad guys vs. Good guys ABCs
“Okay, bad guys, you sing the ABCs backwards. Good guys, you sing them forwards.”
The bad guys are the green zombies. The good guys are the Avengers.
The Cleanse, Day 2
Well, it went better than I expected…aside from the initial poop incident this morning.
Owen was a real rock star when it came to sitting on the toilet and trying to poop. He learned that if you blow the balloon hard enough without holding on to it that it flies out of your mouth (and usually hits me) and that’s GREAT fun to him. It’s somewhat annoying, however, so he has to blow up the balloon for real and THEN if he’s successful he gets to let it fly around the room. He also didn’t seem to mind that it was all liquid (it seems strange to me as an adult that he doesn’t mind diarrhea, but to him I guess it’s just way easier than actually pooping).
As far as if he’s completely cleaned out yet…well, I really don’t know. From talking to other friends who have gone through this with their own kids, I just thought there’d be A LOT more poop. I mean, there was a lot of liquid but it’s not like I have a conversion chart for that. I actually put in a call to his doctor today asking about it (because he really only had those two lime-sized poops the first day and the rest has been diarrhea) and the doctor said he’s probably mostly cleaned out and to just go to the daily regimen.
Ticklemania!
Kids having fun
Sun holes!
“Mama! Look! Sun holes!”
Well, yes, I guess they are. 🙂
Backwards ABCs Take 2
This is a better sample…though I help him a bit on the second run-through. 🙂
Locked in.
Yeah, so, I just got locked in the bathroom with Owen while Katie was roaming around ungated. (I thought she was gated in but then I heard her playing with the dog bowl and knew she was on the loose.)
Talk about trying to stay calm in a panic.
How did it happen? Well, the door knobs were off from a kid-locking-herself-in-during-play-group-incident earlier that morning and I hadn’t put them back on yet (no, we were never given the little keys to unlock the doors—and we’d tried to find some to buy but just never did). So I didn’t even think about it when I shut the door behind me to keep Katie out while I dealt with a diarrhea pull-up.
Talk about an instant all-over body sweat.
Okay. I can’t get the door open. Who do I call? Who is closest that might be home? I thought of any of the mommy group people who were just there but I knew the closest ones had kids napping…
Okay, I can get one pin out—if I can get them all I can take the door right off the hinges. Nope, the other two are stuck. Calling Tom was pointless since it would take him at least 45m to get home (and there’s not much he could do over the phone).
Who would know how to get the door off? Roger might, but he’s likely busy. Ursula—she could at least come get Katie and then—oh, duh—she could likely put the knob back on. So I called her and she wasn’t home (5m away) but was in town (15m) so as I was telling her what was going on I was still messing with the door and trying not to sound terribly panicked…when I somehow managed to move something just enough to allow me to open the door.
Ah.
Breathe.
Wipe the sweat off my forehead as I thank Ursula for answering her phone.
Then race to find Katie…who was happily playing in the playroom.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
And put “buying keys” on our shopping list. 😐
What a morning.
So the things I expected yesterday that didn’t happen…happened this morning as I was prepping to host play group.
Yeah, while I wasn’t looking, Owen was laying on the floor trying not to poop…and left a nice puddle of diarrhea on the carpet because it overflowed the pull-up. 😐
Then he was so messy he needed a quick wash and rinse, which meant Katie had to go to her crib and MY GOD you would have thought I set her in hot lava for all the screaming.
Poor kid.
Oh man. The pooping today was the least of it. His butt is now so raw he screams when you try to wipe him. Hell, not even wipe with wet wipes but barely dabbing at it with wet wipes. So he’s completely slathered in butt cream tonight and I’m hoping he sleeps through the night so we don’t have to deal with screaming and a reapplication in the middle of the night. 🙁
Backwards ABCs
For awhile now, Owen has been super intrigued by my ability to sing the alphabet backwards. He’d request it, then when I’d get to about T, he’d say “No no no!” then sing it normally. But then slowly HE started singing it backwards—just a few letters at a time and making up what he didn’t know. So then I pointed out where the alphabet was on a few of his toys so he could read it backwards….and there was no looking back. In a matter of a week, he pretty much had it down. I recorded him today but it’s not as good as he usually does it. But still impressive for four.
Patty Cake with Katie
Your guess is as good as mine.
Sibling…love? And typical Owen silliness.
The Cleanse
7:00—The first 4oz of “special water” took 30 minutes to drink with lots of nudging.
7:15—I showed Owen what his end-of-day treat would be if he was really good—he was EXCITED!
8:00—4oz in 20 minutes. Not bad.
9:00—And the tantrums start. He refuses to drink and wants to eat. Thankfully Katie came to the rescue and made him laugh by pulling everything off the shelf.
So once his mind was on to something else, he ended up drinking the juice pretty quickly.
10:00—“Mommy, why are you putting sugar in my juice?” But wow. He drank the juice in 10 minutes with no prompting!
