Mr. Owen

I need to be better at writing down what Owen says daily, because he is still very funny these days and I’d like to remember.  In general right now he is very into talking about emotions, specifically being grumpy and/or angry.  If we ask him if he wants to do something, he will often answer, “No!  I want to be grumpy right now!”  To which I often reply, “Well it seems as if you’ve met your goal.”  He is often grumpy, although that will change on a dime.

He still gets very angry if things do not go his way, and Sean has started taking him to the steps to have a little talk (usually after he has tried to hit me).  They sit on the steps and Owen counts to ten, and then takes three deep breaths.  Then they might talk about anger for a bit and how you shouldn’t hit, etc.  Then he’ll come to apologize to me with an “I sorry I hit you Mommy.”  It’s not so much a time out or a punishment, but more just a way of resetting his temper.  He will now ask to go sit with Daddy on the steps right at the beginning of his anger, so I suppose it is working!

And then he later likes to ask us to tell him a story about when he was angry earlier in the day, and he still will also ask us, “Did you get a picture?”

He’s also fascinated by when we are angry, and when I start to get exasperated at him for something or the other, he will say, “Are you angry Mommy?”  And then he will insist that I “Be happy, Mommy!” 

He went over to Sean’s iced tea the other day and started to take a sip.  When Sean told him to stop, he replied:  “I not listening to Daddy.”  And then when he had finished what was left in the cup, he said to Sean, “You’ll have to go buy more, Daddy.”

He will want toys when we go to the store, and doesn’t understand why he can’t just take what he sees.  We’ve been telling him that we have no money for that or that it’s too expensive.  Yesterday when he was helping me change the sheets on the bed, he didn’t like the clean ones I had picked out, and brought them back to the closet telling me as he went that “These are too expensive.”

As we were driving in the car the other day, Sean was quizzing Owen about traffic lights, asking him what red means, what green means, and what yellow means.  After replying correctly, Owen asked, “What does brown mean?”  After a bit of thought, I told him brown meant chocolate.  As it so often does to me.