Owen got a new Sesame Street iPhone app (The Great Cookie Thief) which allows you to make WANTED posters and save them. This is our favorite one so far:
Category Archives: Owen
Welcome to the real North!
I love this sight:
We were surprised at the amount of tree color in the U.P. considering it was only September 16.
After what seemed like a short 7½ hours (after two long nine-hour days, 7½ felt short), we made it up to the Upper Peninsula to see my dad’s new house…MAN, that’s a drive. (Here is our total one-way trip from North Carolina.)
See that tiny point? That’s where we were—Eagle Harbor. We joke it’s Alaska.
The view from the back deck—I have to admit it’s nice:
And Owen having a blast playing with cars out there:
And Papa meeting and feeding Katie for the first time…
Owen’s great behavior!
We just got complemented on Owen’s great behavior at a restaurant. Yay, us! Yay, Owen!
Refusing to go poop!
This is now one of my all-time favorite Owen videos. Oh. My. Gawd. It was all I could do while recording him NOT to bust out laughing…and at one point, you can see the video jiggle because I was trying to hold it in. I laugh every single time I watch it, and I bet you will, too. In fact, I dare you to only watch it once.
Owen’s Phone Call
Using Grandma Jean’s handheld solitaire game:
Hello?
This is Owen Hudson.
I need a recipe. I forgot the ingredients.
Okay.
Thanks, Hon.
See you later.
Long (well, short) night.
Well, that was a long, sleepless night. I didn’t really fall asleep until 11, Katie was up at 2, Owen was up at 3, and Katie was up at 5…and they both made so damn much noise all night we barely slept.
Big jumps with daddy
One of the only good things about staying in a hotel with the kids on our road trip…watching Owen have a complete blast in the pool!
We have a backseat driver!
We apparently have a backseat driver:
“Nice turn. Go right. 45 miles. Red light.”
Listening to Owen’s imagination.
Today, he went camping, had a store, put out fires, made cupcakes and s’mores, raced cars, got party invitations, helped Santa, and other stuff I know I’m forgetting.
Santa’s coming!
He found the tiny Santa hat (from when he was a lot smaller) and was having a ball. We had also been watching a Christmas-themed Backyardigans, which I think is where he got the bit about the sleigh. Of course, I could never get him to wear the hat when it actually fit him…
Once upon a time…
Owen decided he wanted to read me a story, so he went and picked a book and this is what happened:
Happy birthday, papa!
Bath attitude
In his bath tonight, Owen made a “sandwich” with a flat foam pumpkin piece, a tiny rubber ball, and a foam seahorse.
I said “Oh, I think it’s a s’more!” and he says with noticeable attitude: “NO! It’s a pumpkin, a ball, and seahorse.” Like How could you be so stupid, mom?
WE HAVE POOP IN THE POTTY!
Oh. My. Gawd.
Owen just pooped one of the biggest poops I’ve ever seen. IN THE TOILET! ENTIRELY ON HIS OWN!! (He claimed he did once before but he flushed before we saw it, so we aren’t 100% sure.)
He had pooped in his underwear twice this morning so we kept him naked (on the recommendation of a friend who went through this recently with his son and claimed it worked wonders). So Owen was playing out of sight (naked) while we were watching the MSU/CMU game…then suddenly came running in “Mama! Daddy! I pooped in the toilet! All by myself! C’mon! Come look!”
So I followed him—downstairs!—and I’ll be damned…he did. But it was SO huge I honestly thought it might have been Tom! So of course I called Tom to check it out (it wasn’t). And I took a picture for posterity (no, I won’t be posting it!).
We lavished him with praise. He seemed thrilled.
We said “Wasn’t that easy?” He said yes!
Then he says “You happy now?” We said yes!
Then he picked out his reward and I asked if he was going to keep pooping in the potty…and he says no. 😐
Family Jerseys
Family MSU jerseys (Tom’s 40th birthday presents)… Any other game I’d actually be rooting for State, but today I’m rooting for CMU, my alma matter! GO CHIPS!
