too early

it's 3:50 by my computer clock as i begin writing.  that's 3:50 a.m.  way too early to be awake. between the first day of school today and some stuff going on in my personal life (more details on that at a later date) it's an early morning.  not by choice, though.  i could very easily be asleep right now.  i'm wishing i were asleep right now.  

owen is growing up so fast.  in just one short year, he'll be getting ready to start at my school.  i've had people ask me already this year if owen is coming to my school this year.  i'm glad for his october b-day.  he's not ready for formal school just yet.  i'll bet that in a year he will be.  last night we played a board game for the first time.  it's based off of two of his favorite eric carle books.  it's a matching game, which he easily mastered.  remember playing "memory" as a child?  it's basically the same thing, but you have to pick the cards up and match them to spots on the game board.  we played three times.  the first time was just to show him how to play.  the second and third times were for real.   he legitimately won both of those times.  then i brought out the pink material (part of the montessori language materials, three letter phonetic words to match to pictures, mounted and laminated on pink paper) to start on.  i got a large set of that material from one of the teachers at school who is replacing it with newer pink material.  she asked me if i wanted it to bring home for owen.  of course i said yes.   i think i'm going to get the book from her and see exactly how i'm supposed to be teaching this work to him.  i have some ideas, but i want to make sure they're appropriate before i get too far in to it.  we're going to start with initial sounds, i think.  put out three pictures cards that start with different sounds (pin, dog, box) and have him figure out the first sound and then find the word card to match.  he showed some interest last night. i'll follow his lead, though.

ok.  i'm yawning again.  i think i'll climb back in bed and try to get a little bit more sleep.  the alarm goes off at 6...i need to be able to get up then.

SLEEP!!!!!

he went to sleep by 9 last night. it's 7:51 by my computer's clock and he's still asleep. he was up a few times this morning - singing just before 5:00 a.m. poor babe must be exhausted. i'm going to get him up here in about 10 minutes. for the first time this week, we've all had a full night's sleep.

sweet boy

owen fell asleep on my tonight. he had snuggled up against me as i was playing my nintendo ds and eventualy, i see his head to the slip down, then snap up thing. it was a little bit earlier than his usual bedtime, but only by about 30 minutes or so. that, plus he was up playing for a little bit at 4:00 this morning. it certainly made bedtime easy tonight. put him down in his pull-up and a t-shirt.

the terrible twos are definately in full swing. everything i ask him to do is answered with "no!" i actually called my mom last night and asked her to tell me that it was normal - i know it is, i just needed to hear it from another mom. it's aggrivating, but normal.

hard to read

anyone else have the issue where your 2-year-old doesn't know hwat they want? owen wants his sunglasses right now but when i hand them to him, he pushed them away. when i take them away (like i think he wants), he starts crying and reachign for them. it's really frustrating.

part of our problem might be the fact that our household lost 4 hours of sleep on thursday night. owen woke up around 12:30 and didn't get back to sleep until close to 4:30. i think he's still recovering, though the 11 hours of sleep he got last night certainly couldn't have done any harm.

i found a cool site thanks to some teachers at my school. i even found family there! it's a site from ellis island. if you have family who came over and went through ellis island you can see their entrance information, the manifest and a picture of the ship they came on. it was very neat to see my great-grandparents on there. however, there are some mis-transcriptions so it's not 100% accurate. for example, my grandmother's maiden name started with a D. they had her father listed as starting with a B, but the rest of the family was correct.

long day - what a story!!!

which turned into a very long night. we were to fly home at 7:00 p.m. on the 27th. well, as luck would have it, there was another major snow storm in denver that day (on top of the one on Christmas). i set up text alerts to my cell phone from our airline when we checked in at my mom's house. gotta love that online check-in thing. :-) anyway, on our way to the airport, we see a dozen cars along the side of the road, four tow trucks waiting in the median along pena blvd., and one emergency vehicle also waiting in the median along pena. (for those of you who aren't familiar with the denver area, pena blvd. connects the denver airport with I-70 which runs through the north end of denver.) luckily, we made it to the car rental place in one piece and got all of our stuff unloaded. we got onto the shuttle bus and as we were pulling into the drop-off area, my phone went off. it was the first alert telling us that our flight was delayed by 20 minutes. four minutes later, i got the second alert adding an hour to the initial alert. the next alert (20 minutes later) added 1 hour and 15 minutes to the second alert. the last alert came about 2 hours later and delayed us until 10:22 p.m. then on the reader-board at the gate, our final departure time was slated for 11:22 p.m. it was 12:17 on friday morning by my watch when we finally took off. this time is significant, but i'll get to that later.

