Owen's First Birthday!

Today is Owen's first birthday, and, fittingly, there was a tornado warning in our county. We celebrated by going to Bottom's Up, where everyone (my parents, Naomi, Brennan and I) enjoyed yummy pizza in his honor. Owen, meanwhile, dined on pureed squash, proving that sometimes life just isn't fair. The real party is Saturday with both sets of grandparents and a trip to the Metro Richmond Zoo.

So far, for his birthday, Owen has received two books and lots of clothes. Somewhere in the future, an eight year old Owen made a sour face and said, "More clothes! Why is it always clothes!?!"

Here's the birthday boy on his special day...

Happy Easter!

Even though we choose not to do the Easter bunny in our house, the boys still get baskets with a few goodies and we staged our own Easter egg hunt in our front yard after church this morning. Brennan was thrilled to find eggs filled with some chocolate, Goldfish crackers, and fruit snacks!

Still too little to really care about all the fuss, Owen was still pretty pleased to shake an egg filled with crackers!

Sometimes, you just have to settle for "good enough" when it comes to getting a decent picture of two small children!

Happy Easter from our family to yours!

Easter Dance

John sent me a link to this video called "Dance Your Shoes Off" produced by Second Baptist Church of Houston. This song is addicting! After hearing it a couple of times, I bought it off iTunes and the boys and I have been having multiple dance parties in our living room while listening to this song. Trust me, it's worth it!

Egg Hunt Extravaganza

Our church did an Easter Egg Hunt this year. Both boys came away with some eggs, although Owen was far more interested in playing with the dirt and grass than he was in crawling toward a couple eggs!

Bubbles

Bubble-obsession has taken over our house! Brennan has always enjoyed popping bubbles, but this is the first season that he's shown any interest in blowing bubbles. Once he got the hang of it, he is a bubble-blowing machine! Good thing we have lots of bottles of bubbles to keep him entertained!

An Owen Update

Food has always been an issue with Owen, in that he's never had a real active, healthy interest in eating. He does eat, but it only seems to be just enough to get by. And he doesn't complain about being hungry in between meals or snacks. He certainly doesn't get up at night because he would like to eat.

When he started drastically diminishing the amount of formula that he drank when he hit the 9-month mark, I figured we could wait him out and that this was maybe just his new pattern. That he'd daily fluctuate how much he drank. He kept doing his solids well, so I pushed any worry to the back of my mind, giving in to occasional flare-ups. The worry took a front-seat in the past 24 hours because he had been having more significant food issues over the past couple of weeks, but it got really bad in the past day or so. Enough to merit concern on the part of the nurse I spoke with at his pediatrician's office. Enough to merit an appointment for a weight check.

The end results: he's only gained 1/2 a pound since his 9-month check-up. He only weighs 17 lbs., 15 oz. This lack of weight gain was enough to cause him to fall off the growth chart of the normal range. This little guy (and he truly is a little guy!) also tested positive for strep throat--a rarity for infants! He's currently on medication, so we're hoping that he starts to eat a bit more once it really kicks in. The strep explains the dramatically diminished eating over the past couple of weeks, especially the past couple of days, but it doesn't explain the general disinterest in food and lack of significant weight gain.

Then, to add to the fun, I got to bookend my day with another trip to KidMed, the pediatric urgent care here in Richmond. Since Owen hadn't had any significant amount of formula or anything from a sippy cup in over 24 hours, he also hadn't had any wet diapers. His pediatrician's office referred us to get IV fluids into him. Having had a couple IV's myself when both boys were born, I can say from experience it's not any fun. But watching your baby go through it is far worse. I thought I was going to cry as much as he did. And I knew in that instant that I would have traded places with him in a heartbeat if it meant sparing him the pain of an IV and strep throat. But when he fell asleep in my arms while he was getting hydrated, what a priceless moment! They pumped 10 oz. of fluid in him to help him catch up, with the hope that he'll start to feel better once he's better hydrated. We'll keep you posted!

