Three Tales from the Adorable Files

Tale #1: Snakes

In May, we visited Pennsylvania for Dan & Meg's wedding.  While we were there, we spent a lot of time with Owen checking out the small pond in Pops & Nonnie's back yard.  This pond is full of frogs and fish, but what Owen picked up on the most clearly was Nonnie talking about the time she saw a snake in it.  After this trip, we spent several weeks talking about snakes--What do snakes say?  (Hisssss.)  Where do snakes sleep?  (The Pond.)  What's in the pond?   (Snakes.)  What do snakes eat?  (Grass.)  Etc.  In June, Nonnie brought Owen some colorful toy snakes to play with.  What a hit!  The snakes went in the bath, in the yard, and most especially in (and out of, and in again, and out of again) a bucket.  

Then in July, I got a new book for Owen, the Fisher Price Little People "lift the flap" book called Let's Go to the Zoo.  (As an aside, anyone who is shopping for a gift for a 2 year old cannot go wrong with these books. They are a delight for kids and parents too.)  Page 1 of Let's Go to the Zoo features many cartoonishly rendered zoo animals in various hiding places.  Including snakes.  

One day shortly after we got this book, Owen and I are exploring this page.  He was kind of spaced out, not really paying attention to my questions or lifting up any of the flaps.  After a few minutes, I asked him what he was thinking about.  

He lifted up the flap for the snakes and pointed at one, shook his head and said "Snakes...  no ears."  

Tale #2: Necklace

Last week I was wearing a necklace with a large, shiny blue mother-of-pearl pendant.  I came home from work and sat down on the couch and Owen ran over to me saying OOOooohhhhh... neck!  And grabbing my necklace.  I said, "Yes that's my necklace. Don't pull!"  

Owen started kissing the pendant.  I said, "Why are you kissing it, silly boy?"  

"Neck-kiss," said Owen.

Tale #3: Lights
Owen's birthday was Tuesday, and he also had a small party on Sunday morning.  For his birthday, of course we had rainbow cupcakes and sang happy birthday for him!  He even blew out his candles.

Last night Owen asked for cake as soon as he sat down to dinner, and we bargained until he ate one chicken nugget and about 2.5 strawberries before getting the promised cake.  I cut a cupcake in half and put it on a plate for him.  

Wrong!!!  WAAAAAAAAhhhhhhh!!!  Crushing disappointment!  This cake was WRONG WRONG WRONG!!  Owen was so upset.  He tried to throw the plate with the cupcake off the table.  

Did you want a whole cupcake?  I offered him a whole one.  NO!  NO NO NO! 

Finally I asked him to settle down and tell me in words what the problem was, so I could fix it.  He gestured wildly at the other side of the kitchen, boo-hooing.  Cake! Cake!  No no no!  Finally he gets out...  Yights!  (That translates to 'lights,' by the way.)  

Lights???  What?  Do you want me to turn on the lights in the kitchen?  

Nooooo.   Very sad crying.  Big tears.  

Finally, it dawns on me.  

Ohhhh....  do you want candles on your cake?  

YES!   Yeaaaaaahhh!  Candle!  

He didn't know the word.  I can't describe what its like when one of these communication moments happens and Owen has made himself understood.  He's so sublimely pleased that you've finally caught up to what he means.  He does this crazy pressured low giggle and squinches up his entire face and throws back his head with glee.  

So, we lit the candles and sang happy birthday, and he blew them out...  three times.  He didn't touch the cake.  I only dragged him away to his bath with the promise of more candles tonight.  

23 months - Big Boy

Goodness it has been a long time since we posted, at least, in Owen-time.  It took Owen a while to move on from those first few two-syllable words, but now the world of multisyllabic communication is his oyster.  I bet he could even say oyster if you asked him.  Although thanks to Dora the Explorer episodes on the subject, he would surely insist that any oyster he met was a clam.  He sure learns a lot of weird stuff from Dora.  We recently got a flat tire on the bike and he knew just what to do!  "Pump!  Mama!  Fix it!  Pump!"  I could not figure out how he knew that.  Then I saw the episode "Rojo the Fire Truck" in which Rojo gets a flat tire and Dora uses a tire pump to fix it.  Needless to say, our lofty aspirations of breaking the TV habit failed.  But we try to keep it to a dull roar.

Owen Helping to Set Up at Dan and Meg's Wedding

We have, after all, been rather busy with other things.  Mama got a PhD, daddy got a new job, trip to Madison for Mancation, a big trip to Pennsylvania for Dan & Meg's wedding, visits from Amani, Pops & Nonnie, and Jenna... and we all got bronchitis to boot.  Yes, it has been a particularly busy 3 months at the Jones homestead.