so, we get to our gate knowing we will have to do a fair amount of waiting. we find a couple of seats by the window so owen can look out at the airplanes and snow (both new words from our trip). jeffy and i take turns walking around with him and jeffy even takes him to the neighboring concourse to play in the play area they have there. while my boys are going to play in the play area, the gate agents come on over the speakers (there are two flights' worth of people waiting at this point, both planes are delayed in leaving their origination point) and tells us that they have vouchers for us for food. all we need to do is bring up our boarding passes so they can mark who has received the voucher and who hasn't. i called jeffy and they came back. i got the vouchers and went to get food for owen and me. he ate his apples and then his nuggets. i didn't really care as long as they both got eaten. (everyone involved with that whole situation - both airline personnel and passengers - was so easy-going. there really were no problems to speak of aside from the delay in our flight, but everyone knew that it was noone's fault and we all just rolled with the punches.)

at a couple of points during the wait, owen was getting really restless so we pulled out the portable dvd player and watched elmo. don't you just love modern technology!? i sure do. we invited the little girl who was sitting behind us and her mother to join us (girl was not quite 2). earlier in the evening, owen had seen this little girl, gone up to her and given her hugs and kisses. it was very sweet. her mom even managed to get a picture of owen kissing cassidy (the little girl).

anyway, our plane finally leaves Seattle (it was a round-trip thing for the crew), which was announced over the speakers and greeted with much joy on our part. when it gets here, they tell us that they are going to try to get us all on the plane as quickly as possible so as to get us back to seattle as fast as possible. owen is counting people getting off of the plane. when there was break in the stream, he'd ask me, "where's the (insert appropriate number here)?" then when the next person came off of the plane, he'd pick up right where he left off. once he got to 10, he'd start over again, even counting backward from 5 at one point. i'd say that's really good number sense for 2 years old. asthe people are getting off of the plane, some of the people waiting to board near me notice someone behind the wall behind the desk put his hand over his mouth in an "oh " sort of way. said individual then makes an announcement that our flight might still be cancelled due to the length of time the crew has been on duty and that we needed to get everyone on the plane ASAP. well, this prompted a mini rush. "wait!!!" says he, "listen to your gate agent for directions." i'd say we did a wonderful job of getting everyone on and seated in record time. they got the doors closed and secured as soon as the last person was on board and the numbers check was done.

at 11:40 p.m. the head flight attendent then came on over the speakers in the plane and told us that in order to get to seattle that night, we needed to have wheels-up by 11:17 seattle time, which translates to 12:17 denver time. (this is where that time i mentioned earlier comes into play. do you remember what it is?) we sit in front of the gate after push-back for 10 minutes, then move to de-ice which gets done rather quickly, but still takes up several minutes to do the entire plane. we hit the runway and do a bit of taxiing, all the while people are looking at their watches and decideing to go with the watch that is earliest. in our row, that was mine. noone thought we were going to make it. there was a huge applause when the captain came on and told the flight attendents to prepare for take-off. we made it off of the ground with maybe minutes, but likely seconds to spare. the official time of our take-off according to the airline website was 12:20 a.m. once we were airborn, we were fine. we landed in seattle at 2:45 a.m. and didn't get home for another 45 minutes to an hour. i honestly didn't think that i was going to be waking up in my own bed yesterday morning.

boy, what a story this is. owen was such a trooper. one woman told us as she was passing our row during the boarding that owen was the best behaved child in the waiting area and that she could tell that we really work on his behavior. what an ego boost!!! we thanked her very much and i turned to jeffy and told him to give me a high-five. he asked what for. i told him that we're good parents. it's so nice to get that confirmation from strangers. owen slept most of the flight. all but the last 30-45 minutes, during which he cried and just wanted out. i did what i could to help him understand that i couldn't get him out just then. i'm not sure he understood. as soon as we were on the ground in seattle and the plane was taxiing to the gate, i took him out and just held him. he was fine from that point on. fussed for a couple of minutes when i put him in his bed when we got home (he was in jammies before we got on the plane...lucky boy!) and slept until 9:30 yesterday morning. i think we're getting close to being back on a normal sleep schedule around here.

