Down in Florida

Why is it that you always remember the things you left behind on the drive to the airport???

Waking up at 5am to catch a 7:50am flight might have had something to do with it. I realized that I forgot my camera and Owen's monitor, two things I really wanted to have on this trip. Oh well.

We survived the 2 hour flight, met Grandma and Poppie at baggage claim, went out to lunch, and then took a long nap once we got to their house. We woke up refreshed and ready to golf!

New blog

Check out my new blog! Just a place for me to show off my favorite pictures and my progress as an amateur photographer. Enjoy! :)

My photography blog

Backyard egg hunt

This morning we dyed Easter eggs, got Owen dressed in his Easter best, and hid the eggs in the backyard for a little hunt. Owen had a ball. Mommy took lots of pictures.


It's chilly here today, so we came inside after the egg hunt so Mommy could download the pictures and do a blog update. Note to self and others doing egg hunts with toddlers: do not leave an egg in your toddler's hand while you download pictures and do a blog post. Otherwise, this may happen to you:


I knew he was up to trouble when he disappeared from my view and was silent for a minute. I caught him mid-bite. At least he got some protein.

Counting to 8 (minus the 4)

Jelly bagel

We tried something different for breakfast this morning. Instead of his usual blueberry waffle, Owen had 1/2 a mini bagel, lightly toasted, with raspberry jelly. He loved it! :)

18-month well visit

Today was Owen's 18-month check-up. He cried when the nurse measured his head, he cried when she tried to check his length, and he wailed when he got his shot. But overall, he is one very healthy little boy who is growing fast!

Head circumference: 19 & 1/4" (75-90%)

Height: 35 & 1/2" (97%)

Weight: 26#12oz (50-75%)

www.betterparenting.com

A friend of mine from high school just wrote an article for a new parenting blog called Better Parenting. She's currently expecting her first baby and wrote an article about exercise during pregnancy. Check it out:

http://www.betterparenting.com/exercise-during-pregnancy/

Great article Hope! :)

Early Easter gift from Grandma & Grandpa Marshall

The Easter bunny came a little early for Owen since he and I will be in Florida for the actual day.

It took about 20 minutes to build it, but Owen didn't seem to mind the wait. Once it was assembled, Ben filled it up with water and we didn't know it, but Grandpa snuck out to grab some batteries for the motorized tower. Owen LOVES it! He especially loved being squirted by the canon!

Thank you so much Grandma & Grandpa Marshall! :)

Saturday bike ride

I heart Freecycle. A few weeks ago I picked up this bike trailer from a fellow freecycler who wanted it out of their garage. I was eager for some spring weather so that Ben could put it together and we could go on a family bike ride to the park.


Today was the perfect day! We gave Owen his drinkable yogurt and some fruit loops in his snack trap to keep him busy on the ride. We buckled his helmet and snapped his seatbelt on, and we were off! He got a little antsy, but did well. I think we'll do many more family bike rides this spring and summer. :)

Happy 18-months to our little man!

Owen is eighteen months old today. I cannot believe how fast the time has gone by. It seems like just yesterday he was cutting his first tooth, and now he's getting ready for his 2-year molars! (Hence, the non-stop drooling.)

He continues to amaze us with the new things he learns to do and the phrases he is starting to say. Just last night when Ben was putting him to sleep, Owen sneezed, then looked up at Ben and said "bless you!".

At a year and 1/2, here's what he's been up to lately:

~ Wakes up every morning around 7am (going to bed around 7:30pm)
~ Naps every afternoon from about 12:30-2:30, sometimes longer
~ Is talking up a storm! We can't keep track of everything he's saying anymore. Just this week he has started to put two words together (Mommy's shoes, Daddy's mote (remote), Climb up, black truck, etc.)

~ Has started to learn his colors (just today he pointed out the window and said green - I looked over and saw a green truck next to us!)

~ Can sing the first few letters of the ABC's (Aye, Bee, Cee, Dee - we're working on the rest.) :)
~ LOVES the playground. Just this week started going down the slide by himself. Yesterday he went down one head-first - luckily I was there to catch him at the bottom!
~ Still using baby sign language (in combination with talking). Favorite signs are: more, milk, please, apple, carrot, airplane, fast, car, motorcycle, bus, doctor.

~ No longer uses his paci for nap or bedtime. But always sleeps with his "sleepy bunny" blankie.

~ Enjoys watching his Baby Signing Time and Elmo DVD's giving Mommy time to do dishes or clean.