Dr. Mama

Favorite words and phrases include: happy, bigger, giant!, tiny (which he says in a very tiny voice for emphasis), "do it", button, dump-truck, trash-truck, chocka (w/s chocolate ice cream--or just plain chocolate, which I don't even know how he learned about because I NEVER gave him chocolate, I swear), husher, apple, strawberry (which comes out with only two syllables, "stawbry"), TeeBees (T.V), and phrases such as "Bye bye, Mama!"  And this morning he said his very first complete sentence: "Owen throw meckas."  I don't know what meckas are, but he was evidently thinking about their potential as projectiles.  Noah also taught him to say please & thank you (which he either says "que que" or "Thanks") and he's really pretty good about it.  

Here's a cute word game Owen has been playing since Pops & Nonnie were here to visit three weeks ago--he makes all his family members into superheroes.  He shouts SUU-PER-MAMA!  then... SUU-PER DADA!  ...  SUU-PER POPS!  SUUU-PER NONNIE!  SUU-PER GRAMPS!  Then I'll say, "What about Jenna?  is Jenna super?"  ...  SUU-PER JENNA!  Here's a shot of Owen with SUU-PER NATHAN!

Another very, very important word in our house these past few days has been Potty.  We heard enough nightmare stories of potty training after the age of 3 that we decided the time was nigh.  Why not?  Noah had a few days off for the 4th of July so we took the diapers off, and they've been off ever since.  The approach we're using is more like potty conditioning.  You just keep doing it until they are conditioned to go when they're on the pot.  Maybe that's how all approaches work, I don't know.  He is getting it, bit by bit.  Owen is very excited to be a big boy now.  In fact, there are a lot of big boy changes coming down the pike--he  slept in his big-boy bed for the first time last night.  He's almost tall enough to climb out of the pack-n-play crib so its days are numbered.  And pretty soon we're going to have to give up the bottle and the hushers.  Fortunately, he'll always have Weasel.

After several months of showing interest in colors and naming them consistently but utterly incorrectly, he is finally sorting them out.  He's known all the color words for a while but he used to just get them wrong--what color is that button?  Purple!  When it was orange.  Now he gets them right most of the time.

Owen is also counting and can count things up to four, sometimes five.  Sometimes he just says "one" over and over, or alternates between one and four.  He says the alphabet if you coach him--every letter except V which seems to be too challenging to pronounce.  Usually he just says U again instead of saying V.

In terms of physical development, Owen has grown to be extremely tall (we would measure him if he'd stand still for long enough) and weighs about 28 lbs.  His baby fat is melting away.  He has all 16 of his first-year teeth in, and no sign of second year molars so I (very, very much) hope that we have a respite from teething.  Another unexpected change was that his hair went from being baby hair to grownup hair all of a sudden.  His hair is now thick, not baby fine, and dirty blonde.  His left hair swirl is beginning to dominate, too.  He really looks like a big boy--easily 3 and people are constantly looking at me in shock and wonder when I tell them he's not yet 2.

Owen's favorite activities right now include loading stuff into buckets and then dumping the stuff into another bucket.  Actually, bucket is another big favorite word.  He does this with balls, small toy cars, puzzle pieces, blocks, buttons, plastic eggs, whatever he can get his hands on.  If buckets are unavailable, he'll load up boxes, baskets, or his big trash truck instead.  He likes to use the spare house keys to "unlock" the trunk of his dump truck.  He is also getting very dexterous with stacking blocks, and with putting his puzzles together.  He's interested in drawing but it requires a lot of sitting still, so it's a momentary kind of activity.  Usually after a minute or two, he gets more interested in loading the crayons into a bucket than actually using them.

Portrait of a Pair of Shoes which Owen Outgrew in Less than Two Weeks

He also likes to build pillow forts (tunnels) and crawl through them, climb on the furniture, and dance around.  We spend a lot of time outside.  We play at the water table that Noah built for him in the front yard, dig holes in the garden (loading the dirt into buckets, of course), pick strawberries, and generally have a romping good time.  He is a happy, energetic little monkey.

Life is Good when you Drink from the Pig

20 Months!!

Hard to believe that we've hit the 20 month mark!

Gramps and Granma are back in France, and Owen is showing no signs of slowing down.

He picked up his first two-syllable word - "juggle" - while we were visiting our friends Jon and Alexa and their new addition, Dash. Slowly, he's starting to piece together multiple words. "bonk" + "tooth" to tell us he has a toothache. "good" + "doggie" to say he wants a puppy.

There will be no puppies.

He also says, "huh?" when he's stumped. It was cute the first five times. Now it's clear that we are looking at the first of many annoying conversation habits that we're going to have to battle. We're looking forward to "duh!", "like" and "um".

All this advanced language has him feeling pretty confident and that means he's testing new boundaries.

