To Gran’s House We Go….

The Monday after Christmas, Owen, Sydney, and I headed to Gran’s house and moved in for a few days so Papa could do some work on the bathroom at home!

The kids love staying there and I think Gran likes it a little bit too!!

Early in the week, Aunt Barbara and Uncle Richard visited (as I mentioned in my Christmas post) it was great to see them again and be able to visit and catch up!

On Thursday, Kate, Mike, and Megan came by to visit from WI – and we celebrated ‘baby Meggy’s’ 1^st birthday!!

So fun to see how much she’s grown since we saw her last in August! We ate dinner, Megan opened her present from us (we got her one of those old school Fisher Price record players) and we had dessert – which Owen particularly enjoyed!!! 

On NYE – Al, Greg, Loretta, and Henry came to visit.  We had quesadillas (thanks our chef!) and ate munchies and just had  a fun time together…

H&L chillin in their bumbo’s while we all ate…

we even had a kid circle and sang songs together! :)  sweet babies….Henry and Sydney (sorry loretta, i’m not quite strong enough to hold all three of you!) We had a great time, but we did NOT stay up til the ‘ball dropped’ in fact, The R fam headed out around 8 and we put the kids down shortly thereafter!! We’re getting so old not to even stay up to bring in the new year!!!

The rest of our visit at Gran’s was fun too, Owen got plenty of uncle time in, which he loved, and Owen got totally spoiled and probably ate way too many snacks!!!! he even built a gingerbread house with Gran and I….

The kids and I didn’t end up ‘moving back home’ ntil New Year’s day, so, although the break was nice, it was crazy being ‘displaced for that long…plus we really missed sleeping in our own beds! Owen and I shared a bed while we were at Gran’s….and let me tell you, a 2 1/2 year old’s energy does not settle down once they fall asleep! I endured kicks in the back, leg, arm, etc as well as arms across the face!  But it was also so sweet to be able to cuddle with my little guy and wake up with him in the mornings! :) 

A BIG thank you to Gran for the help watching the kids and for offering your home to us for a whole WEEK!! I hope we didn’t overstay our welcome!

Stay tuned for some before and after pics from the bathroom renovation…it turned out awesome!! :)

Ten Months

I’m a little late on this post, but better late than never….at ten months, little miss Sydney is 18 lbs 8 oz – about 30th percentile and 28.5 inches tall – about 60th percentile.  She’s growing so big, its amazing!  and to think that she’s going to be ONE in such a short time is just mind boggling!!!

In terms of teeth, she now has eight of them!! They just sprouted out quickly!!!

Food wise, she has tried bananas, bread, graham crackers, and mango so far

She is down to 2 naps  a day now, we finally made the transition around the end of December. 

She is saying so many sounds - ma, ba, ga, and she will say ‘ba’ when she sees a ball says mama all the time!! She’s also learning some signs, she sort of claps  when she wants more, and waves her hands around when she’s all done….can’t wait to teach her more!  Its just so fun to see her learn to communicate – she also loves to shake her head no, and will raise her eyebrows when she likes something or is excited or if she just wants to be left alone or is overwhelmed, just put her head down.

She has pretty much mastered the sippy cup - and LOVES to drink from it, but makes SUCH a mess, thank goodness for plastic bibs with a pouch at the bottom to catch all of that mess!!!

She pretty much always has to have something in her mouth – her paci, a toy, something she found on the floor…its so funny that  two kids can be so different, owen never put anything in his mouth and he was done with his paci so early.  Not miss syd! one of her favorites is the foam letters at bath time, she hoards them and usually prefers an x or a j in her mouth… :)

At the end of Dec and early January, she was still not sleeping well – getting up around 10 or 11 and then 1 or 3 and usually up again 6-6:30 - basically, she doesn’t sleep for more than 3 hrs at a time!  But, during that first week of Jan, we tried just letting her “cry it out” and she slept the night through after two nights of it and since then, she has been waking up usually only once a night, sometimes just @ 830 but usually 11:30 – and then she sleeps the rest of the night!

