Owen was playing a new video game that he constantly needed Tom’s help with. So, Tom told him if he would hold Katie, he would help with the game. I’ll take it. 🙂
Category Archives: Toys & Games
Threenager alert!
Life has become interesting lately. Our sweet little Owen is turning into a threenager. Holy cow does he test my patience…what little of it I have left.
We tell Owen to NOT do something or STOP doing something…and he turns right around and does it.
He has zero attention span when we ask him to pick up toys. It’s a constant repetition of “Owen, please put all your toys away. Owen, please put your cars away. Owen, please put your cars in this box. Owen, put your cars away now. OWEN! Mama asked you to put your cars away. If you don’t, I’m taking them away.”
And every time you ask him to put something away—whether he’s actively playing with it or not—he says “No, I’m just playing!” And then wants to play with whatever you wanted him to put away.
He’ll whine that he “doesn’t want a snack/drink/toy/etc. anymore” and then two minutes later he wants it.
He is starting to get more destructive—he was “helping” by winding Katie’s pack-and-play mobile…and actually doing okay so I left him alone, only to come back five minutes later and it was completely broken off and he was playing with it on the floor. 😐
He’s broken a bunch of toys just rough housing with them or not being careful. I make him throw them in the garbage.
The day care lady had to talk to him today—a first. 😐 He was throwing toys at or with another kid. She said they talked about it, he apologized, and things were okay, but she just wanted to let me know. Oh, and he also snuck into the bathroom and was playing at the sink…his shirt was completely drenched when I picked him up after only an hour. I commented that he has just turned into a threenager during the past week or so and she said it appears to be going around.
And potty training. Oh man, don’t get me started on potty training. He had the peeing down completely after really just a week (with just a few accidents after his nap or in the morning, which was to be expected) and poop has been a challenge since day one. So we get home from vacation, and suddenly he’s peeing in his underwear and ON THE FLOOR. And poop is still a huge issue—he knows poop goes in the potty and he’s excited and happy when he does go, yet I typically spend all day cleaning up poopy underwear and his poopy butt because he either doesn’t realize he’s pooping, he does realize and just doesn’t care, or he’s just being super obstinate. I know he’s still learning, but it’s super frustrating.
One time he called me over to tell me he had poop on his foot. Yes, poop. On his foot. And it was completely dried. So I have no idea when or where he stepped in poop (I haven’t smelled it or found it). And then he threw a holy terror tantrum when I made him stick his foot in the bath to clean it. And this was after I had to strip his bed again because he peed in his bed (and on the floor) during his nap. Yes, potty training might just kill me.
Anyone want our threenager? Just temporarily, mind you?
Things Owen said today.
I was going through some flash cards with Owen. He’d tell me what the picture was, then flip the card over and read the letters to spell it. Most of the words were short, like apple, sun, barn, and lamp. Then we got to skateboard—and he turned it over and said “Wow! That’s a lot of letters!”
He was sitting on the toilet in an attempt to poop (what he has to do when we see him grunting or find poop in his butt). He talks about anything but pooping, which is hilarious. Tonight was:
- “Mama, that’s a pretty picture of rocks!” (About a picture of petoskey stones on a beach above the toilet.)
- “Mama, where’d the fire candle go?” (One of the times in the bathroom with him, I lit the candle.)
- “Mama, can I see the timer? I need to see the timer.” (He has to sit there for 10 minutes, and I made the mistake of showing him the timer on my phone once and now he won’t shut up about it.)
- “Mama, you have a poop spot on your leg.” (It was a bruise.)
He doesn’t shut up the entire time. He’s full of stories and imagination and things like this…
Destruction!
Owen’s skeleton’s arm came apart and he took it to Tom to fix it.
Tom: “Owen, what happened?”
Owen: “Destruction!”
Neither of us have any idea where that came from!
Game Day at Grandma’s!
We spent the day at Grandma Marsha’s place, and it just happened to be MSU game day! We all had our jerserys—and the boys played football and hot potato! I love Owen’s guffaw.
I caught Owen catching the football!
And I got to take a little nap with Maggie…
WANTED: Stinkeye Sawyer
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:
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 drive-in theater
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…
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.
Avengers assemble!
Owen really likes the Avengers. It started with Iron Man and has grown into the whole crew, thanks to a kid’s movie on Netflix (Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow
So when we were thinking about potential Halloween costumes, someone mentioned they had Avenger costumes at Costco…so on our recent trip, we got one. We wanted Captain America or Iron Man, but of course they didn’t have either one of those. So we got Thor…which he’s completely enamored with because he LOVES the hammer.
