Recent Owenisms

When it was still winter, I would have to urge Owen to go outside in the cold with me for some exercise.  Apparently he was listening to what I said, since one day when we asked if Sean wanted to come and Sean said no, Owen said to him:  “You don’t want to turn into a blob, Dad!”  And:  “don’t you want roses in your cheeks?”

We were on a walk one day with Owen in the stroller and were talking politics. 

Owen: What are you talking about, guys? 

Me: Government and money.

Owen: The Government?  Are those the bad guys?

Me: --

Owen can be a bit of a klutz these days (let’s face it, he comes by it naturally, since I myself can barely go through a doorway without hitting one side of it).  When he hurts himself, he doesn’t want us to kiss the hurt or anything like that.  No, he wants us to scold the object that hurt him.  He’ll say, Mommy!  Tell that bush not to hurt OwenMartinGares!  And then when I do, he’ll prompt:  Tell it, “Owen is my little buddy!”  And I do.

One of his favorite outside games is to play “Shiver Me Timbers” on the back deck.  He pretends that he’s a pirate and the back deck is his pirate ship.  Dorothy, who is often lying in the grass chewing a stick, is the shark that might attack the ship and steal the treasure.  This was fine until one day I went in for water and came back out to see Owen chasing Dorothy with his large plastic bat, trying to smash the shark.  Sigh.

I was getting Owen ready for his bath one night and gave him a little pat on the butt in the direction of the bathroom.  Owen started lecturing me:  “The teacher says, keep your hands to yourself, Mom!  Keep your hands to yourself!  Unless you are going to hug and then you can use your hands.”  Well alrighty then; good to know.

I have a book which I read to Owen on occasion about a little boy raven named Edgar who always is telling his parents, “Nevermore!”  Sometimes I wonder if Owen is paying attention to my reading, as more often than not while I am doing so, he is jumping on the bed and/or bouncing around his room.  But I know some things sink in, because when he gets mad now he will bellow at us, “NEVER!!!” in the same tone I use to have Edgar say, “Nevermore!” 

I’ve always said that I’d like to raise Owen to be a chivalrous feminist, and I’d say we are headed in the right direction, as he is very protective of his mother.  He likes to chatter (nonstop) about how Dorothy is a guard dog, and he, Owen, is my guard boy.  Sometimes Dorothy’s a watchdog and Owen a watchboy.  This pleases me until he starts talking about punching burglars in the face and then I feel we have to tone things down a notch.

We were reading a book about an astronaut and I said to Owen (always trying to push the Jean-Luc Picard lifestyle on the boy), maybe one day you will be an astronaut and go to the moon.  And Owen replied, “Can Mommy and Daddy come too?”  I said sure, why not.  And then he said, “Can dogs go to the moon?  Can we bring Dorothy?” 

He is VERY into action figures right now – mainly the Avengers and other superheroes.  I admit to not being able to keep track of who is who.  He also has some old green army men, and the other day he asked Sean to help him find a certain one, “the one with the thumb”.  Sean had no idea what he meant by that, and offered him a few different ones, all of which were turned down by Owen.  Owen explained further, “No, I want the one with the thumb sticking out!”  And finally, Sean realized that the one he wanted was holding and pointing a gun.  Ha!  He let him think that it was the man’s thumb.  Peace out!  

Owenisms in January

Owen was running around at the playground and at one point passed a father on the play structure and said:  “Hello!  I’m OwenMartinGares!  I’m here with Mommy!  Daddy stayed home because he had to poop!”  To which the man replied, “Sometimes that happens!”  But it wasn’t true!  Sean didn’t come with us because he was exercising!

Picture by Lily Hunter

We’ve been talking a lot about holidays and the order in which they come, and the other day in the car Sean asked Owen what holiday came next, and Owen replied with exuberance, “Whistlepig Wednesday!”  Um, that particular holiday hadn’t been part of our list of celebrations, although perhaps it should be?

Susan told Owen she liked his trousers and could he get her a pair just like it.  And Owen replied, “Nanny, I am not your father.”

Owen calls our dining room "the diamond room", and when he sees a carton of eggs, he calls it an egg train -- since anything that is vaguely rectangular can be put to use as a train!  Because of all his Thomas train watching, he also uses the word "cross" instead of "angry".  He'll ask us if we are cross, or will refer to a time when he was cross.

He still tells us, “I love you with all my hawt” when he is happy, and “You go to work all by yourself!” when he is angry.  Recently he’s started to ask us – after a tantrum and once he is repentant – “Can we still be friends?”  And so far we always can be.

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.

June Owen

When we were planning Owen’s first train trip, we told him about it, and then tried hard to get him to understand that we weren’t going on the train that very minute.  We kept saying “not today, tomorrow.”  Although I’m not sure how much of that he understood, it is now one of his favorite instructions to pass on to others, including geese.  Owen and I went to feed the geese with their five goslings on Sunday, and after we had given them their food, we left saying we would be back.  And then Owen added several times, “But not today!  Tomorrow”  “Not today!  Tomorrow!”  I hope the geese understood.