tomorrow is christmas take 3 at jeffy's parent's house with all of his siblings and their kids. that will make 19 people in all. two of the people will be in arms of adults for the majority of the time as they are 15 days old and 6 months old. should be fun!

safe trip

we made it to denver easily, though it took nearly all day from the time we left our house until we arrived at my mom's. owen was a pro on the plane...until he decided that he wanted out of his car seat about 30-45 minutes before we landed. then he fell asleep about 20-30 minutes before we landed. wouldn't you know it! he fell asleep in the car between the airport and my mom's so he got a little bit of a nap yesterday.

as for his nap today, i put him down, he didn't want to be down so he got up and played. then he let himself out of the room. i've known for a while now that figuring out doorknobs was just a matter of time. he had the concept figured out (hold the knob and turn) but didn't quite get the fine mechanics of it figured out. until today. just as jeffy and i were leaving to go do some shopping, my mom comes out on her balcony to tell us he had just opened the door and walked out of her room. oy.

our rental car had 3 miles on it when we got it. how cool to get a brand new car to drive! it's a 2008 jeep grand cherokee. i like it, but jeffy's a little cramped in it. guess we can cross that one off of our possibility list when we go looking for a new vehicle sometime in the relatively near future (like in the next year or so, or when my car dies, whichever happens first)

o had bacon at breakfast this a.m. it's a first. he's getting amazingly good at using his words to ask for "more please" sometimes, "more" just means "some", like when he hasn't had any yet. the question of late is still "what's that?" even when he knows what it is. he's getting to be quite the parrot. it's so cool!

A new approach

after two consecutive nights of being up with a certain short person in our home in the way too wee hours of morning, i've taken anew approach to bedtime. he can play a little bit after i tuck him in, but i set a timer and then go back in when the timer is done to make sure he's in bed. last night took three total tuck-ins. same thing so far tonight. he was asleep by 9:00 last night and slept clear through (yay!!!!!) and tonight he's down (after my second time of stopping the reading/playing/whatever) and i'm still listening to see if he gets up again.

i think we have a new favorite food. pasta. as long as it is coated in sauce, he's good. last night was chef boyardee. tonight was real pasta - buitoni tortolloni with a fancy carmelized onion and garlic tomato sauce. he gobbled it up! sweet!!!!! then at the mall he tried a bite of teriyaki chicken and thought that was pretty good, too. yippee!!!!

christmas break is officially here. we kicked the first group of kids out at 11:20 and the second group out at noon. teachers got to leave at noon-thirty. i met my friend katie for lunch (had to change the venue due to zero parking at our first choice). it was really nice to just sit and talk and not have to worry about little boys getting fussy or bored.

and the neighbors are officially gone. there is a pile of their stuff on the curb (public property). if they set foot onto the property, they're tresspassing. many of the immediate neighbors know this and will be keeping an eye on things over the next week or so. they apparently did some major damage inside the house (kicking in all of the doors, for example) prior to leaving. hopefully, we're done with them for good. good ridance

waiting

to find out which 50% owen is in. we had a note sent home from day care today saying he has been exposed to the chicken pox. he got the first shot of the vaccine a year ago. i talked with a nurse and she told me what to look for and said that he has a 50/50 chance of getting it and wished us luck. the way i'm looking at it,he either gets chicken pox and we're done with it or he doesn't get it and we finish off the vaccine (2nd dose of the vaccine) and we're probably done with it. i think i'd rather he not get it and get the second dose of the vaccine - that will mean no missed work - but we'll have to wait and see. i really hope he can hold out until thanksgiving week. it's a short week of school (2.5 days) so it could be a managable thing. keeping my fingers crossed...

owen's speech is really improving lately. he's becoming more understandable more often. apple went from "at" to "appo". "pizza" is very clear. "dinosaur" is "di-doe". he's also counting to six and knows at least three letter sounds - b, d, m.

school is continuing to go well, we had our veteran's day assembly today and my choir sang. they had two weeks to learn their two songs (all but memorized!) and also to learn the poem "In Flanders Fields". they did such a wonderful job. i am so honored to be their teacher and directress.

i was supposed to have a release day yesterday for my national board process. "supposed to" being the operative words. turns out it was one day too early for finance to finalize approval for all of our release days. i'll still get the day, just on another date. more on this on my national boards blog.