Owen’s drive-in theater
Dancing to Doctor Who
Potty Training: Day 3
Since Owen pretty much has the basic hang of peeing in the potty, we’ve downgraded the cost of the toys in the jar—we started with real die cast Cars cars and are now down to chocolate candies, dollar store trinkets, and Matchbox cars. 🙂
Also, Tom had regaled me with tales of Owen doing everything perfectly by himself. But with me? He apparently can’t ever get his undies off and when he does he pees all over everything. So now, in addition to the cheaper toys, he only gets a toy if he successfully pees in the potty and keeps his undies dry.
About half the time we still have to ask him if he has to go potty. Today I asked him and he said no (he was watching a TV show) but he was crossing his legs so I actually said “OWEN GO POTTY RIGHT NOW” at which time he ran in there and peed just fine (Tom ran in right behind him and I think he may have helped a bit). So our biggest obstacle seems to be him not wanting to stop what he’s doing.
And then there’s the poop. UGH. We knew he was going to have to poop today since it’s been two days…so we were watching him very closely and making him play in the same room as us. Whenever we asked if he had to poop, of course he’d say NO! and then say “NO poop on the potty!” |-| He peed just fine.
Fast forward to this afternoon when I discovered a tiny little nugget in his underwear…which, of course, he hadn’t told us about. So we made him sit on the potty, letting him play with his cars (and future reward) but he pretty much spent the whole time saying “NO POOP ON THE POTTY!” and saying he was going to poop in a diaper. 😐 I told him we were going to try to poop every 15 minutes and sent him off in clean underwear. On our next trip to the potty? Poopy underwear again. >:XX I know pooping is the hard part, but OHMYGOD one of us might not survive this.
And I really don’t know what I’ll do when Tom isn’t around all day…
Owen is 3 years 7 months today!
Owen and Thunderstorms
We learned last night that Owen doesn’t like thunderstorms—he never used to be bothered by them so this is new. We had a whopper roll through last night, shaking the house, super loud lightning, etc… I got up to pee at 5 and saw his light was on so I went in and he was crying. 🙁 He’s apparently very concerned as to where the sun is. 🙂
He calmed down pretty quickly and let me cuddle him (which I fully enjoyed) but neither of us fell asleep as he kept chattering off and on about the storm, the rain (the sound of rain), his new cars, the movie Cars, etc.
I finally left him at 6, just as Tom was finishing with Katie…as I was laying down, I heard Tom in Owen’s room. Huh? I got up and they were in the bathroom trying to pee. Yes, in the two minutes since I had left Owen’s room, he had turned on his light again. He didn’t have to pee so was diapered and put down again. Ten minutes later I heard him get out of bed so I went back in there. I think we both finally fell asleep around 7 and got up at 8.
It’s going to be a long day.
Second day of potty training.
Well, there were ups and downs today…as expected, I guess. 😐
I went to town and bought 15 pair of (size 6!) underwear, so we’re fully stocked. I also bought a bunch of toys for the Pee and Poop Reward Jars. Of course, when Owen saw me with the new toys that he couldn’t play with, he had a mini meltdown…complete with his growling “Not gonna pee in potty anymore! Don’t want toys anymore!”
But overall he did pretty well peeing in the potty. There were a few instances of not quite making it in time—he gets to the bathroom but either pees on the way there or doesn’t get his undies down in time. And the times he does get in there, his aim is awful (even with Cheerios as targets)…so needless to say the Clorox wipes and baby wipes are kept close at hand (one to clean the floor/wall/toilet and one to clean him).
I think his biggest problem is not wanting to stop what he’s doing to go potty, hence the waiting until the last minute. If you ask him if he has to go, he usually says no. So you have to watch him like a hawk and notice him holding himself or crossing his legs or prancing around. But other times he’ll just go in the bathroom on his own… so it’s a total crapshoot. He did earn quite a few toys so he was happy.
