Jillian and Owen both had a hard day. Jillian's teething is bothering her and she doesn't want to be put down much and Owen was grumpy and defiant. Oof. It's amazing how quickly the days go and how little we get done! Ah well, there's always tomorrow, right?

I was talking with Mike this morning while holding Jillian and he said, "stay right there" and he grabbed the camera and took our photo. I said "my hair isn't right and I have no make up on!". He said it was better that way - apparently we looked cute!

Jillian has her first tooth - the bottom left center one! Well, you can't see it yet, but you can feel that it has broken the skin. The other bottom one is about to come in any minute, too. Yay for teeth!

Today I volunteered at Owen and Jillian's "Friday Morning Out" program. I have volunteered in most rooms but had not had the opportunity to volunteer in Owen's room until today. It was really fun to spend time with him in a school setting and meet his "friends". His regular teacher wasn't there today which was a bummer because I would have liked to see how she does things. Owen has been saying that he's "shy with Teacher Rae". I was talking to him about it yesterday and got a little more out of him. Apparently she said "something rude" but Owen couldn't remember what she said. All he could remember is that it made him "feel mad". I think it may have happened when I brought cupcakes for his birthday and maybe he was feeling shy when the sang happy birthday? Who knows. Poor little guy.

Owen really loves temporary tattoos so I put the Cake tattoo that came with my new CD on him. It's a huge wasp that says CAKE. Pretty cool, dude.

Jillian is 9 months old! How did that happen?! To celebrate, she had her 9 month well child visit today. She now weighs 22 lbs 10 oz (95th percentile) and is 28 1/8" long (75th percentile). The pediatrician asked if she's always so easy going (mostly) and said that she looks great. He confirmed that her two bottom teeth are about to cut through her gums (yay!) and asked about our family's head size because apparently her head is pretty big (as are all of ours).

Jillian has been doing really well with feeding herself. I gave her kiwi for the first time this morning and she gobbled it up. For dinner, I strained our corn chowder and gave it to her and she devoured it. She's also been sleeping longer stretches at night. Yeah! Still no proper crawling but she's crawling backwards really well!



I think Owen is happy to be back to his social life. Our friends Karin, Julian (2.5) and Eli (11 months) came over last night for pizza and a movie. We all had a good time. Yesterday morning, cousin Alexa and Uncle Joe came over for some playtime, too. It had been so long since we've played with friends - it is so nice to socialize again!

Today, Owen had a haircut. He loves to get his haircut. It's funny though, because he's in a complete trance during the haircut and is so shy. But it's all he can talk about before and afterwards! After the haircut, we went to get him a hot chocolate that he earned for his poop chart (yes, he has a poop chart).

Tonight Mike is working a double back which means he works evening shift (home at 11:30 PM) and then works a 6:30 AM shift. I say that he might as well sleep at the hospital. Anyway... I asked Owen to be extra helpful for me and he really was. He helped clear the table, load the dishwasher, and sweep under the table. It was so helpful and lovely.

We've started a tradition of telling a "little Owen bear" story before bed. They're always about something that really happened but we tell it about "little Owen bear". I don't usually do Owen's bedtime but tonight I did so I had to come up with a little Owen bear story. I'm not always very good at coming up with them on the fly. But, tonight I told a story about how little Owen bear went to visit Nana and her fish and her cats. Owen seemed to approve of the story. Telling the stories is fun and it's amazing what he remembers. He'll interject his memories into the story as it's told.

I completed it awhile ago, but here's Owen's dino hat! He loves it and I'm pretty darn proud of how it turned out. And, to clarify, this is his own "pose". I can't get the kid to just look at the camera these days!

Today was the first day in a long time (3 weeks?) that we're all healthy. Hoorah! Healthy feels so great.

Jillian is almost 9 months (will be on the 2nd) so she had her 9 month photo shoot today! I can't wait to see the photos. She took photos in a bunch of different chairs, on a furry blanket, in a basket and on a dresser. She wore 3 outfits: a onesie and baby legs, a poofy dress, and a diaper. Fun! We have to document those rolls while she still has them!

Jillian is teething and seems to be pretty bothered by it. Her gums are swollen but there's no obvious signs of teeth cutting yet. She's cranky and having a hard time sleeping. But, she's 9 months and has no teeth yet! So, I think it's time. She's also so very close to crawling. She rocks back and forth on all fours, scoots on her butt, and goes from all fours to sitting very easily. She's also starting to pull up to her knees. I think she'll be crawling and then walking before we know it!

