sleep, glorious sleep!

'nuf said

figuring things out

and by that, i mean all three of us are learning. jeffy and i are learning that owen likes to be in control of his world, which can (and has of late) mean that he won't eat what is put in front of him at meal time (but we have that figured out - put it there, and act like it doesn't matter if he eats it or not. usually he will eat it eventually. just not always immediately) he will also spit out foods he doesn't want to eat, which is better than the gagging until he pukes method he used earlier. last week, owen and i went to lunch with some friends who have a little boy who is about 6 weeks older than owen and i didn't take any baby food with me. i ordered for owen off the menu and he ate part of his lunch. :-)

in addition to being in control of what he eats (or not), owen is also learning new ways to communicate. he can now shake his head "no" and last night he took my hands, put them under his armpits (which means "pick me up", he's been doing this for a few weeks at least) and then patted my lap, as if to say, "i want to sit on your lap, mama." very cool. the last few nights he has not slept the entire night. sunday night he was up until 12:30 a.m. on MONDAY morning, and last night, he went down at 9, then was up at about 2:30 this morning and stayed that way until 5:00 or 5:30. jeffy and i made a pretty good team in coping with it. it's nice to have a partner in this. in the past, i've been the one getting up with him regardless, mostly because jeffy tends to sleep pretty soundly and doesn't hear owen so guess who ends up getting up with him...mom... i wonder how much sleep we'll all get tonight. i'm betting on 5-6 hours. i really don't function well on that multiple nights in a row. one isolated night and i'm ok. two or more , i need a nap after lunch. or a Coke. can you main-line caffeine?

that's all for now!

what a week!

and it's only tuesday... owen was pretty lethargic on sunday, and i ended up taking him in to the emergency room at about 11:00 sunday night with a 102-degree fever. we were home by 1:00 monday morning with instructions to alternate tylenol and motrin every 3 hours (so he was getting each on a 6-hour cycle). i woke jeffy up when we got back and he and i had a complete conversation, he asked and answered questions. come his alarm at 4:00 (had to be in to work by 6:00), he had no recollection of the conversation. it was pretty funny, actually. good thing i woke up and had also left a note for him on the counter reminding him to give owen motrin. we follow up with the pediatrician on friday afternoon, which is fine since there is no school on friday in honor of veteran's day. i won't have to take yet another day off.

yesterday we both stayed home (i ended up getting a 24-hour stomach bug) and were both horizontal for the majority of the day. owen slept most of the day, something he hasn't done since he was brand new, but since i wasn't feeling too hot, it worked out well. he slept through the night, and has been pretty good today. we both stayed home again and now he's back to his usual happy, silly self. :-)

the reason for the temp and the lethargy, come to find out, is two brand new teeth! he cut his first molar (upper left) on sunday and i discovered the second (upper right) today. i can tell that he is feeling much better. i've missed my little boy. we're both going back to school tomorrow. it will be good for both of us, i think. thank goodness for e-mail, because that's how i've had to get my sub plans into school the last two days. that plus i didn't really want to go out in the deluge we had yesterday. it was crazy wet. the wind was blowing the rain up onto our porch, which normally stays dry.

bilateral otitis media...again

well, isn't this fun!? i think i've figured out what all of the fussing has been about. last sunday morning, owen was screaming practially inconsolably and tugging at his right ear. i called my sister, i called the doctor's office, and decided after talking with both of them that i'd wait it out. he got better around 11, and we went to the playgroup halloween party like we had planned. he was back to his normal, happy self. then monday morning comes around. i go to nurse him and notice that his right ear is pretty goopy. i knew immediately what had happened. i called in sick (got a sub 45 minutes before i was supposed to start - surprize!), then he and i went in so i could do sub plans. we went to the doctor, got our diagnosis and prescriptions (one for an antibiotic, one for a diaper cream incase the antibiotic gave him a rash, luckily we still had the drops left over from last time so i'm just using those - no need to get another supply, though i did take what we had in with us just to be sure they were what we needed to have), and came home. he was cleared to return ot daycare on tuesday and we have been good to go since then. he's even learned not to fuss or fight us with the ear drops, which is nice. he'll just lay there and let us put them in his ear. no more wrapping him up like a burrito, which is what we had to do at the beginning of the week. we do the drops until monday morning, and the antibiotic until it's gone, which will be thursday morning, i believe.

the exciting discovery (by me) this week is that owen now has three words: mama, dada, and dih-da, which is owen's version of "kitty cat" he'll go after max, with both arms out saying, "dih-da, dih-da!" max just runs the other way. it's pretty funny. owen is at least getting more gentle with the cat.

night time is getting pretty amusing. owen has a favorite book that we have to read every night. he won't sit still for any other book until we read this one book. its' "don't let the pigeon stay up late" by mo willems. follow this link: http://www.mowillems.com to find out more. we have all of the pigeon books and i can't wait to get his other books. eventually, i'd love to have the whole collection. apparently, the pigeon works his way into all of mo willems' books. when owen gets older, we can make a game out of finding the pigeon.

halloween was pretty fun this year, too. owen was a cow. we went over to j's parent's house for a little bit, where we saw j's sister, brother-in-law, and our niece and brand new nephew. o was in his costume, of course. we'll go trick-or-treating next year, i think.