~ Can feed himself using a spoon and fork, although it's still easier and faster for him to use his hands.

I wish I could put this time in slow motion because I feel like he's growing up too fast. But at the same time, it is so incredible to see how far he's come in 18 months.
To document his 18-month birthday, we did a little photo shoot at the playground today. Here are the results:

Animals

Owen has learned to identify many animals and the sounds they make. Check this out:

Happy Birthday Aunt Lindsey!

(This picture is from last night's dinner, but I thought it was appropriate for today's holiday and Aunt Lindsey's birthday.)

Today is St Patrick's Day, but more importantly, it's Aunt Lindsey's BIRTHDAY!!! In honor of her birthday and the green holiday, I made Owen pasta with spinach pesto sauce for dinner last night. He loved it!

Happy Birthday Lindsey! Hope you have a great day! We look forward to seeing you in 2 weeks!

Picnic at the park

Owen and I took advantage of some early spring weather today by packing a picnic and heading over to a nearby park. Great concept, but it didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped. Owen was so excited to be at the playground, he wasn't very interested in eating lunch. We had fun though!

Talking

We've noticed (Ben especially) how certain words that Owen says will sound to us like other words. For example, he has a hard time making the "k" sound. So when you say to him, "Owen, look at all the kids!", "tits" is what he repeats back to you. Ben is trying to get him to say, "Nice kids". AKA, nice tits. That's my husband's humor for ya.

Tonight Ben was taking Owen up for his bath and his blue elephant towel was still in the dryer. Ben asked when I would bring it up. I said, "It's in the dryer. I'll bring it up to you in a second." Owen repeated, "suck it". I, of course, heard our son say "second". Ben heard what he thought was hilarious.

As you can tell from this post, we're having to watch what we say very carefully these days. Let me just say that I'm trying to take my friend Andrea's approach to swearing. Cheese and rice!

Sauce

A couple of weeks ago, Owen decided he didn't like to eat veggies anymore. So we had to get creative. I read an article online that said to try giving kids "sauce" to dip their veggies and other food into. We tried it and it worked like a charm!

His favorite "sauce" is ketchup, but he also likes ranch and occasionally, honey mustard. I will admit, watching him dunk green beans in ketchup over lunch is pretty gross, but hey, I've got to get him to eat veggies somehow.



Breakfast sauce:
Last week we were feeding Owen a blueberry waffle for breakfast and right after I put the cut-up waffle on his tray he pointed to the pantry and said, "sear-rup! sear-rup!". Cracked us up!

Top Golf with Erica and Greg

We made a date to meet up at Top Golf with Erica and Greg tonight. It was cold and rainy, but it was covered and they had all the heaters on. We had fun aiming at targets and Owen enjoyed watching us. After a couple of rounds we headed over to Erica & Greg's house for a little American Idol on the Wii.



Greg's rendition of Celine Dion had Owen doing squats. It was so funny!

Playdate with Patrick

It's a small world. Last summer when Owen was attending The Little Gym here in Ashburn, we met Debbie and her son Patrick. We were talking about college and she asked if I grew up in Virginia (since I went to JMU) and I said no, that I actually grew up in Hershey. She said, "you wouldn't happen to know Kelly Woods, would you?". Kelly and I have known each other since middle school, so of course I said Yes! So funny! Debbie went to college with Kelly and they played field hockey together.

Debbie and her husband Steve just built a beautiful house here in Ashburn and she invited us over for a playdate. The boys had a great time pulling out all of Patrick's toys. Here they are checking out the backyard:

Mommy swims with Owen

Owen's first dentist appointment

A friend I met at a local Mommy's group recommended a dentist to us, so given the fact that Owen has all of his baby teeth now and is still drooling, I thought I'd schedule an appointment for him to find out when the spit will stop oozing from his mouth.

He had fun in the waiting room looking at the "shish" in the fish tank and coloring at the kiddie table with the other kids. Then it was time to see the doctor. (I didn't take a picture of him with the other kids for fear the other moms might think I was weird.)




Despite the way she was very nice and gentle with Owen, he still screamed the entire time she was looking at his teeth. (Maybe his lip injury was still bothering him?) She said everything looks good and he only sustained a teeny tiny chip on one of his front teeth. The dentist informed us that the tooth may turn a color (brown, black, grey) because of the trauma, and if it does we need to bring him back in for an x-ray. But overall his teeth look great.

