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Category Archives: Owen

Owen and the Pinecone

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Today we went for a walk and I stopped to show Owen a pinecone. At first he didn’t want to even touch it—I’d hand it to him and he’d abruptly drop it. But then…then he decided it was fun to drop and pick up, drop and pick up, drop and pick up…then throw and pick up, throw and pick up. The only problem was he wasn’t moving much (I was trying to get us back home)…so I tried tossing it in front of him and he loved that! After a few tosses from me, he gave up and left the pinecone, and we made it home. 🙂

Walking on grass!

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Up until today, Owen would stop whenever he hit the edge of the cement—he would NOT walk onto the grass. Well, he would if he was holding your hand or finger, but he would not do it on his own. It was actually kinda cute—you’d be walking along then take your hand away, and he would just stand there balancing like What do I do now? 🙂

Well, today I finally got him to walk by himself! YAY OWEN!

New foods! Not so much.

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We went out to dinner tonight, so were able to offer Owen a whole bunch of new foods. How do you think it went?

Plain noodles No.
Cooked carrots? No.
Cooked celery? No.
Chicken? No.
Oyster cracker? Yes.
Broccoli? No.
Pesto? No.
Breadstick? No.

Sigh.

I know this is somewhat typical…but really, when does it get better? I’m ready any day now!

Meatballs!

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I made veggie-infused turkey and beef meatballs for Owen today (with some organic frozen baby food— corn and carrots—that he didn’t ever like) and quinoa for some extra protein…and at first he didn’t eat them and threw them on the floor…and to say I was frustrated was an UNDERSTATEMENT. I took the tray away and let him sit there for about 15 minutes (my mom and I were both busy with things) then gave him the tray again and he ate. And ate. And ate. Three meatballs (mini, but still), 1/4 of a pear, cheese puffs, dried strawberries, two baby mum mum crackers, fresh strawberries, and half a piece of banana bread. HOLY WAH. I was thrilled. THRILLED I SAY!

It’s amazing how much him eating a good meal (easily) puts a wonderful spin on my mood for the day!

Burpie Naptime Hysteria

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We thought Owen was tired enough for his afternoon nap. We watched him on the monitor, and he kept rolling around and playing with his burpies—tossing them around in his crib and laughing and shrieking. Mom and I were having a ball watching and listening to him on the monitor.

After about 20 minutes, mom went up to check on him to see if he wanted to come out…and he didn’t. He wanted to keep playing! So then I was watching and listening to BOTH of them on the monitor—and also hearing them down the hallway—and I couldn’t stand it and had to go up myself and take the camera!

Please forgive the bad quality in the first video segment—the camera lens was a little dirty from SOMEONE (cough, Owen, cough) carrying it around and chewing on it. 🙂

Frog Whistling

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This is a new toy we got for Owen—it’s a spiral tower that balls (and a penguin!) roll down and a frog which whistles as it goes down the chute. It’s for 18+ months but he got the hang of most of it right away (he can’t quite get the hang of putting the balls on the spiral, but he’s great at stacking them on top of the tube!).

Anyway, he really LOVES the frog, nd he has discovered how to make it make noise by himself:

Napping Rave!

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I know I’ve said it before, but I just have to say what a great napper Owen is…

After talking to my mom’s group today about naps, apparently Owen is the King of Naps. Everyone else has to deal with multiple 15 minute naps or maybe one 45 minute nap if they’re lucky. And my little sweetie gives me (on average) TWO 2-HOUR naps a day. 😀

I guess this is what I get since he’s become a picky eater. 😉

Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse

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This was the third steak house in the local trifecta of The Capital Grille (which we tried last year), Morton’s Steakhouse (which we tried last week), and Ruth’s Chris.

To start, we were really debating taking Owen—I mean, it’s not a place for toddlers—but we REALLY wanted to try them during the (cheaper) Restaurant Week offerings ($30pp). I posted on Facebook asking, and (without counting) it was pretty well split yes vs. no.

We went.

And he was the perfect little quiet smiling happy giggling toddler. The whole time. Everyone who walked by smiled at him and/or had to stop and say hi to him/us and/or tell us how good he was or how cute he was. Our waitress loved him (“a grandma of five” she told us). We did get desserts to go, though, because he was starting to get a little fussy, but we probably could have stayed. I’m really glad we went. (And I didn’t see a stink eye from anyone!)

He is such a good little boy!

