Progress

Owen is no longer crying or whining when he gets dropped off at his nursery school playgroup, which is nice.  He happily goes into his classroom and then is pleased to see Susan when she picks him up in a couple of hours.  I’m told he doesn’t always sing the goodbye song, but perhaps he prefers a handshake or some simple sprechtstimme.  Or even a see you later.  At any rate, school is going well, although we are all braced for Illness #2.

We’ve also seen some changes with Owen’s counting abilities.  He can count along with us – when we are walking down the stairs, say – up to twenty.  But until recently, when counting things on his own (something he likes to do), he would count thusly:  2, 10, 2, 10, 2!  So I started counting 1-2-3 to try to balance out all the 2’s and 10’s, and now he has started counting like this:  1, 2, Ghee, Pa, 15, 18.  Hmmmm.  I guess he heard “three” as “Ghee”, his nickname for his Granny, and then figured he should throw in a “Pa” so his Grandfather wouldn’t feel left out?  And then he's always been fond of reciting the teens.

We’re still working on his numbers!

He likes to tell us what colors things are, too, and gets them all correct except he can’t seem to tell the difference between pink and white.  All pinks are pink and all whites are pink too.  Perhaps that’s a remark on my laundry skills?  

Gone Reading

I’ve been a bit blog-shy lately, primarily due to wanting to spend all my free-time first re-reading the 7^th and then reading the new, 8^th Diana Gabaldon Outlander novel (a guilty pleasure, although really not that guilty, since except for issues with pacing and a tendency to over-swashbuckle, she writes quite well and is an excellent story-teller).  And since her novels are all about 800 pages, it will probably be another week or two before I complete the 8^th.  Anyway, I shall pry myself out of the 18^th century and let you know what Owen has been up to these days:

He has been up to CARS.  And TRUCKS.  And BIIIIIIIIIG CARS.  And FIRE TRUCKS!  Pretty much all day long.  The first thing he does each morning is to start bringing certain cars and trucks from where I put them the night before, to scattered about in clumps and lines throughout the living room.  It is something he can play with on his own, so I am all for it, except that he doesn’t know how to hook his trains together yet (trains are categorized along with CARS and TRUCKS), so when he is playing with one of his trains there is a lot of whining involved and one of us has to keep hooking them together.  We show him how to do it himself, but he hasn’t caught on yet.

We took Owen to the 4^th of July parade in Glenside and it was a big hit.  Almost 2 is really a good age for parades; he can’t scamper out yet and get the candy, but he can get very excited over the twelve or so firetrucks that went slowly past with their sirens a-blaring.  He also liked the marching bands and the mummer string bands, and the Philly Phanatic, and the Belgian horses.  For the record, he was a little creeped out by the man who walked past wearing stilts and long striped pants.

He really loves music, and the minute he hears it, will start bobbing his head in an exaggerated manner, clapping his hands with wide arms, and doing this move he learned in Music Class, which consists of raising his arms overhead and spreading his hands wide and waving them about.  He’ll do all these moves even if the “music” he is hearing is just his parents singing.  And then when we finish singing, he claps and says Yay!  And then “mo” for more.

In fact, one of his favorite things right now is when we sing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” – he gets very excited and will join in on the e-i-e-i-o’s.  I think what excites him most about the song is the choosing of the animal, and then interspersing what the animal says with the singing—that always makes him laugh.  He also still is a fan of “The Wheels on the Bus” for the same reason—the choice of the subject of the next verse.

Owen’s favorite thing to watch on TV right now is Peppa Pig, a British cartoon for toddlers.  Coincidentally, I find it as amusing as does Owen, albeit for different reasons.  (Have you seen Peppa Pig?  It’s hilarious!)

Owen fell on Saturday and got his first scraped knee.  It was not a bad fall by any means, but the whole washing of the wound and applying of the band-aid was a new experience for him.  I had cut my own knee the week before, and all week he had been talking about Mama’s boo-boo and pointing to my knee (often jabbing a finger right into my cut, which needless to say, wasn’t too pleasant).  And now Owen had one of his own!  It turns out that Owen has inherited his stoicism, or lack thereof, from my sister, Meredith.  (Hi, Meredith! J)  Each time he remembered his injury, he would clutch his leg and act as if he were dying.  Sean said it was like he had been in ‘Nam and was having a flashback.  Poor Sean was in charge of the first bath after the wound, in which Owen had to first get it wet, and then have the band-aid removed.  I think Owen’s howls were heard in the next town over.

