7 weeks to 9 weeks

It's about time for me to begin posting about Owen since he is now 7 weeks old as of Wednesday the 2nd of June.

Dear Owen,

You are a delightful baby. You rarely cry and when you do it seems to almost always have a clear purpose. You cry when you are hungry, want to be swaddled (are tired), have to burp or have a gas pain or you want to be picked up. You started smiling and cooing at about 6 weeks...

Well, I never did finish that entry. You are now 9 weeks old. You had your 2 month check up yesterday and got 3 shots and the rotovirus oral vaccine. You weighed 12 lbs 5 oz and were 23.5 inches long. You are sleeping about 8 hours a night. Here's a photo from today at the top of this entry. I'm going to post this as you are waking up for your bedtime feeding. Love you, little Owie Kazoey!!

William's stories

I've been wanting to keep track of the funny jokes and stories William tells.

Tonight, he was having a hard time settling down after returning from Encompass' babysitting service. He was overtired and laying on the floor being upset with Andrew laying next to him, trying to support and comfort him. While he was laying there being grumpy, he said to Andrew "Woh, there is a crocodile over there by the door. I'm going to catch it". Andrew said, "Where, show me" and they both hopped up and ran towards the front door. William proceeded to hunt for the crocodile under the ottoman cushion, under the foyer table, under the coffee and kitchen table and then found him outside the playroom window playing ball with an owl. Then he looked for him on my phone and found an App called Regator with a crocodile and opened his flashcards App and Andrew found the crocodile card for him. While William was "crocodile hunting", the crocodile turned different colors (yellow and purple) and the hunt continued upstairs as the crocodile was hiding by his bedroom window.

William has also told Andrew a story during storytime that was super cute. He was trying to prolong the time before he was to go to bed so he was desperately trying to distract Andrew from putting him to bed. He began telling Andrew about how there were eagles at Ami and Papa's house that were fishing. The eagles were going to catch fish and bring them back to William so that they could eat fish pizza together.

William knows his "Moose Book" and his "Orca Whale Book" from start to finish and seems to point out the words in the sentence, A is for Auklet, and so on. We are guessing his grandma taught him to point out the words and aren't totally sure he knows how to read "is" and "for" yet. You can ask him which animal goes with each letter of the alphabet and especially loves that N is for Northern Spotted Owl and will inject Northern Spotted Owl before other words such as T is for Tide Pool (T is for Northern Spotted Owl Tide Pool) and X is for Xerophylum Tenax (X is for Northern Spotted Owl Tenax). He also loves the pages where he can count the owls and sea otters. He loves to say that owls eat mice and sea otters eat sea shells. He learned about owls eating mice from a zoo worker who was giving a little presentation while he was at the zoo with his grandparents this weekend. I hear he thought this was the funniest thing ever and laughed about it.

February 2010

Wow. It's been a really long time since I've blogged. There is so much to update, I hardly know where to start.

Firstly, I will be 33 weeks pregnant next Tuesday. I can't believe how fast this pregnancy has gone, and it is starting to dawn on me that this will probably be the last time I will have this experience. Each little kick and movement is starting to become more and more precious as we get ready to welcome this little person into our lives.

This pregnancy is so much different than William's. No gestational diabetes, no pre-term labor, no abnormal Quad Screen results, no bed rest and most surprisingly; no low AFI. The AFI has been measured as high as 14.5 with 10-20 being the normal range. I don't thing we ever even reached 10 with William. This time around I have a few different aches and pains and complaints. I've got the same rib pain as last time, but my pelvis is much looser and sorer this time around which makes running after a very speedy 2 year old especially tiring and challenging. He is so fast and I am so slow that I literally cannot catch up with him if he doesn't want me to. How sad is that? This laxity in my pelvis caused the waddle to begin much sooner too. But, I'm mainly writing this down for posterity, not to complain. I feel very blessed to have a healthy pregnancy this time around. The baby is growing well and all ultrasounds have indicated that he is a healthy and happy baby boy.

This weekend, Andrew's parents are watching William so we took advantage of our freedom and did lots of things that are near impossible to do with a toddler. We saw The Blind Side, went out to breakfast, lunch and dinner and shopped. I am so glad that we were able to roam around at our own pace without feeling guilty that I should be in bed on bed rest as was the case last time around. William had a great time at the zoo and museum of flight and even got to hang out with his cousin Maya.

William is talking like crazy now a days. I don't even know where to begin in describing his language skills. He tells jokes, makes up stories and figures out things to say that he hasn't even heard us say before. He is starting to form his own identity and likes to be a "funny boy" and tell jokes about how "Daddy kissed the mailman", "The mailman kissed the milk baba", when Mommies have babies they "push the baby out of tummy like owie poo poo". Although, I think he may be a little confused about the whole childbirth process because on a few occasions he has said that he has a Baby Owen in his tummy that he is going to push out of his tummy. He has also asked to listen to the baby in his tummy with my doppler.