tomorrow i drive to shoreline for a 7 p.m.-10 p.m. workshop, which continues on saturday all day. i'm not going to make the drive home on friday night. instead, i'll be staying with some friends in everett for that night. it will be a much better drive than coming all the way back home and then back up there again.

i am so ready for christmas break. i need the down time from work. i also need time to recoup from the cumulative hours of sleep i'm losing by a certain someone being up way too early and starting to play in his room. i get to stay in bed, but i'm still awake and losing sleep. the other day, he didn't nap at all at daycare. instead he was awake and trying to wake up his friends then quickly jumping back to his mat. what a little imp!

i received word on monday from the backpack people. owen and i will be in the 2008 calendar! immediate family will be getting calendars for christmas, among other things. we get 12 free. :-) i've asked about purchasing more. they're thinking about selling them and will let me know when they decide. i'll let you know as well. :-) i'm so excited! i'm a calendar girl! owen's a calendar boy!

sick day

for both me and the little man of the house. he has been getting a sporadic fever in response to those nasty two-year molars. they caught it at day care yesterday so he can't be there today. grumble grumble grumble. i have that beginning of the year cold which is threatening to go into my sinuses. i took a personal sick day instead of using a family leave day since i am also sick. i had to go back in last night after dinner (and after calling around to see if owen could go anywhere today so i didn't have to miss work...) to finish my sub plans. I then e-mailed them to one of the middle school teachers (i had my middle school class this morning) and the office coordinator. the latter couldn't open anything initially but the procedures. not the lesson plans, not the middle school project info to give to the kids. i only found this out when i called in to make sure everything made it to the sub. the office was supposed to have the phones on at 7:30. i didn't get anything but the immediate voicemail until 7:50. that was ten minutes before middle school starts. i was slightly frustrated, but everything turned out just fine. he should be done in about 20 minutes.

owen is down for his nap - no fighting, no getting out of bed multiple times. once jeffy gets home, i'm heading out for tgif (aka "choir practice") with people from work. he knows this, so i hope he hurries home tonight. i'll be upset if he doesn't get home in time for me to make it out. we're going to the waterfront tonight so it's going to be yummy.

one of owen's newest words is "tractor". he says it pretty clearly. i know grandpa will be happy with that one! ;-) he can also point to a picture of a tractor and correctly i.d. it. granted, most big machines are currently "tractor" but he'll get it right eventually. kids tend to over generalize anyway.

i am amazed that my little boy will be two in exactly two weeks. where has the time gone? i look at the quilt and his hands on the quilt and then at his hands now. it's incredible how much has changed in the last two years. two years ago, he relied on me for absolutely everything. now, he is somewhat self-sufficient. he is communicating his needs to us in a pretty effective way. he his gaining new words daily. this morning we were watching disney channel and i told him to say "hi, mickey mouse!" and he tried it! (deep thought: why can't i type that name without thinking of "em-eye-see kay-ee-why em-oh-you-ess-ee"?) he's imitating more and more of what we say and do. my favorite is closing the doors by backing into them (it's how we have to close the front door if we want it closed completely.)

getting better

owen went potty a total of four times on saturday. none on sunday (but we were at the fair most of the day so we didn't worry about it too much.) and three times today, i think. once first thing this morning (even with a full diaper!) and then twice at day care. he's pretty much transitioned up to the toddler room by now. that's a good thing. it's really where he needs to be for a multitude of reasons. i'm glad he's finally there. the coolest thing in my mind is that one of his teachers is the older sister of two of my favorite students. it's nice to have the family connection. the button on the book is still a favorite thing to push. usually he'll say, "button" when he wants to push it. i've pretty much learned to tune it out by now so it really doesn't bug me at all.

o started crying at 11:10 last night. i got up and went in to see what was up. he was. he was standing next to his bed in a small space. he managed to get himself mildly stuck between the bed, the wall, some sterilite tubs, and a wooden magazine rack we use for his books. once i got him unstuck (which just meant up onto his bed - he couldn't get that done by himself) and laid down with him for a few minutes, he was out for the rest of the night. i was out of bed for a total of about 20 minutes. i'm liking this bit. lately, it's taken no longer than about 30 minutes to get him back to sleep at night, if we even have to do it at all. i think having the big bed helps cause i can just climb in and snuggle with him until he falls asleep.

school is going well. the kids are learning so much already. my kinders can keep a great beat and follow direction all at the same time. it's quite cool. and so fun to watch. i made yet another small child cry today. same class as last time, but different kid. this one didn't want the red sticks either. she wanted blue. ugh. she ended up sitting out in a chair for most of the class time.

