It's Potty Time!

This has been a fun week. Yesterday we took Owen (and evan!) to the Early Works Museum with cousin Lauren. They get along soooo well, they take after their mamas. They will be laughing hysterically over nothing in no time at all. They got to build things with blocks. play with ducks in a giant tub of water, and make pretend food in the most gigantic and heavy (DANGEROUS!) cast iron skillets and bowls. It was a nice day and I look forward to getting them together again soon. 

In other news, Owen started potty training himself last Saturday! This is something he is doing completely on his own terms. He started saying "go pee pee" and the rest is history. Starbuck took him to the bathroom, he sat down on his potty and did what he needed to do. He's done it several times a day since then. We never ask him if he needs to go, he tells us. Apparently he thinks potty training before 2 is the thing to do. 

For the last several days Owen has been asking about New Orleans. Apparently he had a great time the last time we were there. We are due for another trip so we may just grant his wish and head there next week. 

First we have to get through this weekend. We are attempting to have a yard sale Saturday morning. We'll see how well that goes, with us having to get up at the crack of dawn...

Wow, it's been a long time! I'm going to try, yet again, to keep up with this thing. 

We did indeed have a baby and HE is a beautiful baby boy! I will try to write up Evan's birth story in the very near future but for the moment, I will talk about what the boys are up to these days. 

Evan is now almost 2.5 months old, where has the time gone?!  He rolled over for the first time (from tummy to back) the day before he turned 2 months. He has been smiling since 3 weeks and is trying really hard to reach for things.  He has a great punch and is good at knocking things around on his playmats. 

Owen is still as charming as ever. Last week he started his first Art and gym classes. He made a rainmaker and a Papa G replica in art class and got to climb like a monkey in gym class. He now knows all of his shapes, even the tricky ones like pentagon and octagon. 

We spent father's day weekend in North Alabama with mimi and papa. We took the boys to Russell Cave (Russell Cabes in Owen-speak) in Bridgeport and got them some National Park Passports, which we hope to fill up with stamps over the years. 

Today Anna and her mom drove up to visit. She's visiting her family in south alabama for the week...it was so nice to see them for a little while, i miss her sooo much!

I'm really, really going to try to start working on this blog more frequently so I can actually share it with family and make it worth stopping by! 

37 weeks

The time for new baby's arrival is drawing near! As of tomorrow i will officially be 37 weeks, which means baby will be here in 5 weeks at the absolute latest...but I am highly doubting we will last that long! I have been carrying this baby as low as I thought possible but sometime during the night last night, baby turned into position and i am fairly sure his/her head is engaged. I have never felt pressure like this before! I am having trouble walking and waddling is the best I can do! This has overall been another extremely easy pregnancy and I feel very fortunate to be reaching the highly uncomfortable stage at such a late date.

Owen is now 19 months old and still talking up a storm! He is quickly learning his alphabet. His favorite letters are o, i, and d. He loves to recognize letters on billboards or anywhere he sees them and he fascianates us! If we had known how much he would love letters, we would have introduced them to him earlier! We have some magnetic letters that starbuck showed him and within a matter of minutes, he has already learned 3 letters. Now he knows almost all of them. Amazing!

January Cold

Recovering from our trip to denver has included recovering from colds. Our whole house has been sick. This is Owen's very first cold/cough and it's been unbearable! He is so pitiful with his runny nose and hacky cough. We are very fortunate to have made it almost 18 months without ever dealing with this so i can't complain too much. We took him to the dr on wednesday and she daiagnosed him with the crud. Only in alabama! He's not acting sick other than the congestion, he still moves at lightening speed.

Quick owen milestones update: He is 1.5 years old today. He is getting great about leading us around by the hand and he is learning soooooo much every day. He can put on his own shoes and socks, shirts over the head, and pants on the legs (but can't pull them up or get his arms throug yet). He wants to feed himself all the time now and has no interest in any food if we try to feed it to him. We are definitely entering the terrible twos and the battle of wills early but i think we're all going to make it through just fine. :)

Oh! We opened the store on Tuesday! It's been a slow week as to be expected but the people who stop in all buy and love everything! We are very excited about it and will start advertising when we feel everything is up to par and exactly how we want it. Babies (owen included) cry when they have to leave the store, so that is a great sign of how much fun stuff we have.

Hmmm...kitchen news. We ordered our cabinets earlier this month and they should be in in a couple of weeks. We bought a new dishwasher last night. We still need to get the microwave, sink, and tile for the backsplash then we'll be set. We will only be w/out use of our kitchen for about 2 weeks, the time between the cabinets and the countertop to come in.

Enough of this boring post!

One last thing: Tomorrow will mark 31 weeks in this pregnancy. WHERE is the time going!?! According to our latest updates, baby should weigh around 3.5 lbs and be @ 18 inches long. He/she kicks like a madman/woman all day and all night so I can believe they are getting that big but it's still hard to comprehend. Owen will be a big brother before we know it.

Just wanted to stop in and record a quick Owen update.

We took him to the pediatrician for his 15 month checkup at 16 months. Oops! He is way ahead on his milestones (imitating adults, stacking blocks and putting shapes through holes) and weighs 24 lbs (so lean!) and is 33.5 inches long. He's still a tall one!

Right now he has a phrase "chi-chi-tie" that we are clueless about. He says it all the time and we just can't figure out what he is saying.

He is so happy loving the Christmas trees and Santas (tantas) and Snowmen (noman) that are everywhere. He met Santa last week and was very aprehensive but very brave and didn't shed a tear. Poor Santa, basically every toddler he met screamed at him. This afternoon we're going to the Heart of Dixie Railroad for a ride on the Santa Express so he will get to meet Santa again. Hopefully he will handle it well since it's on one of his favorite things, a train!

It's beginning to look a lot like...summertime

We just returned from a long weekend in New Orleans. It was filled with working, food, and warm weather.

Owen visited the aquarium for the first time. He loved it! There were scuba divers entertaining the crowd during one part. One wrote a message to starbuck- "nice shirt". Owen didn't know what to think of all the fish, turtles, and dinosaurs (actually those were eels but I kind of see the resmblence and know where he's coming from). Uncle Jeremy happened to be in town this weekend so Owen had to impress him with his stair climbing ablities, over, and over, and over. ..

New baby is starting to change his/her waking patterns. He/she is awake and kicking when I wake up in the mornings and throughout the day which is totally opposite of Owen's in utero patterns. He was always up late which stayed true pretty much throughout his first year. New baby is 24 weeks along now and about the size of an ear of corn.

What is up with this warm weather? We are now back in B'ham and were expecting winter to be here but it's even warmer than it was in New Orleans!

Edited to add: New baby is now awake and kicking and it's 11pm. Just like my babies to prove me wrong, as always!

Owenisms

Owen is now 16 months old! Where, oh where does the time go? He's starting to look like such a little boy, there isn't much time before we can't call him a baby anymore. He's already a toddler but it's so hard to let go of our baby!

His favorite words/things right now: dinosaur, christmas tree, santa.

he can make animals sounds (this actually started more around 14 months for clarification): puppy, kitty, dinosaur (rawr!), cow, sheep and the non animal train says choo choo and the bus says beep beep.

he is truly amazing.

We tell him there is a baby in my belly and he will put his head on it and listen. He also loves to give my belly "high fives", which we assume he is directing at his sibling. :)

Right now lots of things are cottage cheese in his eyes, today we were out and somebody walked by with ice cream. owen started yelling "cottage cheese! cottage cheese!" My favorite is the bowl of mush in his goodnight moon book. We read it to him every night and have for a while but only in the last week has he discovered that the mush is actually cottage cheese!