First, he DOES NOT WANT to watch Cars—but as soon as it starts, he’s dancing around and getting out all the matching cars as they come on the screen.
Here, he’s crashing the cars as they crash on TV:
Then I had to pause Cars 2 when Crabby comes on the screen because Owen NEEDS to get his own Crabby—but it’s out of his reach and I’m feeding Katie and can’t get it.
I get Crabby AND Siddely (to prepare for later in the movie) and then it’s okay to start the movie again.
And on and on.
Owen has been bugging me to go in the pool ever since the first day’s brief splashing, but I haven’t been able to let him since the salt levels were too high. Today I finally over-filled the pool by about 2″ hoping it would be enough…and it was! I warned him it was going to be cold but he didn’t care…until he got in.
“EEK! IT’S COLD!”
Happy, happy boy!
Then I had him empty some of the water. It’s easier (and more fun) for him to do it!
Then he wanted balls. And water guns. And his AquaZooka. And then…
Owen: Mama, I want the fish.
Me: What fish?
Owen: The floaty fish!
Me: We don’t have a floaty fish.
Owen: Yes! In the shed!
I go to the shed and look around. I don’t see a fish.
Me: Owen, I don’t see a fish. Where is it?
Owen: Behind the wagon.
And damn if it wasn’t there, buried UNDERNEATH a hose. He must have seen it last weekend when Tom had everything out.
Then I noticed the sky looked like this:
So I kept an eye on the weather, but the clouds just moved right over us. Katie was enjoying watching her brother.
Then, strangely enough, AFTER the clouds passed, THEN it started to sprinkle, so I got Owen out of the pool:
And he decided to give Katie some love:
And then post-pool Lego play—of course in the kitchen where things easily get bumped or knocked off. But, to his credit, he said “But it’s out of reach [for Katie]!” which is exactly what I told him he had to do.
Unfortunately, when I went out later to fix the skimmer (that Owen had knocked apart), the pump started beeping at me that the salt was too high again. I have NO idea how that could happen, so I get to try again tomorrow…
This morning at breakfast I gave Katie a straw sippy cup to play/practice with. I marked where I filled it so I could tell if she actually drank anything or was just playing. And damned if she didn’t actually drink some! Then I let her have it during play time and she drank more! So…it looks like we’re going to bypass the hard spout cups. WOOHOO! (Owen didn’t drink out of straw cups until probably 1.5-2—but I don’t think we even gave him the chance because typically regular sippy cups come first so that’s what we did.)
At her second dinner (when Owen was finally eating at 8:00) I gave her the cup again and she was drinking and drinking. She’s still obviously getting used to the flow because she’d often choke a little bit on a big gulp of water. She’s also learning to hold it and pick it up…something she’s refused to do with her bottles thus far.
But look at how VERY proud of herself she is!
ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE!
THERE YOU GO!
TA DA!
I’m really wondering if she’s going to be done with bottles sooner rather than later. She still drinks SOME but it’s really few and far between (I can’t tell you the last time she drank a full bottle in one sitting)—she’d much rather eat real food.
She loves Owen so much! She’s always by him or crawling on him or messing with him. And I think he loves it more than she does!!
Oh my goodness he was SO excited watching Tom get it ready and start filling it up…
I love the feet here.
And the face here.
Tentative first step…
Hey, this is fun!
Posing for mom’s request.
More splashing around.
“Can I take my shorts off?”
“I have to go potty!”
I tried to get a cute shot of his face with his butt blurry in the background…but for as scary smart as he is sometimes, he could NOT grasp that I wanted him to move his legs around. 🙂
Tom working on the walkway.
She LOVED the water and wanted to GO GO GO!
When she first got in, it was pretty shallow so she could kinda crawl/float around…and boy did she scoot quickly!
But since it was filling as we were in it, it obviously kept getting deeper…
…and she started taking on water!