The hammer was played with as soon as we got home, and the costume sat there for a day before he had to wear it (which was fine because we also wanted him to try it on—it’s a size 7-8 but they run small so we wanted to make sure it fit). Luckily he loves it and wants to wear it all the time, but we limit the time so it will hopefully last until Halloween!
This is him saying “Avengers assemble!” (from the movie) and making the arm motion!
Fencing Owen
We were watching a few minutes of Olympic fencing, so of course Owen had to go get his sword!
A knight and his sister
Taking a break from playing knight to check out his sister. 🙂
Family Bingo
Gramma Jean brought Family Bingo to try and play with Owen. He didn’t play so much as he found matches…which was close enough!
Two weeks old!
Long story short, we no longer have to travel to the base hospital for appointments! When Tom went in to add Katie to our insurance, they asked if we wanted to change our PCM to someone in town and we said YES! (That’s what we initially wanted to do when we moved here but they told us we HAD to be seen on base. Ironically, Tom was dealing with the exact woman he dealt with before that gave him such attitude and she tried to tell him that he could have picked a PCM a year ago when we moved here. But anyway.)
So we only have to drive 15 minutes now and can park about 20 yards from the office (instead of driving 30 minutes and parking 200 yards from the office)…it really does feel like a HUGE difference. The office is small and a bit outdated (i.e. the scale they used to weigh Katie was an old-fashioned one where you slide the bars to get it to balance instead of the digital one at the hospital that takes three readings and averages them)…but the staff and doctor were nice and it was quick and easy and I’m glad we made the change.
So, Katie’s stats. For reference:
She was born 8 lbs. 1 oz.
She left the hospital at 7 lbs. 12 oz.
At her one-day check-up she was 7 lbs. 6oz.
At her three-day check-up she was 7 lbs. 11 oz.
At her two-week check-up…she was 8 lbs. 14 oz!!
I didn’t think about it until after we left that they didn’t measure her length or her head…but maybe they don’t do that until the one-month appointment. I just chalked it up to something else I don’t remember, and will make a note of it for her next appointment.
He doesn’t even put his cars down when he naps!
On our way back from Costco…
I have two Rod Torques!
Katie had given Owen a Rod Torque (“damaged” version) so when we gave him the one from Grannie Lin and Papa (the “undamaged” version), he ran around saying “I have two Rod Torques!”
Owen opening presents from Katie
Alphabet, numbers, and Dora
Owen has been loving the baby toys we’ve been unpacking…and has been super enthralled with this one. After a little while playing with it, he can now sing his alphabet! And we’re constantly amazed at how his mind works—towards the end he flips the language switch to Spanish and says “Dora!” ❗
Charlie watching over Owen
Just loving his new cars…
New Cars book and Cars Surprise!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAUW1EG3WY
Thank you Aunt Sue and Uncle Marv…Owen loved the Cars stuff! And I’m sure Katie will love her night-lite!
Bath time! 3-2-1-go!
Kids!
Our good friends Tom and Karen (that live on the other side of our neighborhood) have moved back into town, and they have three kids (ages 6, almost 5, and 8mo) so we’ve been seeing them more lately—which is great for Owen! We had dinner over there this past weekend, and Owen and Nate (the 6yo) got along fabulously…Owen showed up with his knight helmet and sword and Nate was already running around with his own sword! Owen also sat and talked to the 8mo which was adorable! They’ve also been to our house to swim a few times, but that’s a little overwhelming for Owen who is used to having his pool to himself (but we keep doing it so he’ll get used to it)!
Today, I left Owen there while I had a doctor’s appointment, and Karen texted me this pic of our “Little Toms”:
And then this pic of Owen driving one of their power wheels cars…which, if you recall, he won’t even barely sit (let alone drive) his own police car! So needless to say I was surprised…and of course, apparently other kids’ toys are more fun than your own!
Naming his line of cars…and racing!
Cement mixer! Kind of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B0XKnV7hR8
Trying to say “cement mixer” in one shot.
Pool tiger!
He didn’t love this tiger when we first got it…he’s really too big for it (in our shallow pool) for him to actually sit with his legs through it (they touch bottom) so it just floated around the pool for a week or so. We did sit him in it like an inner tube and that was okay for a few minutes…but today he WANTED to play with it. And it was SOOOO cute—he just kinda put his head down on it and moved/floated around the pool for quite some time.
Charlie’s X-Ray
Here, Owen is showing Charlie her x-ray.
Curled up in the bath.
As the water was draining, he decided to lay down like this to stick his face/head in the bubbles. Silly kid.
Mama, out of the way!
Owen: Mama, out of the way.
Me: ???
Owen: Mama, out of the way.
Oops. I was sitting right in the middle of his roads rug.