Owen still gets the order of words mixed up, and pronouns in general.  He says “I carry you” when he means “Will you carry me?”  And he always shrieks, “Catch you me!” and then runs away, and we are supposed to run after him and catch him.

Susan will be stern with Owen when he isn’t listening to her (plus they have a running joke that Dorothy doesn’t listen to Nanny.)  So the other day, Owen was trying to follow Sean into the front yard, instead of staying in the back with me, as he was supposed to do.  I called for him to come here, and Owen called back, “Owen’s not listening to mommy!”

I warned Owen the other day that it was almost bath time, so that he should prepare himself to go upstairs.  He first held out a bouquet of splayed fingers and said, “I need four times!” (times meaning minutes).  Then when I agreed to four minutes, he said, “Be patient, Mommy.  Take a deep breath.”

He makes us laugh by making our kisses fly off his face with a little whoosh sound.  He did this one day when we were outside and I kissed his cheek.  We were under a tree, so after whooshing the kiss away, he told me it was flying up to the kiss tree above (to perch on the branches I suppose).  And now he often talks about the kiss tree.

Ever since we planted the garden, he is very aware of seeds, and seeds growing into plants.  Sean eats sesame seed bagels, so as I’m sure you can guess, Owen now calls them bagel seeds and asked if they’d grow into a bagel if we planted them.

He says “wheelbabble” for wheelbarrow, and “cracksmasher” for backscratcher.

He’s also completely lost his shyness, and will say, “Hi, I’m Owen!  What are you doing?” to anyone we see, including everyone shopping in Target and anyone we pass by on a walk.  People often ask him how old he is, but he doesn’t quite get the question (or counting yet in general), so will answer with gusto, “Owen Martin Gares!”

He’s still having mini-fits, although they are generally too fleeting to be called tantrums.  For example, he came with me last Saturday to take Dorothy to the vet, and when we left, and got in the car, he had a HUGE fit that came out of nowhere, because he didn’t want to take Dorothy home.  He wanted to a) go straight to the carnival we were going to in an hour, and b) go back to the vet.  He screamed and tears poured from his face for the whole ten-minute ride home, and then it was over.  I will try to redirect his interest during these fits, and if that doesn’t work, I just ignore him.

The screaming at us – it’s a quick shriek – is a new thing.  He was doing it to Sean the other day, for a reason I forget, and when I asked him if he wanted to go somewhere with me, he turned to face me, stopped the shrieking, and said in a quiet, pleasant voice, “But Mommy, I’m screaming at Daddy.”  Well, then!  Carry on!

Owenisms

For a long time this fall, Owen’s favorite event to talk about was the time when Pa dropped his fork on the ground.  As of late, that incident has been replaced by two other calamities.  The first is from one Sunday a month ago when Sean apparently “crashed into the strawberries!”  I don’t think it was actually as violent as that sounds, but apparently strawberries ended up on the ground, and Sean was the culprit, and Owen has not let him forget it.  For weeks, when I would get into the car at the train station at the end of the day, Owen would remind me that “Daddy crashed into the strawberries!” while Sean would be muttering in the front seat that what happens in Trader Joe’s stays in Trader Joe’s, etc.

Lately, his new favorite tale of woe is the time (months ago) when I put a piece of apple on my plate and Owen popped it into his own mouth.  It seems to be a guilt he is compelled to confess daily (even though I really didn’t mind – if it had been a piece of cake, that would have been a different story.  But a piece of apple?  Knock yourself out, kid.).  He will say multiple times a day:  “I ate Mommy’s apple!  From her plate!  I did it!  I put it in my mouth!”  And then sometimes he will try out blaming someone else, like Daddy or Nanny.  But eventually will return to “I did it!” and I will tell him “that’s okay, I don’t mind!”

He was playing with a ball the other day and when I asked if I could have a turn, he said, “No.  It’s not a toy, Mommy.”  Which is apparently a phrase we say to him often!

When we get ready for swimming on Saturdays, I change from my glasses to my contact lenses for the pool.  When Owen sees my face, he’ll say, “Where are Mommy’s glasses?  Don’t worry!  I’ll find them!”  And then starts walking around calling, “Mommy’s glasses!  Mommy’s glasses!”

He always asks for a “Mommy hug”, especially when I am getting him dressed in the mornings.  One morning he said, “I need a Mommy hug!”  And when I said just a second, he replied, “But it’s important!”  Lately he’ll say “I need a Mommy hug!” followed by “I need fifty hugs!”

When he is feeling particularly loving, he will say “You’re my best friend.”  It is rather sweet.