And I think that is mostly it for now.  Owen so kindly did not awaken during the fireworks on Friday night, and also managed to remain asleep during the bad thunder storms we had on the 3^rd.  He also was very helpful throughout the long weekend while Sean caught up on the weeding.  As usual, Owen was very pleased to be able to help put the weeds in the bag.

Owen at Twenty-Two Months

Owen turned 22 months on the 8^th and it is really a fun age.  He has tantrums, which are tiring, and he’s been torturing us with a sleep regression, but on the whole he is just so enthusiastic and excited and earnest.  He talks non-stop, although not in language an outsider would really recognize, but I feel like he will be speaking in sentences quite soon.

He’s also very aware of sounds that he hears; we can hear a train whistle from our house, and whenever he hears the whistle he will start chugga chugga choo-chooing.  He wants to know what everything is and what we are doing.  Nothing excites him more than if we are out in the yard and Sean starts doing a yard project.  He then will want to know every step of the project and what he can do to help.  Sean was pruning our various trees and bushes in the back yard the other day (we have an ivy and an invasive clinging weed that we have long been trying to rid the yard of.  It is slow going.  Sean clipped a tendril that had been strangling part of our elderberry bushes and we witnessed the bushes sighing in relief).  Anyway, Owen was helping by picking up all the branches and sticks and putting them in the collection bag, and loving every minute of it.  It was also something he could do that was actually helpful, although we did have to make sure that he didn’t put all of Dorothy’s yard toys in the bag….

He also seems to have inherited his father’s sense of humor.  We have tiny ants which appear in our windowsills and then work as a team to try to steal our sugar, and Owen will point at them and say buh for bug.  Now he will do that with my freckles too—point at them and say buh.  I say “I certainly hope not!” and he thinks that’s funny.  He will point at a freckle, say “bug,” and then say “not a bug,” and crack himself up.

Owen is still an extremely picky eater, and we generally do what all the books say and put foods on his tray in the hope that one day he will eat them.  And sometimes he does, but I’ve stopped getting excited about it, as he usually then won’t eat them the next time they are offered.  He is a big fan of corn on the cob now, although he doesn’t understand how to eat it off the cob himself – he keeps sticking the stem end in his mouth and then making a face.  He loves dessert, of course, and can say “cake” quite clearly.  That’s my boy.

Here he is buzzing like a bee:

Owen at 19 Months

Owen has a new dance, in case you were wondering.  It looks a little like this:

No, that is not a video, just a picture.  But it is pretty much what he does.  Stand there and lift his feet in tiny baby steps up and down.  Sometimes he will turn, and the whole time he is dancing he usually has a very cute smile on his face.  So there is that, but he has yet to really bust a move.

He is really on the verge of speaking in "sentences", or saying more than one word and a string of gibberish.  The other day we were in the kitchen, and he began to, well, poop, and as he often does while pooping, he will say the word, Poop.  But then he realized that I was standing right there, and might just sweep him up and off to get his diaper changed -- an activity he is Very Much Not Fond Of.  So after saying Poop, he quickly looked at me and said, No, Mama!

His little sentence was all to no avail, since I indeed said yes, and then did the dreaded diaper changing.  But although the sentence was not obeyed, it still was spoken!  And was rather cute.

He also says a lot of "Hiyas" while lifting his foot in a karate kick motion to imitate Dad.  And his other favorite thing is to drop or knock something on to the floor, and then put his head to his hand in mock dismay and say, "Oh man!"  I tend to point out to him that you don't get to say Oh Man if the knocking over was done on purpose, but I suppose I am just raining on his parade with that one.

Owen is also very much enjoying going outside on the warm days we have had here and there peppered amongst the snowy ones.  Here he is on just such a warm day a few Saturdays ago, enjoying destroying the leaf pile Sean was trying to rake.

It doesn't look too springy yet, does it?!  Alas.  Although we do have about two inches of crocuses and daffodils starting to come up in the front.  And I will take what I can get!