The best part of the day, however, was when he was handed a chocolate coin for his potty training reward, and said: “A chocolate coin! WOOHOO!” Yes, he literally said WOOHOO! 😀
Tomorrow is poop day. It’s been two days with only rabbit turds… Lord help us.
Are we really potty training? REALLY?!
So I was off getting my hair done and Virginia (our good friends’ kid who is now babysitting age! She was three when we met her!) was watching Katie, so Tom decided it was time to see if Owen would use the potty (especially after the success of peeing in the grass last night). I didn’t know this, of course, until I was out of the house, so it was a big surprise to me!
So I got a text and a photo of Owen standing in front of the toilet! The next text was “Success!” and a picture of Owen holding his reward—a new Cars car! The next text was a photo of the near miss (pee on the rug in front of the toilet). Then later a text saying Owen had earned a lot of cars! 88|
I tried not to get too hopeful, thinking it really couldn’t be this easy (though we had hoped that if we just waited long enough, it WOULD be this easy) but I admit to being excited.
When I came home, we celebrated by ordering pizza for dinner. And Owen kept peeing in the potty all night and earned more toys (it’s a good thing I have a backlog of toys ready for this occasion)! Here he is outside, waiting for the “pizza man.”
Of course, poop is going to be the bigger obstacle…but I have BIG (more wanted) toys ready for that—an Iron Man robot, a big school bus, and a bunch of Cars 2 cars—that he’s really excited about. Funny thing—the big toys are too big to set on top of the medicine cabinet, so I was just going to put them in his closet, right? Except he knew they were there and kept opening his closet to look at them. I figured that might not be conducive to him actually sleeping, so I put them in our room, but put one of them (Iron Man) in the bathroom on the top shelf above the toilet—but that didn’t last long as he climbed up on the toilet and reached up to touch it. I could only see that ending badly, so that one got moved as well. Hopefully they are enough incentive to get him to poop on the potty!
The only somewhat big (though minor) mishap was when I was putting Owen to bed. He was in bed, we read a story, and as I was getting up to tuck him in…I saw a poop nugget in the bed, smeared (I had obviously just been sitting on it). So…sometime during the day, he had pooped, and it apparently fell out of his underwear…and he never told us. Yes, poop is going to be the hardest part.
So, it looks like we’re potty training. And sticking close to the toilet all weekend. And watching him like a hawk!
GO OWEN!!
Owen peed in the grass!
Owen and I were in the pool and he was naked and we’ve told him you can’t pee in the pool. After awhile he says “I need a diaper” and grabs his penis. I make a big deal about him letting me know and tell him he can go in the grass—and then I put him there! He wasn’t too sure. I told him he could pick one of his new cars and he was super excited about that. It took a minute with some cajoling, but he did it!! :up:
We celebrated, he was excited, and he got to pick his car! I said going pee in the grass was just like going in the potty…but he wasn’t falling for it.
But it’s a start, right? I think we’ll do a naked weekend soon.
My favorite part of today…
Owen was in the pool and I was holding Katie because Tom wasn’t home. He kept saying “Mama come in? Mama get your suit?” and of course I couldn’t. Tom got home and Owen kept asking, so I just hopped in—clothes and all—and he was soooo excited! And we had soooo much fun.
He says “I’m Tony!”
Tony? Huh?
“Owen, who’s Tony?”
“IRON MAN!” (For those who don’t know, Tony Stark is Iron Man.)
So I was the Hulk and chased him around the pool. And he reenacted parts of his favorite Avengers movie.
It. Was. Awesome.
NO KISSES!
He definitely didn’t want kisses and was letting us know…but he was also half laughing. That growl you hear in his voice? That’s what his “tantrums” are like (I know, not bad—I’m not complaining).
P-U-O-L-E-P spells pool
My little helper
Owen is SUCH a great helper.
I have him do little things for me off and on—partially because it really helps me out and partially to teach him how to follow multi-part directions.