He can get himself into and out of an old wooden high-chair - but he sits in it backwards and sticks his legs through the rungs. Cute - but not safe, as his center of gravity makes the chair tip onto two legs with the slightest effort.

He's also testing the rules and starting to learn that actions have consequences. We've started putting him in time-out when he hits or throws something. At first - he was outraged. But recently, when he tested and broke a boundary, he shook his little head and said, "no" and put himself in a time-out, closing his door (and his Mama) behind him.

We now realize the danger of television. He is completely entranced with Thomas the Tank Engine, Elmo and Curious George. That would be fine, but he's also addicted to a few other less awesome shows. So we are working on phasing out the ritual of using TV to put him to bed. Some things are easier to start than stop - but he's getting there, and is back to enjoying a book before going to sleep for hi nap or bedtime.

Gramps and Granma did an amazing job of introducing him to the neighborhood on daily morning walks. We are not doing as many of those as they did, but we are still going out to visit his fans. Along the way, he practices stopping at the intersections, waiting for traffic, and holding our hand for the walk across the street. He's getting very good at taking instructions.

His personality is really starting to develop. His sense of humor is pretty goofy, and when he's having fun, he'll let you know by shouting, "fun!" He also gets pretty serious sometimes, when he's focused on a task, or intent on getting something he's not supposed to have. He's asking for help now - which is a neat way to interact with him as he learns about his limits and our role as parents to help him overcome them. He can get on the rocking horse all by himself - but he can't get off without a helping hand. There's an analogy there, I'm sure.

We took him to the butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum, but he was more interested in the construction site outside. He loves trucks and can point out the cement mixer, the dump truck, and the emergency-vehicle (though for that one, he just goes, "woooo woooo" to let you know they have sirens). He was on his way to go see a front-end loader, and got side tracked by a ramp.

You may not know this, but ramps are awesome.

Photos and Videos to come.

18 Months

It's been four months since I posted.  I just read through my last post, from when Owen was barely taking his tentative first steps.  Boy oboy have things changed!  Now he can hit a full run, push his toy lawnmower several blocks, go up and down stairs on his own!  Climb to the highest slide in the park and slide down it solo!

He worked very hard on learning to jump and spent several weeks in hard concentration.  He would bend his knees, then stand up straight and lift first his right then his left foot one after another, as fast as possible.  Then he used a new approach: he crouched down and straightened up quickly, going up onto his tiptoes and holding it there.  If only he had jets in his toes, he would have blasted right into the air.  Finally, just a few weeks ago, he lifted both feet off the ground at the same time.  He's still not a pro but he's getting there.

Owen has also been working hard on talking.  His list of words is too long to name them all, but it includes: ball, dog, kitty, treat (for the kitties), bird, duck, bok-bok (that's a chicken, for the uninitiated), song, sit, jump, step, stomp, hand, help, swim, water, good, up, down (although he gets these confused), outside, inside, walk, bump, hot, cold, hat, coat, shoe, sock, run, swing, slide, park, home, car, bus, truck, bottle, weasel ("Soooul"), pacifier ("Pass"), rat (yes, rat), Elmo, Cookie monster, baby, cracker, cookie, cheerio, orange, banana, apple, blueberry, strawberry, egg, cheese (and he can also get the cheese out of the fridge if you let him), pasta, butter (which he requests on many kinds of food and then says MMMMMM, butter!), peas, yogurt, fork, spoon, nap, book, star, moon, flower, butterfly, ... that's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

He's got Mama, Dada, Gramps ("Namp") and Granma ("Nama") down perfectly.  Everyone is greeted with "Hi!"  And dismissed with "bye bye."  He gives real kisses and real, wonderful hugs.  He can give high-fives, low-fives, blown kisses, and fist-bumps.  When you guess what he's after correctly, he squinches up his face with delight and says "okay." 

He can name some colors, a little inconsistently.  He has orange down pat and I heard him say purple the other day.  Blue is hit or miss. 

He can make the sounds for pigs, cows, chickens, ducks, sheep, bears, lions, rats ("eee-eee"), microwave ovens ("beep beep"), trucks, and waves. When he doesn't know the sound and you ask him, his default answer is "ROAAAAR!".  As in: "Owen, what sound does a giraffe make?"  "ROAAAAR!" 

He's starting to combine words into 2-word phrases, like "drum song" or "orange truck." 

He is really into singing along to songs and requests specific ones.  Favorites include Snuggle Puppy, Old McDonald Had a Farm, the Elmo song, Happy if you Know It, Wheels on the Bus, and a couple of tracks from a disc with singing in Chinese.  One features a drum and another has a flute (two more words for the list).

When you least expect it, he will lift the edge of your shirt and tickle you, saying EEEE-EEEE-EEEE.  Sometimes he lifts up his own shirt and tickles himself.  

He's a lot of fun, and more fun every day.