An Owen Update

One of Owen’s favorite things to do at the moment is play with a small flashlight of Sean’s.  He will shine it on the ceiling and on the walls and then on his own two feet, upon which he will often do a little dance.  Here he is enjoying the flashlight:

He also likes to exercise his sense of smell and will sniff things if told to do so.  Here he is in Target with Susan smelling the candles.

Another of his favorite activities is to put his toys in stacks and piles.  I was reading something the other day about what a 17-month old likes to do, and it said something to the extent that your 17 month old likes to categorize, so will probably start sorting his toys and putting like with like—so Owen is pretty much textbook right now.  It’s the first thing he does in the morning when he comes downstairs and see his toys—he starts to move one kind of toy to the coffee table, while chortling happily.

He likes music and will stop and dance to it.  He will also often sing a La La La, although I haven’t really noticed him singing anything in particular yet.  One night I was holding him against my shoulder as I tried to get him to go to sleep, and started singing a Christmas carol; after a minute or two, he joined in and started wailing a little complementary tune.  Which would have been cuter, had I not been trying to get him to fall asleep!  At the moment he is on a brief hiatus from his music class, but will hopefully start again soon.  In the picture below he is singing to himself while he plays with his blocks:

Owen’s mealtimes are still not much fun.  He’s not necessarily a skinny toddler, so he seems to be getting enough to eat, which is good.  But he only eats the same old things and spits out anything new we try to give him, as well as any vegetable that isn’t in babyfood puree form.  He most definitely does not trust us now when we give him something new, even if it is something that he should like—like cheesy risotto, a healthy version of chicken nuggets, sweet potato fries, or pasta.  So basically he eats fruit, whole wheat bread, cheese, bagels, oatmeal, tons of yogurt, and any kind of sweet or salty snack.  He can do better!  So we continue to each night put food on his tray and in his mouth and he continues to ignore it or spit it out.  I suppose we are at an impasse.

Since writing the above he did surprise me by eating couscous and a few mouthfuls of scrambled eggs.  But whether or not I can get him to repeat that remains to be seen.

He is definitely a busy and mostly happy little fellow.

More Owen

I know!  This blog is becoming all Owen all the time!  But I have yet to crack the baby book I bought for Owen before his birth, so the blog is really his only chance at having his baby and toddler-hood documented.  But if you are missing the wizened visage of Dorothy, the merry sarcasm of Plum, or the everything of Posy, I promise some pet entries soon.

We got some toddler crayons for Owen for his birthday and periodically set him up at the kitchen table with the crayons and some paper.  He likes to scribble a bit, although doing so seems to rank equally with tasting the crayons, and then throwing them all one by one on to the floor.

He still loves bath time.  Sean is the primary bather for a variety of reasons, and as I am downstairs usually tidying, but okay, sometimes sitting on the couch eating bonbons, I am treated to a whole host of loud noises and sound effects, for which Owen seems to have inherited Sean's propensity.

We haven't taught Owen any sign language, mainly because I don't know any myself.  I did read somewhere one anti-signing viewpoint that if you teach kids to sign, they aren't looking at your mouth, which is what they need to do to learn language.  That did make sense to me, but I can't really argue that that is why we aren't teaching him any.  Oddly enough, Owen has made up a few of his own signs, the main one being the one pictured below, which is his way of asking for more (in this case for more oreos).

It looks like he is doing a move from the Thriller video, but its genesis is really from asking him "how big is Owen" and getting him to hold up both arms in a "so big!"  Owen soon started only lifting up one arm (lazy boy!) and then lifting up one arm and tilting his head.  I guess we reacted favorably enough so that he started doing the movement to generally charm us and get what he wanted.  In this case a second cookie (it didn't work).

And lastly, here is Owen walking with his pet gator, which I'm including because what is cuter than a toddler with a pull toy?

Not much!

Being Very Busy

If I had to pick one thing to characterize Owen at fourteen and fifteen months, it is that he loves to be busy.  And by being busy I mean taking things out of drawers and putting them in other drawers, and endlessly sorting through the hamper of clean or dirty laundry.  He can spend a solid hour doing one of these activities.  Here he is taking items outside of our corner hutch in the dining room:

And then I always like to encourage him to sort through the laundry, be it dirty or clean.  Hey, it keeps him quiet and occupied and surely there is something beneficial to that?

Next up is teaching him how to fold.