tomorrow is my first day off this year. i don't like taking a day off this close to the start of school, but it's a family funeral. jeffy's aunt died on thursday night. Lou Ann had been battling cancer for about a year. when they first found it, it was already everywhere (and i mean everywhere) and they didn't expect her to make the weekend. services are tomorrow morning at 10:30. it's too late in the morning for me to be able to take off just the morning (i'd have to be at school by 11:45 if i took a half day off and i can't make it back in time so i just took the whole day.) jeffy will be going to work, then leaving in time for the funeral, then heading back afterward. i'll just have some me time before and after. maybe i'll do some planning on my national boards. we'll see.

pictures!

Here are some pictures, just as I promised.

The first couple are of our little man reading, a favorite pasttime for him. He's not wearing any pants to make trying the potty easier for me. Too bad he didn't get that bit...

Can you tell he's not the least bit camera-shy?

Again, he's reading. I sing the words to this book to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle. Before I took these pictures, I could hear him singing away as he was reading. I even heard a few words I didn't know he knew ("see" is one that comes to mind).

I just love the look on his face in this one.




A boy and his bed. It's a beautiful thing. Too bad he doesn't realize that right now and go take a nap. He's been playing for at least the last hour, despite my poking my head in there several times and telling him to go to sleep. I've even physicall put him in his bed at least three times this afternoon. On another note, aren't the sheets and comforter cute?!




A wider view of his bed. It has been moved over to your right by about a foot so as to make it a little harder for him to work the lightswitch. He can still manage to reach it, however. The safety rails have a latch at each end so they can swing down quite easily and automatically catch and lock when they are raised. It makes changing diapers on the bed much easier. Yesterday morning, I found him laying cross-wise in his bed, head to your right, feet toward the left, between the rails

dry spell

in more than one way. i realized it's been two weeks since i've posted last so here is all that has happened in the last two weeks:

owen has his big boy bed in his room. he's pretty good about staying on it when it's time to be sleeping, even if he's not sleeping. he has cool car-and-truck sheets. i'll post pictures a little later.

separation anxiety is hitting for really the first time. owen loves his mama. that's a good thing. the other good thing is that at day care, he knows i'm going to leave, but he also knows that he has to stay. the way i look at things, he doesn't have to like it, but he does have to cope with it. he's coping. it helped yestereday when we got there earlier than normal (i have different hours depending on the day of the week this year) and the wiggles was on. he made a bee-line for that and was good.

owen should start transitioning up to the toddler room at day care starting on monday. this was helped along partly by the fact that he (1) woke up dry yesterday morning, (2) went on the potty yesterday morning, and (3) stayed dry most of the day yesterday but didn't go potty in the potty a second time. we're working on it. (this excitement sure beats the excitement we had on the first friday of school last year - a dead body on the sidewalk in front of the school in the morning.)

school is going well so far. i've seen all but two of my classes so far. these kids are really mine now. i'm finding i'm the most comfortable with my upper el classes that i have ever been. when i started teaching, that age group (4th and 5th grades) was my least comfortable. now, i've had these kids their entire school career so they really don't know any different. my rules haven't changed at all and they know me and my routines. it's really nice. i have even taken on a middle school class this year. i have them at 8:00 on monday and friday mornings. since i start teaching at the beginning of the elementary school teacher's day, i show up at 7:30 instead of 8:00 and get to leave at 3:00 instead of 3:30. i felt like i was playing hooky yesterday when i left as the elementary kids were getting loaded onto buses. i'll get used to it. my middle school class is going to be great, i think. this is the first year i've really felt comfortable having a middle school class. it is also the only situation in which i would take on middle schoolers, seeing as i've raised most of them since 1st grade. they came in so quietly yesterday, found their seats (i let them choose their assigned seat instead of me assigning them like i usually do.) there were some good questions about the course as i was describing it. and a collective moan when i announced the first quiz, which i gave yesterday. once i explained what was on the quiz, they were relieved. one kid even made the comment about how i can't do that on the first day. they have the weekend to finish it up and we'll discuss it on monday. basically, i'm just finding out what they know (or think they know) about music, how and why it changes, the different genres of music, and what composer names they might know.