Oh, and he ate one bite of calamari and sweet potato, but spit out the filet mignon, baked potato, and shrimp.

Our rating? Better than Morton’s but not as good as Capital Grille.

Lost dog!

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Talk about utter terror and complete panic.

It was horrible—I had just started feeding Owen and wondered where Maggie was, then remembered I had let her out so I opened the door and called her and she wasn’t there. So I ran outside and the fence door was open (from when Owen and I were out walking Sunday)! I hadn’t even thought about it, since Maggie had been out multiple times since then with no issues.

So, realizing what happened, I freak out because she does not wear a collar (although she is chipped, but that doesn’t help much if someone finds her) and she’s probably been gone about 15 minutes. So I ran out the front door and yelled for her. I ran a few houses up the street (leaving Owen in the high chair) and when she didn’t appear, I knew I had to go on the hunt.

I had to rush to get Owen cleaned up, out of the high chair, into his hat/coat/mittens, find shoes for me (I skipped shoes for him), find Maggie’s harness and leash (which seemed to take forever), get Owen in the stroller…then call Tom to say COME HOME (he didn’t answer so I had to leave a message!). Ugh.

All I could think of was that it was my fault the door was open. 🙁

After a trip up and down the street yelling for her, it hit me that she was probably at the park—with lots of people, dogs, and squirrels. As soon as I got there I saw her about 50 yards away playing with another dog, and when she saw me, she came running. Owen saw her and started laughing.

As I was putting her harness and leash on, the guy came up to me with his dog and asked if she was mine, and I said yes, she got out of the fence. He told me that some other woman had called Animal Control because Maggie looked like “she had been out awhile and her eyes looked bad.”

🙄

She’d been out less than 20 minutes and her head was covered in dog slobber from playing with the guy’s huge slobbery dog.

But she’s home now.

He’s walking better!

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Since the weather has been awesome the past few days, I’ve been taking Owen out for walks—both in the stroller and just with him walking. At first, he needed to hold BOTH of my hands—but now he’s down to one hand (or should I say finger!). Here he is practicing a day or so ago with Grandpa Mike:

And today, he took some major steps on his own (with some help at first). He’s all bundled up because the temps dropped from the high 60s to the mid 40s.

Molars!

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Owen has been REALLY cranky yesterday and today, and long story short, today I happened to look inside his mouth, and what do I see but the teeny tiniest little teefer poking through each side on the bottom! According to this chart, it’s the first molars (at least the best I can tell—it’s about in the middle of his gums away from his two front teeth)! Poor kid! :no:

So, right now, we have these eight teeth in varying stages of eruption:

He really only has three full teeth (still) and three partial teeth (still). I say still because he’s had those same three full teeth and partial teeth for MONTHS now, even though the partials are s—l—o—w—l—y coming in.

Just as an FYI, tere is the chart for the secondary teeth.

Daylight Savings Time

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I was a bit worried about DST this time, since Owen has a real schedule now (as opposed to when he was too young to really notice) and I was afraid he would get really messed up. And you all know how I hate doing anything (ANYTHING!!) that will mess with his sleep schedule.

So he went to bed a little later than normal last night—he’s been taking long afternoon naps again (like up to two hours!) which means he’s getting up from his nap at 5:30—so he didn’t go to bed until about 7:30. But he got up at his normal time this morning, which means he actually slept an extra hour…YAY OWEN!

But the biggest YAY was that it meant we were still on the same schedule—with him napping at around 10am for two hours. But then he took a late afternoon two-hour nap again…and was SO NOT TIRED at 7:30 when we tried to put him down. He tossed and turned and didn’t really fall asleep until 8:30! 88|

So, we have NO idea what to expect tomorrow morning…if he’ll sleep his normal number of hours (which means “sleeping in” until 8:30, which will throw off the rest of the day’s typical schedule) or if he’ll be up at his normal clock-time of 6:30-7:00 (which means he will not have gotten his usual 12+ hours of sleep).

Life is always interesting with a kid, right?

Walking! Finally caught on tape!

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Well, not really tape but you get the idea! I was trying to put Owen to bed and he was just not tired and wanted to play and crawl around. He kept taking half steps, so I kept the video ready to go but of course he never went more than that. So I recorded another cute video and as I was sending it to Tom (who was out running an errand)…THAT’S when he decided to walk. |-|

But then I got this:

AND THEN I GOT THIS…SO CUTE!!!