She said that since he got all of his teeth early, he'll probably get his 2-year molars soon. And after that, the drooling should stop. COME ON OUT 2-yr MOLARS!!! I'm so tired of going through 5 bibs a day!

Trailside park with Kayla

Kel and I took the kids to Trailside park (our favorite) to enjoy the sunny afternoon. They had so much fun running around the playground, swinging, and sliding.

Breaux vineyards ~ soup weekend

We drove out to Breaux today to enjoy the amazing weather, good wine, and yummy chicken gumbo. It was a fun way to spend our Sunday.

Baby's first trip to the ER

We had an eventful Saturday morning, to say the least. I woke up early to head off to a consignment sale at my church (which was awesome!). Got home around 10:30am to a happy little boy playing in the family room with his Daddy. He LOVED all the new books I found for him. We read them all a few times, and then he started climbing on the couch (his new thing these days). I had started reading a book that I had purchased for myself (What to Expect - the Toddler years), and was only keeping one eye on him versus my full attention.

That was all it took.

I was reading a sentence in the 18-month old chapter, when all of a sudden I heard Owen fall off the couch and hit his head. He immediately started wailing. I rushed over and picked him up and tried to calm him down. Then I saw the blood. Poor baby had cut his upper lip on the corner of the coffee table. Ben ran into the room and helped me to try to calm him down enough to look inside his mouth to see if his teeth were still there. (Thank God they were.) He just had hit his chin so that his bottom teeth cut into his upper lip.

We got the bleeding under control while calling the pediatrician who referred us to the Emergency Room. Ben and Owen were still in their jammies (they were having a relaxing Saturday morning), so I took Owen by myself to the hospital. In his pjs.

He had stopped crying and was doing okay on the way over, but his lip was so swollen and still bleeding a tiny bit. We had given him a dose of Motrin before leaving the house (as instructed by the pediatrician), so I was hoping that it would help with the swelling and pain. We got to the hospital within 15 minutes and I rushed him into the ER to check in.

Owen: "'Copter! 'Copter! 'Copter!" He was so happy to get to see a REAL helicopter right outside the ER entrance. It was definitely the highlight of the experience.

We waited for about 15 minutes and then finally got to see the doctor. She checked him out from head to toe and looked closely at the lip cut. She said he didn't need stitches and that since it was only on the lip and didn't extend out past the top of the lip, it would heal on its own in about 4-5 days. He needs to be on a soft food diet for the rest of today so that we don't irritate the cut, and she said it would be a good time for us to wean him off the paci cold-turkey. (I wasn't so sure about how he would feel about it, but she assured me that it wouldn't be that painful.)

We got home and had a quick lunch and then it was off to take a long nap. He went down at 1pm (without his paci) and is still sound asleep.

Stay tuned for pictures of the fat lip. (Hey, it's my job to document this stuff, right?)

Playdate with Adam

Today Maureen came over with her little Adam who is 6 months old. He is getting so big and it starting to sit up on his own! He had fun watching Owen run around and pick up toys. It was such a nice start to our Friday to get to catch up with Maureen since we don't get to see each other that often.

Playdate with Sarah Catherine

Steph and Sarah Catherine came over to play today. The kids had fun as usual, taking turns grabbing toys out of each other's hands. Ahhh, sharing. :)

Some pictures from this afternoon:

Indoor sandbox

I got this idea from a fellow mommy blogger. It took forever for me to inflate the baby pool. (I eventually gave up and decided it was good enough for our purposes.) Then we were off to Giant to buy our "sand". It took me 4 large containers of oatmeal to fill the pool enough to play.

At first Owen didn't want to get in. After a few minutes he gave in and started digging around. We had a couple of moments of oatmeal snow, but overall it wasn't too messy. After about 40 minutes of playtime, I scooped up all the oatmeal and put it into a garbage bag to save it for another time. Then all I had to do was vacuum up the oatmeal that spilled out onto the carpet.

It was a fun way to spend our morning and I have a feeling we'll do it again sometime soon.

Playtime and dinner with friends

Kelly and Kayla invited us over for a playdate which (lucky for us!) turned into an impromptu dinner. The kids had so much fun chasing each other around and giggling. So cute.

They worked on their sharing skills:

and played in the kitchen:

and overall had a great time.

Kel and I decided we should make it a weekly event. :)

Swim lessons!

Owen had a blast at his first swim lesson! There was tons of splashing, kicking, paddling, and bubble-blowing. Looking forward to seeing our little tadpole blossom into a strong little swimmer. :)