Owen did something amazing this morning. He woke up dry for the first time ever! It wasn't really something we were trying for, it just happened. I was shocked and so proud! It's funny because the previous morning he woke up soaking wet (literally dripping) so this was truly surprising. We made a sticker chart to fill when he wakes up dry and hopefully we'll have success!

Tonight, we had pork tenderloin with cherry sauce, cous cous, and mixed veggies for dinner. Both kids ate big portions of it (well, J didn't have the cherry sauce) - would it be possible to raise two non-picky kids? Probably not, right?

There's nothing like taking two years off blogging about your family! Ah, how time flies. Now that we have Jillian (9 months) and Owen (3 years), I'm finding it really hard to document the little things that I find so precious and want to remember years down the road. So, here I am.

In June of 2010, we welcomed Jillian Reese into our lives. I can't believe she's already almost 9 months old. It blows my mind how fast the time goes! She's an incredibly happy baby and a joy to be around. It's such a beautiful thing to watch Owen love his little sister and watch her love him back. Here are a few photo collages to bring us up to date:

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Today, we met our newest niece, Melina! I made a baby doll sling for Melina's big sister, Alexa, and of course I had to make one for Owen, too. Owen sure does love his baby dolls.

I have a few notable things to quickly document:

- Owen's first molar is all the way through. That thing was brutal to watch come through. Holy ouch! His first eye tooth is on its way, too.
- Owen has added a few words to his vocab - balloon ("booooon") and all done. It took me several days to understand all done. It sounds more like ah dot. But I realized he was saying it at the end of his meals, after I ask him if he's all done. That one could be helpful.
- We're in the transition to one nap. I'm not too excited about it but it's happening no matter how I feel!

Owen is a year old today! How did that happen? Happy Birthday my little man!

A year ago, I met you for the first time.




And now you're a year old!


To celebrate, we're having a birthday lunch with Rowan (also born today) and then we're going to do something fun (tbd) with Dad and go out for birthday dinner! Saturday is the official birthday party. Photos and stories to come!

Owen is doing so many neat things, I can barely stand it. One of my favorite things is pretending to talk on a phone. My Mom taught him to do this when she visited at Christmas and now he does it all the time. He usually uses a wood block as a phone but the other day the phone rang when I was giving him a bath so I didn't answer it and he held his hand up to his ear and said, "heeeehhh?". I'll have to try to get that one on video.

He's been pretty attached to me lately. I tried to take a nap today while Dad was playing with Owen and I kept waking up to, "Mama??!! Mama!!". Oy! I think he says Mama at least 20 times a day. I love it but it's also a little tiring. He still hasn't really shown much separation anxiety - I keep waiting for the time when I go to leave and he cries but it hasn't happened...yet.

I'm being paged from the bedroom - Mama! Mama! Mama!

I'm starting to understand why early toddler communication can be frustrating for both child and adult. Here's a excerpt from our breakfast conversation:

V: All Done? (also signing)
O: Hot?
V: All Done?
O: Hot!
V: All Done??
O: Hot!!

In other news, Owen has added a third type of "crawl" to his way of being mobile (the first two being the "wounded soldier" and "normal" crawls . We call it the "monkey crawl" where he sits on his butt with one foot flat on the group and one hand on the ground and moves about. It's his way of moving when holding something. I'm not doing a very good job explaining it. Time to get out the video camera!

The past week or so, Owen had been practicing standing up by himself. He typically pulls himself up to standing using me as a prop and then let's go. He gets this adorable grin on his face when he's attempting to stand by himself. It's amazing how fast he became stable on his feet. I fear walking isn't too far away!

Owen has constantly been adding new words to his vocabulary. Right now he says, Dada, Mama, Cat, Dog, Ball, Sock, Hot, Fish, This, That, Duck.... I think that's all. He also can woof like a dog, meow like a cat, roar like a lion/bear (his very favorite thing to do) and very rarely moo like a cow (my favorite). He was doing a cute little roar but in the last three days, it has become a very loud, throaty roar that might scare some people in public. I blame Dad for that one.

I'm not sure why we even have toys because Owen is perfectly content with going around the house and emptying drawers, cabinets, shelves, turning the radio on/off, etc. Once in awhile he'll play with his toys but they're usually second choice.

I've been trying to get Owen to take to a "lovey". So far, the idea is failing. I know, you can't force a lovey but I try to encourage his attachment to a little blankie. He tells me what he thinks of the idea by throwing it out of his crib and tossing it off the rocking chair when I try bring it in on our cuddles. Recently, he has become attached to a little purple ball that came with a ball popper train that he got for Christmas. He has taken the ball for car rides, taken it to bed at night, taken it to bed at nap time and Grandma and Grandpa said the ball got a bath on Saturday when they watched Owen. Hah! So, maybe the purple ball will be O's lovey? Weird kid!