I think it’s only a matter of time before he starts ZOOMING…

Real food!

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The real food thing is going a lot better now!

Since the last update, he has tried (and liked) a lot of things including red and green grapes, spaghetti (any shape noodle), and Kraft cheese slices. We tried fresh strawberries again (for about the third time) and he finally ate some! YAY! He also really loves fried eggs now, and can easily eat a whole one by himself. He is still really liking Cheerios and of course he still LOVES his yogurt. He wasn’t too keen on broccoli, although he did eat the tops. And he’s LOVING his whole milk.

This past weekend Grandma Marsha and Uncle Rob came down, and we went out for lunch. Owen ate chicken and grapes, tried shrimp (he ate it!), and had a lot of fun squishing (and eventually eating) orange pieces and jello.

It’s really fun to try new foods, although it’s still frustrating when he will scarf something down at one meal and won’t touch it the next meal. He’s pretty much off baby food, although now and again he’ll get some (I fed him a jar when we went out to lunch). Some times it does feel like a challenge trying to figure out what to feed him (if what we’re eating isn’t really acceptable) but there’s always yogurt. 🙂

A few steps…

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A week or so ago, when dad and Linda were here (before their trip to Florida) I ran a quick errand (like 20 minutes quick) to the post office. When I got home, dad says to me, “You didn’t tell us Owen could walk!”

I screeched said, “HE CAN’T!”

Yeah, turns out the little shit took four big steps—and dad thought I hadn’t told him about it so they’d be surprised.

Of course, he wouldn’t repeat it…and we tried and tried and tried. Since then, he might take a step (or half a step) but then he always kneels down and crawls. He does a lot of standing (you can see him working on balancing) and really-fast-walking-along-the-couch but that’s been it.

But he finally took a few genuine steps this weekend—and Tom and I both saw him, although we didn’t get it on tape.

Owen is 13 months old today!

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He is 13 months and I think it’s now nearly impossible for me (alone) to get a good picture of him sitting with the sign:

I am thinking I might have to give up taking these monthly birthday photos because he will just not sit still for even 2 seconds and it’s absoutley THE most frustrating day of each month for me—and it should be fun. :'( I will have to wait until Tom gets home so we can double-team him. 😀

I did get this kinda cute one, though (although no sign):

Food Update

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We’ve been trucking along, trying new things and retrying old things…and things are getting somewhat better.

  • Tom said he ate TWO WHOLE PANCAKES one morning (the morning I was sick in bed after the stomach flu). The next morning he scarfed down a bunch of french toast and fried egg.
  • And he’s even been eating some small chicken pieces (which we gave him from our dinners of Pad Thai and chicken/spinach/alfredo pizza)!!
  • We tried avocado again—this time with some salt and lime juice (since he seems to like spices on his food)—and amazingly two small bites went down without any funny faces (way more than before) but then that was it.
  • He will chew on an almost-ripe pear and bite off pieces—but he won’t eat it.
  • He will eat Ritz crackers, although I don’t like to give him too many since I don’t want him to stop eating the less-flavorful snack crackers I have a ton of.
  • He now likes Cheerios (and will often stuff 3-4 in his mouth at once, which freaks me out but I’ve watched him a lot and he does just fine. He does the same with puffs, too.

I think the biggest thing, however, is that it has finally gotten through to my brain that he will NOT be eating as much as he used to, since weight gain at this age is supposed to slow waaaay down. Which means if he picks and nibbles and doesn’t seem to want the three things I’ve given him, then he gets a yogurt and that’s that. He will get his bottle (well, milk sippy cup) a bit after his meal and that will be good enough. Once I came to that conclusion, meal times have been better for me…although they can still be frustrating. 🙂

Lunch. Ugh.

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I’ve been keeping my online friends updated on Owen’s food issues, and one of them said today (after seeing the beaver picture):

Maybe you should try adding wood to everything.

Hee. 😀

So, today’s lunch was frustrating…BIG surprise, right?

No to mac and cheese (a previous winner).
No to Swiss cheese.
No to kiwi (a usual winner).
No to banana (loves it mushed in oatmeal, but apparenlty not in pieces).
No to plain tuna fish (new today, didn’t have high hopes).
No to my tuna fish (big surprise after the plain tuna).
No to puffs (what? whoa!).
No to bread.

Sigh.

I ended up giving him Stage 3 Broccoli & Carrots with Cheese.