10:00–11:00—Begging for a snack about every five minutes. “Please? Very very very very please?!” 🙁
11:00—4oz of juice gone in under 10 minutes. It looks like juice is the way to go. More requests for marshmallows. Yeah, who knows.
Noon—The juice disappeared instantly. “Mama I’m hungry! I’m very very hungry. I want something to eat!” 🙁
12:15—The first epic hunger meltdown. 🙁
12:30—Yet another typical poop (nothing explosive or messy yet!) but he went to the bathroom on his own…so he earned a Lego!
1:00—I think he inhaled the juice…but then had another epic hunger meltdown. I feel so horrible telling him he can’t eat. 🙁
2:00—More juice, more requests for snacks.
3:00—Nothing was really happening poop-wise which was kinda scary—I mean, NINE FULL DOSES of Miralax and he wasn’t pooping?! Plus he was STARVING and I wasn’t sure what to do next because the prescribed daily regimen was complete. So I called his doctor (the specialist we saw yesterday) and talked to an available doctor who told me to finish the Miralax dosing, start giving him half doses of the chocolate ex-lax (which will actually make him poop, as opposed to the Miralax just softening things up), feed him a light snack and dinner, and to call in the morning if he still wasn’t pooping.
And then he snacked on his favorite cheese crackers, pear slices, and juice. 🙂
3:30—He started pooping a little…but still nothing of the magnitude I expected.
4:00–4:45—The last special juice mix for the day. A few trips to the potty but still nothing much.
If this home remedy stuff doesn’t work, he may have to be hospitalized. 🙁
5:45—His first real success (two pieces about the size of limes)! Normally I’d be thinking we were done but there HAS to be lots more in there.
We certainly have our work cut out for us…
Sometimes Owen scares us. In a good way.
So just now, we see Owen d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g the play house from the play room into the foyer. Then there’s some scurrying around and we hear music but don’t think anything of it because their toys are always playing music. And then he says “Mama! Daddy! It’s the same!”
Huh? What?
We listened more closely…and one of the songs the house plays is the EXACT song the baby MP3 player plays…and he figured it out and started them both at the same time.
Just wow.
EDITED 4/17 TO ADD:
Ahhhh, siblings.
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.)
Impacted. Ugh.
So…I haven’t been talking about it, but Owen is still having major poop(ing) issues. Everything from constipation to diarrhea. Lately we’ve been going through 5-7 pairs of underwear a day. 🙁
We’ve tried eliminating milk from his diet, he was tested for Celiac, we gave him probiotics…and nothing ever really seemed to help. So we scheduled an appointment with the GI specialist and it was this morning.
The diagnosis? He’s impacted. All the little peanut-buttery poops we’ve been getting is basically leakage because he has so much poop backed up that the soft stuff is all that will come out. (I’m sure it hasn’t been impacted the whole seven months…but it’s apparently been most of the time.)
So, we basically get to do colonoscopy prep without actually having the colonoscopy. A full dose of Miralax every hour from 8a–5pm and then a maintenance schedule of one full dose of Miralax every day PLUS Ex-Lax chocolates PLUS mineral oil PLUS as much of a high fiber diet as we can get him to eat PLUS sitting on the potty after each meal blowing up balloons (it mimics the action of pooping).
FOR SIX WEEKS. 😯
We basically have to retrain (and shrink) his colon while trying to teach him how to poop.
I can promise that tomorrow is NOT going to be fun for either of us. Nor is the following six weeks. But hopefully it will do some good… I’m hoping we’ll get back into undies fairly quickly.
So, then it was off to get him an X-ray and Tom met us there because of the whole no-kids-sitting-alone thing. Which Owen LOVED. 🙂
As far as him understanding what’s going on… He just knows he went to the doctor to see if we could fix his pooping. I explained what’s going to happen tomorrow (he has to drink lots of water and will be pooping a lot)…but who knows how much he really understands. 🙁
Photos from the day…
A—A—A
Owen: A—A—Apple. A—A—Captain America!
A shot of pure excitement!
Owen has been earning Lego minifigs for pooping in the potty (instead of hiding and pooping) and tonight he actually got out of his bath to poop in the potty! This is him being excited right before he got his new Lego guy.
And here he is with the figures he earned today!
Bath Night
Bath #1
Bath #2
The next step is baths together…but not quite yet.
Iron Dog
I finally found it!
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!
Getting the garden started!
An unexpected find… 😯
Clever boy!
I often ask Owen to go up to our bedroom/bathroom and bring down all the empty glasses. Usually he just brings down one or two so we were really surprised to see this. Clever boy!
Like Humpty Dumpty
Owen was out playing on his little playset. And half attempting to sit on the side rail…making me a bit nervous.
Me: Owen, don’t sit up there.
Owen: Why not?
Me: Because you could fall off.
Owen: Like Humpty Dumpty?
Me: Laughing. Yes, like Humpty Dumpty.
New robot legs!
After playing Tumblin’ Monkeys this morning, Owen discovered new robot legs:
Mushroom Soup
Owen got out all his wooden food this morning and just made mushroom soup!