I haven't posted in so long - mainly because I always feel like I don't have the time to put much thought into posting. But, I'm hoping I can change that! Owen is growing up so quickly and hopefully I can quickly capture some of the milestones and special moments by jotting them down here.

On the 2nd, Owen's 8th tooth broke through and I discovered that a molar is on it's way, too. You would think that through evolution, teething would become less traumatic. Sleep has been crap lately - maybe because Owen has/had a cold and maybe because of the teething. Either way, I'm hating it! Late night was a "good" night - Owen was up 3 times. The night before, Owen was up 5 times or something insane. I feel like I have a newborn!

Owen is completely obsessed with cats. I'm not kidding! I exchanged some duplicate books he got for Christmas and I decided to get him, "My Little Noisy Book of Kittens" ... noisy, because if you push a button, it meows. What in the world was I thinking? Now I hear, "Cat? Cat? Cat! Cat! ... meow meow meow meow." He also flips through his picture books until he finds the cat and that's all he wants to look at. I hope this will pass or he's going to end up a crazy cat boy.

[This post was started about a month ago and I'm publishing it as is.]

Life has been too busy for blogging!

I'm now watching Sophia 30ish hours a week. The extra cash is nice but I would have preferred 20 hours a week. My free time has been filled with: playing on facebook, emailing, going to the gym, sewing Owen's halloween costume (almost done!) and knitting. I think I 'm preparing for the winter boredom that I usually face.

Owen's first top tooth finally broke through on the 2nd of October. The second front middle tooth and the tooth to the side of his front left tooth look like they could break through at any time. These top teeth seem like the move SO slowly.

Owen has been *this* close to crawling for nearly a month now. He's really good at rolling (he can roll across the house) so I think he hasn't been trying the crawling thing so much because he can get where he wants to go.

Years ago, I worked in a Scandinavian store in the good ol' Mall of America and made some wonderful friends in the four years I was there. I worked with Hilary fairly briefly but enough to get to know her. I ran into her a few years ago and caught up briefly with her. I got an email a few weeks back saying that her Mom passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. Hilary's Dad found her Mom on the floor when he went to check on her because she was napping for longer than usual. They think the cause was a massive heart attack.

And it all comes flooding back... losing my Dad in the same way almost two years ago. It's amazing how quickly the ache in my gut can come back and the memories of finding him on the driveway and all that came after that. I miss him so very badly. I wish he could have met Owen. It's just not fair.

I'm working on a memory book with photos and memories of my Dad because I feel like the memories are less vivid than they used to be. But, the process is so heartbreaking. I thought I had done a lot of healing but it's amazing how fresh my wound feels when I allow myself to open back up to the heartache.

I miss you Dad and I long for the way things were when you were here.

I've been slacking when it comes to blogging lately. It may have to do with me being in a bit of a funk lately but I think I finally snapped out of it. I was feeling stir-crazy and overwhelmed...I think because all of our classes and outings came to an abrupt end. Things should be picking up over the next few weeks so that should be good. I think I'm going to sign Owen and myself up for swimming. We're already signed up for ECFE but I need to see how that will work out with (hopefully) watching another kid. [Details are still pending on the daycare bit.]

We're starting to serious think about Owen-proofing which most likely adds to my feelings on being overwhelmed. He's close to crawling and we are not prepared and I don't want to spend a day of frantically chasing him around to make sure he doesn't kill himself. I bought some cabinet locks that we need to install and we need to put away our cleaners and fragiles. I took care of some of these things today but there's still a lot to do.

On the fun side of things, we took Owen to the state fair yesterday. Last year, he attended as a little peanut in my belly and hopefully enjoyed all the crap I ingested. He seemed to have fun this year and I told him that there are many more years to come! I love love love love the Minnesota State Fair. He looks like he enjoyed himself, no? ;)

I'm a little late in talking about it, but Owen turned 6 months old on the 29th of July. We had his 6 month well-baby appointment last week and confirmed that he's quite the chunk. Mister (as we like to call him) weighed in at 24 lbs (off the charts) was 27.5 inches long (75% percentile) and has a pretty big head at 17.6 inches.

One interesting outcome of his appointment was some suggested dietary restrictions because of the shellfish allergy on both sides of the family. They suggested holding off on wheat and dairy until he's a year old. So, we're going to focus on the fruits and veggies and start meat around 8 months. He pretty much despises solid food at this point, but we continue to offer.


A photo from his half-birthday (he was SO serious and wouldn't smile - highly unusual!).

