Owen Is Three!

A lot has been happening in our neck of the woods, in a quotidian kind of way, and I keep neglecting to write about it.  Last Saturday, for example, Owen turned 3, which doesn’t quite seem possible.  He looks long-ish and lean-ish to me, and is definitely no longer a baby.  He’ll tell you he is 3 if you catch him feeling cooperative, but he didn’t really understand the birthday concept.  All the week before and the day of, he kept wishing everyone he saw a magnanimous, “Happy Birthday!” like one would say “Merry Christmas”, as if it were a shared holiday.  I had let him peek at a few wrapped gifts in my closet, and he asked Susan many times that week if she wanted to peek at her birthday gifts.  He certainly wasn’t inclined to share in the unwrapping of the gifts when the day came, but he still spent his birthday wishing everyone else a good one.

We had a small party with Sean’s parents and sister as guests, and Owen very much enjoyed their visit, as well as his Thomas birthday cake and many gifts.  And now he is 3, although he also finds it funny to say he is 5-6-7-8.

A week or so before Owen’s birthday, he enjoyed a visit from his Aunt Meredith and cousin Lily, who were in town while my niece Avery was at a college tennis clinic of sorts.  Owen did a lot of showing off with feats of physical prowess (jumping with two feet, running around the dining room table, throwing toys, offering Meredith lemonade, building towers of toys, etc.), and very much liked running after “Cousin Willy” as she got exercise at our nearby track (and shouting, “Cousin Willy! Cousin Willy!” to her retreating back).  In fact when we went back to the track after Meredith and Lily had left, he thought every blonde runner was Cousin Willy, and looked at me suspiciously when I assured him they were not one and the same.

And finally, yesterday Owen had his 3 year-old check-up, which I did not attend, and for which I felt guilty all day.  But I’m told that he did well, and that when the doctor walked in to his examination room, Owen first asked her what her name was, and then when told it was Dr. Mary, replied, “Well hello, Dr. Mary!  I’m Owen and this is Nanny.”  He’s a companionable little fellow, albeit one who still has reverse supermodel proportions of girth and height.

Happy Birthday, Owen!

We decided to celebrate Owen’s birthday a day late on Saturday the 9^th this year, so that we wouldn’t be holding the festivities at 6 pm during what can be a toddler’s witching hour.  The plan was that I would bake a cake Friday after work, and ice it during Owen’s nap on Saturday, while Sean went out to get balloons.  And all went as planned.

The napping birthday boy:

Here is the cake, looking a little dumpy since I halved the recipe and only made one black midnight layer.  But while I was willing to halve the cake recipe so that I wouldn’t be the only one eating most of a two-layer layer cake, was I willing to similarly halve the icing recipe?  No, I was not.  In fact I made one and a half times the recipe!  So as you can see, the cake is rather small and the icing rather large.  It was delicious, if I do say so myself:

So Owen came downstairs after we had rid him of his immediate post-nap grumpies, and was greeted by a dining room filled with balloons and gifts and cards and a new bike from the Lawrence family.  Here are some pictures of Owen with the new bike, and still excited by the balloons:

And of course Dorothy had to join in the fun.  She gets very excited about a gift and wants to at the very least partake in the unwrapping.

And then that was all the pictures I took.  Owen was nonchalant about opening the gifts (I don’t suppose that will last much longer), but very excited to play with them once they were opened.  I brought the cake out with lit candles, and Owen knew exactly what to do once we stopped singing (thanks to Peppa pig!) and didn’t need any help blowing out the candles.  He enjoyed his own slice of cake, and then spent many hours playing with his toys.

We are still working on getting him to say that he is two, complete with accompanying fingers, but he mostly does not humor us when we ask him.

Yesterday I brought him for his 2 years’ doctor’s visit, and he was generally quite brave.  He did keep saying, “Bye, doctor!” which was his way of asking the doctor to leave, but he did manage to save most of his crying for during his shots.  He is now in the 21st percentile for height and 73rd for weight--a reverse supermodel. 

I think that was some kind of a remark.

Happy Birthday, Owen!

Owen turned 1 on Thursday, but we decided to wait until Saturday to celebrate.  We also decided to more or less forego a party.  Neither of us are big party people, and we figured why go all out when Owen was too young to appreciate or remember it?  We'll do more next year when he is a little more sentient.

But I did make a cake for Owen from scratch, using the yellow birthday cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen and then my own recipe for chocolate buttercream frosting.  It was quite good on the whole, although the cake is really of the hearty variety rather than the light and fluffy.

Owen definitely liked the piece of cake we gave him, although truthfully he seemed more excited about the fact that we gave him control of his utensil with which to eat the cake, than the taste of the cake itself.

He wasn't too excited about the Elmo birthday hat we put on his head, although he did later enjoy drinking from an Elmo cup with his own two hands.

We also got some balloons from a party store and he liked them very much.  He sees balloons weekly in the grocery store and gets very excited about them, exclaiming BUH! whenever he sees one.  He seemed impressed anew each time he went into the dining room and saw the balloons again.  I don't think he had realized that one could have balloons in one's very own house.

Of course, the cats were rather impressed with the balloons as well, along with the dangling string that was attached to them.

Owen's Aunt Susan came to celebrate with us, and as always, Owen was very happy to see her:

After the cake, Owen opened and played with his many gifts.  He's at the age, too, where he just wants to focus on the present he opened, rather than put it aside to look at the other gifts still to be opened.  He also very much likes to look at the birthday cards which we put on the mantel.  He enjoys having us walk slowly in front of them and comment on each one.  Then at the very end he opens the one with the song inside from Aunt Joyce and Uncle Bob and we both do a little dance.

Happy first birthday, Owen!