She is still not really standing at all, and its quite the feat to get her in the standing position.  She usually just doesn’t put her feet on the ground or her legs just go to jello….here is a shot of her in a rare moment (which was truly just a ‘moment’, standing up")

But, when you put her in her Johnny Jump Up, she will stand right up and jump and jump and jump….crazy girl!! its just gotta be on her terms, i guess!! :)

She has discovered that she can roll over to get around and she rolls back and forth and can get back up to sitting from her tummy

when i discovered her sitting up in her crib the other day, we quickly decided we had better lower the mattress.  We never really worried about doing it before, since we knew she never stands up. 

she is getting up on all fours,that is…when she can figure out how to get one leg out from under her

here you  can sort of see her little leg curled up right in front of her, she just can’t figure out how to move it behind her – and in the rare moments she does, then she will be on all fours for a split second then she flops down to her belly! :)

She is just a sweet little girl and is so happy most of the time!!

She still loves to play dress up!  and her little face just says so much sometimes…

This isn’t the greatest picture of her, but i just adore this little dress….i have been saving this dress for about 8 years now, just hoping i’d have a little girl to wear it someday! :)    

Seriously. these are the cutest little sandals!

As much as she is happy, she also has quite the little diva in her…when she gets something taken from her that she really wants (which usually happens when Owen tries to play with her), she makes her hands into little fists, puts her head down, shakes her whole body, and lets out just the shrillest little scream ever…..quite the little drama queen!! :) 

She just has such a little personality and we love her so much!! and she’s still our little baby, and occasionally, will still even let us rock her to sleep!!!

Sweet little snow angel!!   

And what post is ever complete without froggy and bear pics?  This month was definitely the most difficult yet to get a good shot of her posing with her friends….

  

 

We love you….

littles, littlelicious, baby sydney, syd-o, pretty, otherwise known as our Sydney Charlotte!! :)

Owen 2 1/2 Years!

How can my little boy be 2 1/2 already????

And how can I really even begin going about trying to capture his complexity in one simple blog post? I’ll do my best and I’ll warn you right now, this one is a little long!!

Stats

wearing 3T clothes size 8 shoes size 5 diaper

weighs 36 lbs

on a side note, he still has such a curly little mop! We just cut it again not too long ago – for the second time ever – its so hard to cut those curls, but he gets QUITE the mullet AND his hair grows back SO fast!

Routine

sleeps 730 pm - 7 am (sometimes gets up earlier)

naps once during the day around noon - for about 1-2.5 hours usually its about 1.5 hrs though

doesn't eat a whole lot of variety, but will eat: apples, bananas, peaches, pears, green beans, corn, pb & j (fave is pb & j 'tilla' (tortilla), pizza, cereal, chicken, pork, etc - intensely dislikes trying new foods

Potty training

Likes to talk about going to the bathroom but still not potty trained!  I think he is jus too interested in everything else life has to offer to be bothered with going in the potty!  And I’m not going to push it!!! As he talks about going to the bathroom he’ll say things like: “I pooped and peed  and i mixed it up in my buns"

He will pee in the potty when he feels like it; sometimes  I'll ask him if wants to go and he says 'nah' with a cheesy cheesy little grin….but he does take phone calls!

Funny Guy

Seriously. who knew a 2 1/2 year old could be so hilarious? He will just randomly dance around….in this pic we were taking down the Christmas tree and he started dancing around like a crazy little monkey!

what a goober!!

clapping like Donald duck

cracking up at himself

He went through a time a month or two ago (well right around Halloween – when he just would NOT let us wash off his temporary tattoo (that he got trick or treating)  – he loved that thing – and would go around and tell anyone who would listen - “hey look at my tat” and then he’d just crack up

Interests

He loves music! Scott has discovered this awesome piano player on YouTube named Kyle Landry and Owen will request him by name and will just sit and listen to him play and watch him too. Owen also loves to sing – he’s got most of the standard Christmas songs down – and his rendition of ‘Tis the Season" is AWESOME – Tis the Season to Jalala (or sometimes it sounds like gellato)” but he’s got the “fa la la la la la la la la” down to the beat!!

He also likes to makes up songs to the tune of other songs – a few weeks ago, he made up a song about a froggy to the tune of Mary had a little lamb - and it came out a little ‘off’ LOL!

He just learned to do two thumbs up and thinks he is so COOL !

 

LOVES to draw - will sit with a little notebook for 10-15 min just drawing circles or little teeny tiny squiggles - he concentrates SO hard on drawing and can really draw quite a perfect circle! : )

He LOVES his sister and she LOVES him! He will try to kiss her and she just laughs and laughs (sorry for the grainy pic!)

