Screamer

Owen turned 7 months on Friday and he is doing new stuff all the time. Last week, he learned how to scream, which he does quite a bit. Here's a taste:



Owen also started "cruising" last week, which is where he walks while holding onto furniture. He walks the length of the couch, along the TV, and has even gone from the chair to the end table. It's so crazy how fast he's learning to do all this stuff!

Last Saturday, Ryan's mom came up and took Owen back to her house until today (Tuesday). It's the longest I have been away from my little punkin, so it was scary, but Ryan and I had a great time. One of our friends came to visit from Colorado, so we spent a couple of days on Lake Delhi and just relaxing and sleeping in! It was very fun, but I missed my little guy. Last night, I had a dream that we got him back and he had started walking and talking! It must have felt like a lot longer than 4 days! When we did get him back though, he came back with TWO teeth! His bottom two teeth have popped up and it's weird to feel them in there. I was nervous to nurse him because I was afraid he'd bite me (you should see the way he gnaws on his bottles!) but he was gentle : ) I think I'm going to start pumping more and start weaning him from breastfeeding, but I'm definitely going to keep him on breastmilk. Formula is EXPENSIVE and (knock on wood), Owen has not been sick yet, so I must be giving him some really good stuff! ; )

I also got another surprise when we got him back because over the weekend he learned to say "Mama"!!!!!! It's so cute. He obviously doesn't know what Mama and Dada mean yet, but I love that those where the first two "words" he said.

And of course since Owen spent some time with one of his grandmas, he got spoiled! He came back with a Pack n Play, a walk toy, a rocking horse and his great-grandma got him some clothes. I think he got a lot of attention too, and got to spend time with some cousins. The walk toy is a little advanced for him right now, but he keeps trying, and he sits on the rocking horse and just smiles. I'm sure it won't be long before he's pushing that walk toy everywhere and rocking that horse like there's no tomorrow. What a little sweetie.

6 Month Pictures

We finally got some milestone pictures taken of Owen. We took him to Portrait Innovations in Waterloo and I think they did an awesome job! We picked four poses to have printed, but they gave us a picture CD with all of his pictures, so here are some of my favorites:

We got prints of this one ^

Prints of this one in sepia (brown) tone ^

Prints of this one ^

Prints of this one  ^

And one 8x10 of these two side by side in a collage-type picture in sepia tone for us.

There were a lot of cute ones to choose from and it's hard not to spend a ton of money! I'm really glad we got the picture CD with it because then we can print some of our own later (which we have already done)!

I was a little disappointed because he was NOT in the smiling mood. All he wanted to do was crawl back toward Ryan or me. There are even some pictures where he just looks terrified! At home he's all smiles, but not there. It's probably a good thing, though, or we would have had even MORE awesome pics to choose from and it would have been even harder to choose without breaking the bank : )

We finally tried some real baby food today! His first veggie was peas and he actually seemed to like them! I made Ryan watch as I fed them to him the first time because I thought he'd have a funny reaction, but he didn't. That's probably a good thing. So we'll stick to peas for the next couple of days and then try something else - carrots maybe. I hate peas AND carrots, but hopefully Owen won't be picky! We'll see, guess! Ace apparently likes baby food peas too because he loved licking some off of Owen's hands. Gross! : )

Dada

Here is a super cute video of Owen talking to his dada:



SO CUTE!

And here is what Owen did today all by himself:

And one-handed, too!

Later, he went to the front door to see what was going on out there.

He's getting really good at standing up, but now he has to figure out how to get down without bonking his head. He's a tough little guy, though!

Good Thing

It's a good thing that I lowered Owen's mattress the other day, because when I went in to get him out after his nap today, this is how I found him:

STANDING UP IN HIS CRIB!

Lowering the mattress in his crib was a pain in the butt, and afterward I decided not to put the bumper pads back in because I was being lazy and I didn't think he really needed them anymore (plus, books that I read before he was born said not to even use them at all). BUT, after he had been in bed for about 20 minutes, I heard him SCREAMING at the top of his lungs, so I went in there and he had gotten his arm stuck through the bars. So I put them back in, but did not tie them to the posts, and when I went in the next morning to get him out, this is what I found:

I'm not sure how he manages to do stuff like this but he did the same thing at my mom's a couple of weekends ago. So I ended up tying them to the posts :)

On Tuesday, Ryan and I took Owen to the pool. The pool in Cedar Falls is really nice and it has a baby pool, lazy river, a family pool, two diving boards and three waterslides. The baby pool has lots of stuff for kids to do and climb on, which of course Owen can't do yet, but it will be fun in the years to come! Anyway, I took Owen in the baby pool first because I thought it would be warmer than the other pool (for gross reasons!) and he acted terrified! He clung to me like a koala bear! It was cute but he was pulling my hair out of my ponytail and I could have stood up and not held on to him and he would have hung on just fine. I was surprised because he LOVES taking baths. So then we took him over to the family pool and it was the same story there. I thought he was going to pull my hair out of my head, so I gave him to Ryan for awhile. Then he was fine! Little turkey! He started smiling and didn't cling to Ryan at all. And later when I took him back (Ryan wanted to go down the slide), he clung to me again like a koala bear. I did manage to unglue him from me a few times and we "swam" around. He seemed to like it, but if I didn't keep him away from my body a little bit, he would cling. I don't know if he just felt safer with Ryan or what, but it was kind of funny. We're going to keep going so he gets more experience.

Owen is always on the move! Today he crawled from the living room all the way to the bedroom, which is the length of our house. Maybe he was looking for his Daddy, who was still in bed. :) He's a master crawler now and getting fast! And yesterday he was babbling away saying "Da-da" quite a bit. He started doing that about 3 weeks ago, but only did it for a couple of days and then stopped until yesterday. I got a few of them out today. I'm working on "Ma-ma" now!