jeffy is working the fair today. joy. don't have a clue when he'll be home, but it will be after owen goes to bed. we were thinking about going to the zoo, but it's too late to go, get everything in, and be home at a decent time for a nap. i'm a bit overwhelmed currently, and i think that probably has somethign to do with needing to recover from the week and having to run after a very busy almost 2-year-old all day long. anyone want to come over and help? i need it!

all for now. maybe i'll get pictures posted while he's napping. or maybe it will wait until after the fair tomorrow. we have rodeo tickets. i'm excited! i love the fair. owen will even be able to go on the rides this year (the minimum age is two, but he's close enough and definately passes for two.)

a monkey-boy by any other name

is still a monkey-boy. owen is really starting to mimic what he hears. he now will say "all right" when he give a high-five. mama taught him that. :-)

we went to our friend peter's birthday party today. owen loved the cake. he ate a small piece of each kind. he was a huge mess afterwards. makes up for not touching his cake at all at his own birthday last year.

he and i were up for about 2 hours in the middle of the night last night. i'm not sure why he woke up, but i'm thinking we're going to have to just let him get re-used to getting himself back to sleep when this happens. it may mean dealing with crying in the middle of the night. the good news is that after he woke up around 9 last night, he played for a few minutes and then went right back to sleep. i wonder if things will be easier once he's acutally in a bed, with sheets, and not on the floor. i guess time will tell on that.

owen starts back at day care tomorrow. he'll be in the toddler room from the get-go instead of starting back in waddlers and then moving up to toddlers in october. i'm going in to get my room going since we have open house on thursday night. i'll have all day tomorrow and thursday afternoon to get things ready. should be easy. i've done this enough years now it's all down to a science. my to-do list is on the board, and things are already getting crossed off. :-) it's nice to feel productive.

giving up

counting new words, that is. too many to keep track of each day. this morning, i was in the kitchen and he asked for an apple. usually, he wants a banana in the morning, but this morning, it was an apple. he got the half left over from dinner last night.

nap time is still going well with the mattress on the floor. bedtime is another story. last night he was up until 11:00. i do like him being able to play in his room between when he gets up, but the playing constantly at night is getting a bit old. advice on getting him down at night is readily accepted.....

UPDATE: it's 8:45 p.m. and owen went down before 8:00. he's quiet, like he's asleep. after i read his stories (in his bed, tonight, not in the rocking chair like we've done previously), i tucked him in, turned on his cd, turned off his lamp and closed the door. he played relatively quietly for no more than 10 minutes and it's been quiet ever since. he did wake up from his nap at 3:00 this afternoon so he was probably pretty tired. i'm hoping we can manage the same thing tomorrow night. (9:00 p.m. - ugh. i just heard something that sounded like a double thud and then playing from his room. i'm leaving it alone for right now. we'll see what happens...)

jeff's sister and our niece came over for dinner tonight. jeff's working at the fairgrounds for a concert and our brother-in-law was also working so i invited samara and isabella over. dinner was nice. it was good to have company. isabella played on the activity mat while the rest of us ate dinner. owen refused to eat just ketchup on his nuggets. he acutally dipped one, put it in his mouth, took a few chews, then spit it back out. i put some bbq sauce in with the ketchup and we had success. silly boy! samara and i have decided to do this again when both of our guys are working at night again.

a note on the potty training: owen is sitting on the potty several times a day now. he has yet to do anything in the potty, but at least he's sitting. actually using it will come in time.

My big boy!

You will notice that my big boy is not sleeping in his crib. Last night, he decided that he didn't want to do that any more. I put him down at 8ish like usual and by 9:45, he was crying and screaming. I went into his room and he handed me his jammie bottoms, teddy bear and blanket, then reached up for me. I took him out, and started rocking him. He started playing around a little bit so I tried putting him back in his crib. He didn't like that one bit. Next, we went into the living room where I turned on the TV to try to get him to sleep that way. That didn't work so I went into his room with a pillow case to put on the pillow in there and took the mattress out of the crib and put it on the floor. I then brought him into his room and he laid down right on the mattress. He played for a few minutes, but basically went right to sleep. He woke up sometime after 7:00 this morning and was playing happily while I came too. I was a little worried about him going down for his nap in terms of playing, but he again played for only a couple of minutes and went to sleep, as you can see. I guess he's ready for the big boy bed, huh? I don't know if we're going to get the mattress, box spring, and sheet set this weekend or if it will wait a little bit. At the bare minimum, the crib is being taken apart this weekend so we can have the space usable again. We already have the bed itself, it's the one jeffy's brother slept on and jeffy had the same style bed as a little boy. Pretty cool, if you ask me. We're considering painting the bed. I'm guessing that won't happen, though. At least not any time soon.