My friend Andrea sent this to me in a forward. I hate forwards yet since she never sends them on I decided to check it out. I think it's pretty neat!

Get yours at: http://DNA.imagini.net/friends

CIO sucks. Anyone not know the famous acronym? Cry-it-out.... where you let your baby cry until they fall asleep. Nap time for the past month or so has been really hard. Owen wants me to nurse him to sleep and when I don't he gets ANGRY. He thrashes and scratches and cries and arches his back - all while I try to hold him and love him. It was getting to the point where it'd take an hour to get him to sleep. And no, it's not that he's not tired because he's obviously tired. I was getting angry, he was getting angry, it just wasn't working.

So, I started thinking about cry-it-out. Several people we know have done CIO at night. Mike wasn't on board with that idea and I respect that. But, I had to do something for naps or I was going to pull all my hair out.

I read (skimmed) the sleep-easy solution and decided to give it a try on Wednesday. The first nap we attempted resulted in about 40 minutes of crying/grumping/unhappiness. But, there have also been several successful naps where he's grumped/whined for about 5-15 minutes, fallen asleep and slept for 1-1.5 hours. Last night (Friday), I wanted to give up. He was SO unhappy and it was making me feel really sad for him. I ended up getting him up after 30 minutes of crying/grumping because it was getting late into the evening and we were risking messing up his bedtime. Today (Saturday) has been a little better. The attempt at nap #1 resulted in 10 minutes of mild grumping and then sleep for 1.5 hours. When I put him down for his second nap, he cried/grumped for about 20 minutes and then fell asleep and has been asleep for just over an hour. He rarely takes an afternoon nap longer than 45 minutes so this is a very good development.

I'm sure you can see how I'm contradicting myself ... CIO sucks, but it might work, but it sucks, but I think it might be working, I hate, it's not so bad. I told myself I'd give it a week and see what happens. Right this minute, I feel like it was a good decision.

Not sure if we'll ever apply it to bedtime, though.

Things are quite different around here as of late. For one, we started Owen on solid foods. He was excited the first few days of cereal but now he could care less. Perhaps we'll spark his interest with some sweet potatoes later this week.

Even more interesting is how mobile Owen is now. I put him down on the floor and within minutes, he has rolled to the edge of the rug, somehow with his toys in hand, and is banging them on the hardwood. He has also rolled under the loveseat a few times. This time, he was held up by his chubby arm.



In other news, I've been looking for a source of income. We plan to send Owen to "school" when he's about 16 months and in order to do so, I need to make some money. Next week, I'm talking to one of my fellow ECFEers (baby class) about the possibility of watching her daughter in my home. Her daughter is such an easy baby and is the same age as Owen so they should be doing similar things at similar times. Some moments, I think I'm crazy for considering this but the alternative is to get a job out of the house and that would require care for Owen, being organized, and realizing that I would quit that job when it's time for baby #2. We'll see what happens next week. (am i nuts?)

For the past three nights, Owen has been sleeping in his crib at night. WOO! Until now, he's been in a cosleeper and then a pack n play next to our bed upstairs in our room (and often in bed with me). While we're making the transition, Mike and I are sleeping in the guest room so that we don't have to go up and down the stairs all night. Much to our surprise, Owen has been doing great. Last night, he woke up at 12:30 and then 5:00 (because Murray was loud) - quite a difference from every 2 hours! Hopefully he'll keep it up and I won't have to come back and say I spoke too soon. We still struggle with getting Owen to fall asleep but at least that once we do get him to sleep, he stays asleep longer than he used to!

This morning, Owen rolled on to his tummy and then rolled on to his back (a very new development) and on to his tummy again - moving half way across the room! Scary! Yesterday, I put him down on the living room rug so I could use the restroom. I walk about 4 steps and I hear a bunch of commotion. He had scooted himself over to the pile of mail left of the rug and was tearing up a flyer. We need to start thinking about baby proofing - pronto.

Want to know my best money saving tip? Go shopping with a 5 month old.

Perhaps it's just my 5 month old but I'm guessing that's not the case. Errands used to be so easy with him because he'd sleep the whole time. Now he doesn't sleep when we're out and about unless we're on a walk outdoors. Now, my shopping consists of planning a strategy for getting in and out as quick as possible. And, if a meltdown occurs, I'm out of there.

Since Owen's maximum for shopping seems to be about 30 minutes, I have to act quick. I pretty much race through Target to get my grocery shopping done. And I realized today at Kohl's that looking at clothes for me while with Owen is impossible. I'll have to do that alone.

But, since I usually only get about 1/2 of the stuff done that I was thinking of doing, I spend a lot less money. I guess it's a good thing?