When she laughs he says “I making baby Sydney crack up!” He will also try to comfort her when she’s upset and I’ve come into the room to find her rubbing her head saying “its ok baby Sydney, mama will be right back” BUT he also is quite rough with her – because he just doesn’t understand his own strength – and has knocked her down his fair share of times! :)

totally into matching things - he'll see a lotion on the counter and one on the shelf and say "that one matches the other one" "its a match" and is SO happy to be a match to papa or mama, he will stand right next to us and say, "look, we match" (in this pic he was happy because papa and he both had their coats on and they both had orange on them)

  

would much rather look at books than play with toys - but still loves his toys

He is very adventurous and doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of fear when it comes to ‘daredevil stunts’

LOVES UofM!  He got a sweatshirt from uncle Travis for Christmas and has worn it more times than i care to count since then!

He loves to put the hood up and now has started carrying things around in the pockets and keeps his hands in the pockets too… he is such a little stinker!!!

such a helper! loves to help with Sydney or with anything if we ask him – usually……sometimes he gets in his 2 1/2 yr old mode and refuses to help….here he is helping papa make ‘pizzas’ for dinner

…taking advantage of it while i can…he loves to cuddle!

Red Robin!! He loves that place!! and drinking out of a ‘big glass’

he loves bath time!!

Memory

This kid’s memory is quite mind boggling to Scott and I most times…he will remember things like eating pizza @ Greg and Al's from two months ago! or just tonight, at dinner he was asking us where we were going and we said nowhere and he replied back “yes, we’re going to Chicago” we asked him who he knew that went to Chicago and he said “Katy and Travis” (the went to Chicago in September I think!)

Loves nursery rhymes and knows a lot of them word for word: “rub a dub, dub”, “humpty dumpty”, “Baa baa black sheep”

Stinker Manipulator

he totally works the situation to his advantage!! papa was getting a bowl of cereal to eat one day as Owen was finishing up lunch - so Owen says "papa come sit by me" Scott then told me that “the only reason he wants me over there is so he can mooch off my cereal”....so Scott set his cereal on the counter and went and sat by him and Owen says "bring your cereal over" 

he is always trying to brush his teeth, because he LOVES toothpaste!  the other day randomly, not during a time we would normally brush our  teeth, (with finger in his mouth) he told me "i need to brush my teeth, i have PB crunch stuck right there and right there"

Owen bit a friend at school and when we got home and he was eating dinner he said (with no prompting b/c i don't like to make a big deal out of it) "i bit Alex today on the bench" i asked him why he did that and he said "because I can"

Creative:

he draws on his feet or legs and says "look at my bandaid’

he was in the tub one night and he said your necklace is in the water (my bracelet was dipping in) so i told him it was a bracelet and that a bracelet goes one your wrist and a necklace goes on your neck and then he announced "and a bandaid goes on the knee"

totally just makes things up sometimes – stories or or just different words, and then just laughs and laughs at himself

pretends he is a puppy and will crawl around and bark and ask for treats

shortens words: Mickey=Mick; candy=cand;  kix cereal=kick

A while ago he told us that “A giant is picking me up from school to go trick or treating at the red barn" (on his Mickey show the giant lives in a house by a red barn)

Inquisitive

while watching me carry something to the other room "what are you gonna do with that, mama?"

very curious and asks a lot of questions the other day at the grocery store he asked "what is that" no less than 50 times!

papa got a deer and when Owen saw it he was so excited and he said"papa, you made that big deer?"

is asking what things mean constantly "what's no mean?  "what's a minute mean"

Observant

at school the other day, looking up at classmate's dad - he points his finger up and says "my papa has a goatee too!"

observes SO much that we don't even realize what he takes in - the other day we were reading before bed and he would lick his finger before turning the pages - he saw his teachers do that at school during story time.

Also, went to Red Robin twice, about 3 weeks apart, and as Owen looked around he pointed out that the lights were in the different colors and shapes - "look, a blue circle, and a yellow triangle" then he said "we were here yesterday, with Sydney too and it was raining" (b/c last time we were there we did take Syd and it was raining) then later he said as he pointed exactly to the area that we sat last time "we sat over there last time"

Hears people say things and then repeats it later – in context which is crazy to me!  the other day we were walking down the hall at home toward the kitchen and apparently we weren’t moving fast enough for him so he shouts out  “Move people!”; Also, Scott got a new jacket for Christmas and when he put it on Owen declared, “you look handsome!”

……And once again, I don’t know if that really captures that little boy completely, I’m sure I’ll remember a million other things I wish I would have included…..but all good things must come to an end…and what better thing to end  this post…but with some Froggy Buddy pics!!

What a little man!! We love you Owen Dale!! :)