cheese!

we went to playgroup today and owen tried a little bit of cheese. he tasted it, then gave it back to me. the big thing, though, is that he tried it. something he's never done before. admittedly, cheese has a bit of a strange taste on its own. eventually, he'll decide he likes it not in or on anything. gotta love the babybel mini wheels!

the big deal at playgroup this morning was the brand new baby that was there. hayden was born early last week. all of us mommies were making huge efforts at showing our little ones the baby. i am one of two moms in the group who is not currently pregnant or who does not already have two children. we're not even going there for another year, but i still want owen to start getting a frame of reference for when i do get pregnant. the silliest thing owen did was call hayden "isabella". guess he thinks that any little baby is called "isabella". funny how his little mind works. he may get really confused when his next cousin comes in december.

the little bugger was up at 3:50 this a.m. jumping and chattering in his crib. that lasted about an hour, and then jeffy's alarm went off at 5 and again at 6 (i hate it when he does that!) so i really didn't start to get back to sleep until after 6. then owen was up shortly after 7. i let him play in his crib until after 8 because i just couldn't bring myself to haul my sorry you-know-what out of my nice comfy bed. exhaustion is a bad thing when you have a child as active as mine is. at least it's daddy's night to put him down. i may hand over the reins as soon as daddy comes in the door tonight, which might just be at bedtime the way things have been going with his work schedule the last couple of weeks (113 hours over the previous two weeks, 12 hours in yesterday.) i'd be napping along with owen right now, but i have a violin lesson coming in about 30 minutes so what's the point? maybe i'll just lay down on the couch and rest until my lesson comes.

molars?

i wonder if owen is starting to work on his two-year-old molars. he's been pretty fussy and crabby the last few days, also not to keen on eating a whole bunch of food. pbj is still good and a favorite, though pizza is a close second, and dillas are third. today for lunch, he ate about five bites of dilla, then threw the whole thing on the floor. i gave him some grapes just to get something in his tummy. he's still trying new foods! doesn't like most of them, but he's trying them! yesterday, aunt sheena even got him to eat a carrot stick. the cutest thing yesterday was when he was trying to give baby isabella her bottle, after she had finished it! oh, and he was up for two hours on sunday night as well as friday (i think) crying. i sure hope it's molars and we get them done before school starts in a month. after this, we're done until he's about 6 and then we'll be able to reason with him and explain why it's hurting so much and have him understand. this toddler teething thing is rough.

this morning we got up, owen got breakfast (nana and o's) and we went to the mall so mommy could get a cinnabon and a starbucks. (i know, i was really bad this morning. but, i don't usually get either of them so i don't feel too guilty. ). owen was greeting all of the mall walkers, even extending his hand so they could shake it. a few did. one lady remarked at what a nice young man he is. basically, he charmed the pants off of everyone he greeted. this of course between bites of mommy's cinnabon. after i ate, we went to the play area. we weren't there two minutes when he made his first run for it. this happened four times, after which i posted myself at the opening and ran interference. he told me he was done by bringing me his shoes and then leading me back to the stroller. on our way out, he was using his new word, "bye-bye!", complete with waving. very cute!

i made another attempt at cutting owen's hair last night. the first try since the "uh-oh! that's way too short!" several months ago. this time i used a longer attachment and it looks nice. i like the look in the back, and for summertime, this attachment is good for the top too. i think i'll make it longer for when it gets a bit cooler but this works for right now. the lesson learned last night, though, was this: strap him down when giving a hair cut. he was all over the bathroom while i was trying to cut his hair. trial and error, right?

pictures from our trip are coming. just waiting for permission from a couple of people to post pictures with them.

Busy Day

We went to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha today. It was lots of fun. It's about the coolest zoo I've ever been to...and we only saw part of it! Owen loved it. He got to see loads of animals. He made noises for just about everything, though most of it was barking like a dog (sometimes a higher-pitched yip, other times a low growly bark). He is also extremely good at making monkey noises (we have the full package!) He also hissed like a snake when Aunt Michele or Mommy prompted him to. There weren't any high chairs were we ate for lunch so we just plopped Owen into a regular chair. He stayed there and ate like such a big boy! After that, we went to the Desert Dome, which was featured on either the Travel Channel or Animal Planet within the last couple of years. There's an area of the Desert Dome called "Kingdoms of the Night". We hit that right after lunch. As hoped, Owen fell asleep in the dark. Then Aunt Michele suggested, once we were in the monkey house, to move him from the backpack to the stroller. He woke up - and stayed awake. He's napping now, which is good. Actually, we all napped once we got home. It felt really good. We're going to the baseball game tonight. That will be fun, also.