In the meantime, we'd appreciate your prayers for this little guy. This is the first real bout of sickness that we've encountered with either of the boys, so there's a whole lot of uncharted territory and worry, especially on my part. We go back for Owen's 1-year check-up in about 2.5 weeks, so we can get some follow-up and see if his eating picks up at all again in that time. Otherwise, we'll figure out a new game plan at that point.

Specific prayer requests: for Owen to start to feel better (good enough to eat), for him to become generally more interested in food, for more significant weight gain in this little guy, and for me to have peace going through this with him. I tend to worry too much as it is, but the worry starts to go a little crazy when I offer him plenty of food with a wide variety and he just isn't interested.

Stay tuned for further updates! And thanks so much in advance for your prayers!

Things to Love About Spring

After some wacky weather lately, with temperatures varying from 50-something to 80-something, it seems like spring is finally here to stay. With this our fourth spring here in Richmond, I'm reminded again of how thankful I am to live in a place with such great seasons. There are so many wonderful things we are enjoying about spring!

1. Getting to play outside on a regular basis
2. Playgroups at parks or people's homes where we can take advantage of great weather
3. Planting our first garden this year--the ground is worked, and I'm hopeful that seeds will be planted this week!
4. Planting some petunias in our window boxes--this was a sadly neglected area of our house last year, primarily due to the fact that I spent last spring either about to burst at the seams or caring for a newborn and adjusting to life as a family of four
5. Windows open and letting fresh air blow through
6. Actually looking forward to doing laundry so I can hang the clothes up on our line out back

Fall has always been my favorite season, but now I think spring may have just overtaken it!

Lego-land

Sometimes it feels like we're drowning in Legos. Brennan is going through a phase where he needs to pull out every Lego and build things. Today, he got pretty ambitious and built Daddy's office building. Owen loves to get in on some Lego action as well, but his Lego abilities are limited to choosing the "Lego of the Moment" that he will proceed to chew on until another one catches his fancy, meriting a switch just to see if all Legos taste the same.

Upside Down

Brennan has been interested in showing off some of acrobatics. Here, he's demonstrating the move he calls "upside down". We are looking at the possibility of enrolling him in a local gym class. Based on these latest moves, I think he may enjoy it!

11 Months Old!

Owen's had a big and busy month! He went from army crawling to full-on crawling to pulling up to kneel to pulling up to stand to cruising along holding on to the furniture. All this movement has encouraged us to double our efforts to childproof since this kiddo gets into things that Brennan would never have dreamed of! He loves to give high-fives and blow raspberries. His happy shrieks frequently fill the air (I think he likes to feel like he's contributing to the noise and general chaos of the house!). What a joy he is!

Three Years

We rolled into Richmond three years ago today. Has it really been that long already??? John drove the gigantic Penske moving truck with all our worldly possessions for 14+ hours. I got to travel with an infant (whom I was also nursing at the time!) and a cranky cat who didn't like being in the car. But it's been a good fit and we've certainly loved our time here!

Two cute boys

Owen is quite mobile now, crawling everywhere, pulling himself up and scooting around. It's super cute to watch him discover new things and interact with the world around him. It creates some extra work for us ... putting books back on the shelves, turning off things he's turned on, plugging the phone back in, etc. Baby-proofing items only go so far.


He's a happy boy who loves to smile, blow raspberries and give high-fives. At the dinner table he likes to cock his head to one side and smile at us. He laughs when I mimic him. He's enjoying finger foods like tiny pieces of grape, cheese and bread. He has good gums for smushing things and one little tooth coming in to help with the "hard stuff"! If you look closely at the photo below you can see the top of his first little "tooth-um" (as Naomi likes to call it).


From the photo below you can see that Brennan wants to have a goatee like his father. Brennan is having a hard time embracing the responsibility that comes with being a big brother, but has super cute moments that off-set the trying times. Most of those moments have to do with things he says, like:

Take me away! (when he's being sent to time-out),
Owen Nathanael! (when Owen is doing something he doesn't like; he picked this up from Naomi)
Pillow fight, Dada? (when he wants to wrestle on the bed)
Can I come with you? (sometimes, when I'm going out somewhere)
Family time! (when we're eating dinner or all together somewhere)

Each day he becomes less like a toddler and more like a little man. Some days that transition happens just a little bit too fast. Sigh.