And of course big brother was RIGHT there the whole time. He wanted to play with her SO badly!! And we taught him that if he sees Katie go under, the first thing he has to do is pull her up then scream for us if we’re not right there. 🙂
I sense a very wet summer for me…
On a sidenote, we’re trying a saltwater system
NEW CONTENT:
Otherwise known as “trying to poop on the potty” time. 🙂 This is what we do about 3-4 times a day.
And this is what we usually see under the door. Sometimes we let her in but of course she wants to be right in the middle of things so it’s easier to just keep her out.
Wow. Just wow.
Today was one of those rare North Carolina days where the weather is perfect, there’s a nice breeze, there’s no bugs, and it’s perfectly glorious to be outside…so we took full advantage of it!
I got out the kid enclosure our friends loaned us to put Katie on the deck under the umbrella (so I didn’t have to worry about sun) and she didn’t mind it too much.
And then he climbed in with Katie.
Meanwhile I was catching up on some of my big ol’ stack o’ magazines.
And Owen was running around playing with/snapping his Indiana Jones whip (something he’s not allowed to do inside), running around the yard, climbing on his playset, and playing with his army men* that he earned this morning for pooping. 🙂
And here you can see him in all his adorable action:
We came inside for a little bit because after her nap, Katie was NOT having it…but when daddy got home, we decided to eat dinner outside!! By then it was a little cooler but still definitely worth staying out to enjoy it.
Ahhh, spring!
* The army men were an unplanned surprise. They were a gift from Grandma Marsha probably two years ago (in a Diego backpack) that we just tucked away until he was old enough to play with them. And I had kinda forgotten about them as they were in Katie’s closet (Owen’s old closet). But today, Owen happened to be in her room with us and the closet doors were open and his inquisitive eyes glommed on to Diego RIGHT away: “What is this?!” 🙂 Then he opened it and found the army men…which I then immediately used as a potty training bribe!
Katie doesn’t like being left alone so this is what usually happens while I’m getting dinner ready…or going to the bathroom…or walking into another room. Pretty much whenever she gets left alone.
She’s cute but it gets old. 😐
Turns out Maggie has a beef with the rototiller. I haven’t heard her bark this much in ages.
This is a better sample…though I help him a bit on the second run-through. 🙂
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.
Sibling…love? And typical Owen silliness.
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…
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:
She loves playing with Maggie…but really wants her tags to chew on. 🙂
She’s quite good at copying sounds…and being cute. 🙂
So tonight I thought I’d let Katie go up the stairs and record her. I was SURE she’d fly right up them like Owen did when first given the chance. I mean, every time she even SEES a gate open, she’s off like a shot.
So, here’s what happened.
Okay, let’s try this again. Stairs take 2.
FAIL. Take 3.
LOL! You know if I turned my back on her during the day when the gate happened to be open, she’d be up them in a hot second.
Take 4. Seriously, this is your last shot girlfriend.
Oh for heavens sake. 🙂
She climbed up me to get onto the ottoman. And then takes a nosedive trying to get at my camera. But this video is proof that even though I’m trying to get the shot, I still have cat-like reflexes and I will put the phone down when necessary. 🙂
It only took three months for Owen’s hair to grow out from the buzz cut he had last. Three months! Egads.
Katie was just hanging out while we were waiting…
Tom got this during…
And I completely spaced on getting a post-haircut photo. 😐
This is your average Owen meltdown. Typically post-nap but really it could happen any time.
In this video, he’s 1) mainly missing his daddy, talking about missing me (because I had been gone for an hour to get my X-ray), and 3) upset that he threw his chicken away. (He said he didn’t want it anymore so I told him to throw it in the garbage—which he did. Then he apparently started having second thoughts after I told him daddy was going to take the garbage out when he got home.) The very first thing in the video is him asking “What was that?” because the stinker heard the ding of me hitting Record on my phone.
Enjoy!
Katie loves her green beans!
Making pretty music… I love that she quickly figures out which side makes the music.
We have no idea what got into him during the Skype with Grandma Marsha.
Tom caught this tonight. Katie got a little too close for Charlie’s comfort…and snapped at her. She didn’t harm Katie in any way…but obviously scared her into a delayed reaction.