So, as promised, here's a picture of Owen with Aunt Michele. They were reading bedtime stories a couple of nights ago. Both were having a great time. My sister is such a good aunt. I just wish we lived closer so that we could all spend more time together. As it is, she lives half a country away. I'm insanely proud of her, though. She just completed her third year of medical school and will begin her rotations for fourth year on Monday. As it stands right now, she is looking at going into neonatology. She'll be wonderful at whatever she goes into. Owen adores her. Heck, who can blame him!?

We are so lucky to have such an easy-going kiddo. Owen has slept so beautifully this entire trip, hasn't freaked out at all of the strange (as in new and unfamiliar) places he's slept. He doesn't take any longer than usual to quiet down at night or at nap time, which is so nice. He also adapts quite quickly to the new surroundings we're putting him in. He makes traveling with a little one so easy, relatively speaking. He will say "hi" to just about anyone. Yesterday when we were at the Strategic Air and Space Museum, which is between Omaha and Lincoln, he smiled at a man who came around the corner and it must have been just what the man needed because he told us that seeing Owen at that moment "made his day". There is something very special in store in life for this little boy. I'm excited to see what that might be.

Tomorrow we drive to Denver and will be there until Friday when we fly back home. I can't believe we've been gone over a week already!

i sing, you sing...

owen sings! we had a sing-along in the car this morning. i started with abc's, then owen requested twinkle twinkle (up-up-up-up), then after twinkle, he requested old macdonald (e-i-e-i-ooooooo) he even will sing along sometimes, or at least sing his part.

another thing he has started doing in the last couple of days is sticking by me when we're out walking around. he's done that several times recently. it's a nice change from him running away from us all the time.

right now he is carrying around one of daddy's shoes...that's a size 13 if you're interested.

another change in owen's routine is sleeping with a teddy and blanket now. he started the teddy on monday night and added the blanket two nights ago. it was pretty cute! i should have taken a picture of him right after i laid him down last night. one arm wrapped around teddy, and the blanket clutched in the other arm. very cute. he made it through last night. too bad i can't say the same for two nights ago. i was up with him for two hours. that wasn't fun.

i'm in my final countdown at school. i have five more teaching days left: two more fridays, one more each of monday, tuesday, and thursday. wednesday of next week is field day so that doesn't count for me. next friday is my last teaching day of the year. we go through the 19th with kids and then just teachers for an inservice day (making up from all of hte weather we had in december and january) on the 20th. the only bad thing is that i have my least favorite class on thursdays and fridays. that makes three more sessions with them instead of one or two like the rest of my classes. today i showed my upper el classes (that's 4th and 5th graders) a program video from when they were in 1st and 2nd grade. it was a hoot!

next week i also have my program, which was originally supposed to be today. it's now on tuesday. my littles (PreK-Ks) and choir. my favorite concert of the year. just fun songs.

They Work!!!

so i'm just getting a class started today when my cell phone rings. my kids hear it and inform me, i hear it and ignore it and tell them i'll let it go to voicemail. once i get them going on their lesson (color by number activity while listening to "Carnival of the Animals"), i go look at my phone to see who called. it was daycare. i call them back and find out that his ear is oozing and they're afraid that he's ruptured an ear drum. i calmly inform them (maybe slightly excitedly, actually) that he has tubes and they're doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. i told them i'd call the doctor to make sure we didn't need to take him in and then i'd call them back. as long as they aren't getting clogged and he doesn't get a fever or seem to be in pain with his ear, we don't need to go in. i'm so glad we went for the tubes. i couldn't have dealt with yet another thing with him.

i, on the other hand,think i have a sinus infection. it's incredibly painful. i've barely eaten all day today. just at breakfast. that was really tough, unless i took really small bites. wonder what i'll do for dinner tonight as far as eating.

owen is consistently going through the night, and when he wakes up, he may fuss, but he gets himself back to sleep with relative ease. how nice to be back to that! yay!