For example, today I asked:
“Owen, can you please go upstairs into your bathroom and bring me the Baby B that’s in the sink?”
And he got it.
I also asked:
“Owen, can you please go upstairs in Katie’s room and get the two bottles that are on her crib?”
And he did that, too.
Both of these are impressive since he often has a hard time with (what we think are) simple/easy-to-understand requests. (For example, he asked me where something was, and I told him (while pointing) “It’s under that chair in the pink cat bed.” And he didn’t get it, even after I repeated it three times.) I’m not sure what the difference is between what he does and doesn’t understand.
But he’s learning and getting better and he’s awesome to have as a helper!
He loves his new MSU jersey
I got Owen a new football jersey for Tom’s birthday—and he LOVES it. He’ll dig it out of the dirty laundry and bring it to me because he wants to wear it.
Early birthday presents!
We normally don’t buy each other birthday (or Christmas) presents—we just buy what we want throughout the year. But this year, I thought of the PERFECT gift(s) for Tom…and unfortunately, I kinda had to spoil it at almost the last minute to make sure he didn’t buy it himself! (He made a comment about “still needing to get” it and I just told him NOT to shop for anything the few weeks before his birthday. 😮
Tom wears my old (circa early 1990s) MSU jersey. Owen’s MSU jersey is too small (4T). I don’t have one (my old one doesn’t fit, which is why Tom wears it). MSU’s season opener is coming up soon. So I decided to get new jerseys for everyone (well, not for Katie—she has a onesie). I was going to get them all personalized, but not once I saw the price tag. 88| So, Tom just got one and the other two were from eBay. 🙂
I was going to wait until right before the game to give them to him (still before his birthday) but he had had a crappy day at work, so I decided it was time. And he LOVED them, of course…
When he saw that his was personalized, he says “How did you know my high school number was 72?!?” I said “I didn’t—I got your birth year!” (I should have kept my mouth shut to keep him really impressed—because truth be told, I never even THOUGHT about trying to find out what his number was.)
The best thing? Owen was even more excited than Tom was! He had to have his on right away, and then he made both of us put ours on, too. Then he and Tom had to play football in the living room (Owen is GREAT at recovering fumbles). And apparently his number is a quarterback number (or at least was from last season) so he thinks he’s a QB now. 🙂
Stay tuned for a family photo on game day.
Guess where I just found Owen?
So, Katie wasn’t really tired enough this morning for her first morning nap (which usually happens after her morning feeding)—but she had slept almost nine hours (!!!) that night so I sort of expected it. But she wasn’t fussing, so I swaddled her and put her down anyway, just to see.
Then I got Owen up, gave him his snack in front of Little Einsteins (“Grandma Rocket,” his new favorite—which is the Little Red Rocket (Riding) Hood episode), and went to the office to do a few things on the computer.
After a bit, knowing the episode was surely over, I went to check on him…and he was gone. I quick looked in his room and he wasn’t there. I was going to head downstairs to check, but thought I’d look at Katie’s monitor first…and lo and behold, I saw the video was flying all over the place… which meant little hands had control of it. |-|
So, I went to Katie’s room—where the door was closed!—and both lights were on and Owen was playing in there (with the video camera). While she was supposed to be sleeping. Which of course she wasn’t.
Needless to say I was NOT happy. We’ve had discussions before about NOT going into Katie’s room if the door is shut, but apparently it didn’t stick. I asked if he was checking on her and he said no. I asked if she had been crying and he said yes..but I don’t believe him because normally I have dog hearing when it comes to her crying, and I hadn’t heard anything (and she wasn’t crying at the moment).
I told him I was not happy, and then we went over the rules again: If Katie’s door is closed, you don’t go in. Repeated three times.
So then we all—including Katie, since she was obviously awake!—came back into my bedroom and I asked Owen to hand me the purple towel, which he did. I thanked him and he said sweetly “Mama happy? Mama happy now? Mama not sad anymore?”
Yes, Owen, mama is happy now.
What a kid.