Here are a couple of cute videos I took today.

I didn't even have to clean it up because Ace came right over and ate what was on the floor!

What a cutie! And yes, he fell a little bit and bonked his head at the end. When I put the videos on the computer and watch them, Owen gets a big kick out of seeing and hearing them. He loved that last video!

Chunky Monkey

Owen had his 6 month check up last Thursday and he is a big boy! Since he was born, he has gained exactly 10 pounds and has grown 5 inches, which makes him 18 lbs 7 oz and 26.5 inches!! The nurse and doctor both commented that he is strong...and cute, of course! When Owen is laying down on his back and holds on to someone's hands, he can pull himself up into a standing position without any help except balance. He'll be walking before we know it! In fact, I had to lower Owen's crib mattress tonight because he is almost able to stand up in there and I'm scared that he'll fall out of it! He crawls to the ledge, grabs ahold of it and gets up on his knees. I haven't seen him stand up in the crib yet, but he has tried while out in the living room, and I'm not going to wait til it's too late!

The doctor said he was looking good and told me to start him on solids, so we went to Walmart and bought some rice cereal. I didn't take any pictures of him eating it, but he loves it! I tried a little of it, and it's very bland, but he gets excited when he sees the spoon now and wiggles around in his high chair and opens his mouth. It's pretty cute. I think we are going to stick to rice cereal for a little while before we move on to other foods, because I got a pretty big box of that cereal. Also, we were told to introduce a food and then feed it to him for at least three days before trying something else, that way if Owen is allergic to anything it will be easier to identify what it is.Neither Ryan or I have any food allergies, so it's pretty unlikely that Owen will, but you never know. So maybe next week we'll be trying some veggies. He didn't really have a funny reaction to the rice cereal, probably because it's so bland, but I have a feeling he'll make a face when he tries other things. I'll have to get pictures or video of that!

That's all for now! (No pictures this time, I'm not on my regular computer.)

Crawler

Owen is all over these days and it's been fun. The picture above is of him under the end table. He's a total boy, getting into everything he's not supposed to, over and over and over! :) And today the best thing happened: Owen was in the living room playing while I was getting supper ready in the kitchen, and he started getting fussy and crying a little. I walked into the living room, and when I was about 5 feet away from him, he saw me and crawled over to me and grabbed my legs, like "Pick me up, Mommy! I'm so glad you are here!" It was the first time he has crawled to me to be picked up, and it gave me the best feeling. There have been a few times that he has grabbed my arms to be picked up, especially when he's ready to get out of the tub, but I have always been right next to him, and even though those times were pretty cool too, it was 10 times better that he crawled to me. He's finally starting to show me love, and it's AMAZING! I'm so excited for when he gives me hugs and kisses.

I have another video of Owen crawling. He can also get into a sitting position when he's one all fours which is pretty cool. He's learning stuff so fast! This was taken a week after the first one, and you'll probably notice he doesn't have any clothes on....again! I usually just leave him in just a diaper unless we are going somewhere or if we had gone somewhere earlier that day. I don't see the point when it's 100° outside, and it means less laundry for me! :) Anyway, here's O Baby showing off his crawling:



I also set up his high chair today, because we go to the doctor tomorrow and I'm sure she will tell us to start solids. Some doctors give the OK at four months, but babies don't really need any nutrition other than milk until 6 months, which is fine by me since he's been eating for free for his whole life! The high chair that we got is actually more of a booster seat, in that it sits on top of a regular kitchen chair instead of being free standing. I put him in it today and let him practice with a sippy (which he is getting better at) and he seemed to like it. I'm kind of excited to see his reaction to "real" food.

The dogs are doing so awesome with Owen. He loves to laugh at them, and they love to give him kisses!

I've also been trying to get rid of the pacifier. Last night was the first night, and he cried and SCREAMED for about 40 minutes. I felt so bad for him and went in his room a few times to try to calm him down, but it didn't work, so I just had to let him cry himself to sleep. Today for his naps he didn't cry at all, and when I put him down for the night he whimpered a little for about 10 minutes and that was it. So hopefully we will be done with the paci! I don't really mind having it, but from what I've read in books, it's better to get rid of it now when he doesn't really know any better, than when he's older, so I'm going for it. I'm a little scared for when we are out and about and he gets cranky, because the pacifier really did work awesome, but I can't look back now. Wish us luck!

Happy Father's Day!!

It is Ryan's first Father's Day! So far it has been pretty uneventful, and this morning, Ryan only saw Owen for about 30 seconds before he had to go to work, but it was enough time for a kiss and a "Happy Father's Day, Daddy" from Owen (who's voice sounds a lot like mine, only higher pitched!). Owen and I ended up going to visit Ryan at work for a while and this afternoon Ryan is going to go golfing with some friends. The weather forecast says rain and thunderstorms, but so far there hasn't been anything, so hopefully it stays that way until they are done golfing.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Ryan and Owen over the last 6 months:

Birth Day

3 days old

The puppies love him too!

Daddy's Little Wingman - 1 1/2 months

Relaxing!

Laying in bed together.

The next three are from Brian and Jodi's reception:

Air guitar!!

Owen is getting better and better at crawling. We DEFINITELY need to make sure our place is baby-proofed, he is everywhere! He has his 6 month checkup this week and after that I'm sure we will be starting baby food, so bring on the mess (and watch for pictures)!

Happy Father's Day to my dad, my husband, my brother and to all the dad's and soon to be dads out there!!