Close Up

These are just because I can't get enough of his big blue eyes or his chubby little cheeks...

Workbook

We are pretty well decided on postponing preschool for Brennan until the year before he starts kindergarten, mostly from a financial perspective than any other. With this decision firmly in place, I still want Brennan to get some sort of practice doing "school". I found a great workbook at Borders from Kumon that focuses on tracing, letting him practice drawing different lines. He loves getting the chance to do his workbook and has definitely been improving with some practice. I'm already looking forward to seeing how he does with some of the other workbooks once he has this first one down as the foundation!

Breaking Ground

After sitting on thoughts of planting a garden for a year (spring was little interrupted last year by Owen bursting on the scene), we finally got to realize the goal this year. Borrowing a tiller from some friends, we broke ground this morning and are getting excited to get some seeds in the ground. Thoughts of a bountiful harvest kept us going through some definitely heavy labor this morning!

Determination

In our house, having the computer in the living room is a necessity based on space. Normally, it works quite well. And then...Owen started crawling. There's something about the bright, glowing buttons and legions of cords that is irresistible to the younger set. We set up a portion of a gate to try to keep him away from this area of our living room, but he quickly figured out how to thwart it. Then it was time for plan B: stick a rolled up Sports Illustrated through the gate slats to help prevent him from pushing the gate aside. It's worked. But the little turkey is still determined to defeat the gate. He's now figured out that the magazine is preventing him from pushing the gate aside so he's using every ounce of determination to try to pull or push the magazine out so he can reach his forbidden goal. Gotta admire his persistence!

10 Months Old!

Owen turns 10 months today! It amazes me how much he has changed and grown over the past ten months. Some photos of him as a newborn came on our screensaver the other day. In some ways, it feels like just yesterday he was that tiny, but in other ways it feels like it's been so long. What a wonderful addition to the family!

He's perfected the army crawl and super quick as he moves about the floor. Two of his favorite things to go after are the computer/desk area and the cat's food and water dishes. Sigh. He loves to smile and laugh, especially at the antics of his big brother. He's started to be more interested in feeding himself, so we've been working on expanding his finger food repertoire. And he's definitely proven that he's all boy--when he's given the chance, he goes right for the remote controls. Mama doesn't stand a chance of ever getting the remotes in an all-boy household!

Owen is on the move!

ABC's

Brennan has really been getting into the alphabet lately. He loves to sing his own version the song and loves to make his music table sing the ABC's. He also loves to play with the alphabet magnets we have for the fridge. Only, he loves to transfer them to various magnetic locations around the house. In an effort to encourage the enthusiasm but stifle the magnet relocation, I gave him one of the cookie sheets to hold the magnets and provide him a more contained environment to enjoy his beloved magnets.

Signs that I'm getting old (or that I'm a parent)

1. I much prefer wearing dress pants to jeans.

2. Music no longer provides the soundtrack to my life. I don’t find self-expression in someone else’s lyrics or a driving melody. I enjoy music, but it doesn’t speak for me the way it used to.

3. I get sick of the usual rock radio stations really quickly and switch over to…

a. talk radio (receding hairline)

b. A book on CD (getting gray), or…

c. Classical music (start working on the eulogy)

4. If there is a soundtrack to my life now, it’s the sound of my kids’ voices.

5. I like to look at pictures of Brennan when he was a baby. It gets me kind of emotional because I feel like my little boy is growing up way too fast.

6. At my next birthday I’ll cross the last of the you-can’t-do-that-until-you’re-x-years-old thresholds.

7. I like documentaries and BBC productions more than most action movies.

8. I visit cnn.com, the Richmond Times-Dispatch page and foxnews.com as much as espn.com and si.com. I also watch news programs on TV more than sports programs.

9. It's 11:30pm. I'd rather go to bed than think of a tenth item that make this list feel complete. Symmetry and tidy endings are for young people!

Kool Boyz