Owen Flotsam

Last week was Owen’s first full week of nursery school, so of course this week is his first cold of the school year.  Sigh.  Sean and I were betting it would take two weeks for the first sickness to appear, but the cold won that bet.  Oh well!

Owen’s favorite thing to say to us right now is to admonish us to “Be patient.”  When we ask him to do something that he doesn’t want to do at that particular moment, he’ll say, “Be patient, Mommy.  You have to be patient.”  When I brush Plum and Plum gets tired of it and yowls, Owen will say, “OKAY PLUM!  BE PATIENT!”

In general, he is very interested in narrative and wants us to re-state to him what happened even when only minutes have passed.  So for example, he’ll have a conversation with Sean, and then he’ll turn to me and ask, “What did Daddy say?  And what did Owen say?”  He likes to relive any conversation as a story, which I find rather fascinating, as that is how I process things myself.  Of course, he won’t stop after hearing a recap once; he’ll want to hear the recap over and over.

Owen often will “help” me in the mornings when I feed the cats, and we went through a particular phase (now over, thank goodness) where he wanted to be the one to scoop the food into the dishes.  When one day he was trying to express to me that he wanted to do the scooping, he said to me, “You be the cook!  I’ll be the catman!” – meaning he wanted me to get our own breakfast ready, while he concentrated on the cats.

Owen was bringing me a beer Sean had poured one weekend, and the beer was dark with a head of froth.  As Owen carefully carried it into the living room, he said, “Mommy!  Here’s your chocolick and your banilla!”

People often ask Owen how old he is, but he still doesn’t quite grasp the concept of numbers.  He can identify them up to 25 or so, but when he counts items, for example, he’ll say when counting four blocks, “One, two, three, four… Nine blocks!”  Anyway, we told him our ages the other day while explaining to him that he was three, and now if you ask Owen how old he is, he’ll say 44.  Just like his Daddy.  J

I took Owen to the mall to buy him a new pair of sneakers (sneakers, which for some reason he refuses to wear now), and we walked through the makeup section of Bloomingdales on our way to the mall.  Owen looked around and said, loudly, “It’s lipstick and chapstick!”

Owen’s biggest insult still is “You go to work!”  He says it when he is mad at us and wants us to go away.  Now he’s added a bit to it though and will say, “You go to work!  By yourself!”  And he’ll say it with venom!

Tonight I walked into the living room and found Owen perched on the couch next to Sean.  He said, "Mommy!  It's your two mans!  Daddy and Owen."