So, we shall see how much of this whole new baby situation he is really grasping. We read him books and show him ultrasound photos and he looks at them and says they are pictures of Baby Owen.

These are 3D u/s photos taken at 31 weeks.

After looking at them for a while it became clear how much this baby seems to look like William did when he was first born. Here are a couple photos of Will at birth for comparison.

Uncanny, eh?!

September 09

We recently announced that we are expecting a second child in April 2010! Yay! It's been a challenging past few weeks with all the symptoms that go along with the first trimester for me; lots of all day nausea, tiredness, weakness, dizzyness etc. Fortunately, the end of the first trimester is in sight with the promise of resolving most of my complaints.

William has been picking up new words to add to his vocabulary everyday. He is becoming rather good at saying most of the letters of the alphabet and identifying some letters and numbers. (He can i.d. A, B, C, D, F, I, M, N, O, P and 8 and 9.) He is starting to put three words together to get his point across. (ex: No Baba (milk)? splays hands in gesture that he is missing something, Mama Baba Yay! and claps hands = I don't have milk, mama please get me milk and I'll be so happy.) When he wants us he says, Mama Yay!, Dada Yay! and claps his hands. He often says "Papa Car or Papa boat" lately. I think the day his Papa revved the Morgan's engine left an impression on him and he definitely remembers going out on the row boat with Papa and Dada.

Some of his favorite words are: ball, boat, car, truck, Mama, Dada, Papa, up, baba, nana (blanket), go, no, ahaa (yes), hmm, wow, vroom, whale, book, more, please, eye, nose, knee, bee, baby, woof woof, animal noises, letters, etc.

He loves to play the stop and go game.

He loves to pretend to put his animals to bed at night with Daddy. They kiss and tuck each one in with his blankets and he lays down next to them and happily goes to sleep without screaming when Andrew leaves the room. He will even make a snoring noise to pretend that they are sleeping. It doesn't work as well when I do it, he tends to scream when I leave, but it's only for a minute or two. Bedtime is so much better now that he and his daddy have their storybook routine.

He is starting to like coloring and hardly ever eats crayons anymore. He doesn't really like doing art projects at school. He has two school programs that he goes to on Wednesdays and Thursdays. One where he is dropped off at gymnastics and has a 2.5 hour day and a second where I go with him to Encompass for a couple hours. He seems to be getting used to and even enjoying the gymnastics program and is getting the hang of the routine at Encompass.

Long time, no blogging

Sorry, it's been a while since I last posted. I think it's because I've been somewhat concerned about William's lack of new language over the last couple of months. I tend to use this blog to record William's milestones and new achievements, so I have a central place where I keep all this information. It was hard watching all of his girlfriends bursting with language while he just kept saying his same old words (ball, truck, car, mama, dada, baba, and animal and vehicle noises). I tried pretty hard not to worry, but eventually it got the best of me and I called Encompass for a speech evaluation. Now that I have that evaluation scheduled, it seems he is coming up with tons of new words each day.

Yesterday, was the first real day that he started saying words we suggested he repeat. It all happened while William was looking at the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Andrew pointed out the fruits and Andrew asked William to say Pear, Apple, Banana and Caterpillar and he did it!! It was one of the happiest and most exciting moments of my life. I can't even tell you the relief I felt. I tend to have a hard time imagining William doing anything he hasn't done before and this was no exception. Never before and never again, will the word "pear" sound quite as exquisite and beautiful as it did coming from his little lips. The sound of his voice, just like the sound of his laugh is like nothing I've ever treasured before. It's intense, this maternal love.

Yesterday was a great day altogether. We went to a big get-together with Autumn and her friends and family at their house on Camano Island. I got to learn how to make perfect pie crust from scratch with my personal chef teacher (Autumn's brother) Brent. William got to hang out with a ton of little boys aged 2 mos to 9 years old. He finally learned how to kick a soccer ball-which is what inspired the plethora of photos we shot and posted today. He got to play in a boat, run all around their huge property and play on the beach. It was a great day. One that I will never forget because it was the first time he repeated new words!!!

Other photos from Vermont Trip July 2009

visit to Vermont Teddy Bear Factory

swimming at Top Notch Resort in Stowe, VT

hot tubbing at AI's house in VT

William's first visit to Friendly's in Burlington, VT

Visit with Holly and her parents on Crystal Lake

William LOVED riding on the boat. He smiled and smiled and laughed and pointed at boats going by. He was so at home and comfortable on the boat. When we pulled into the dock and started to get off, he screamed and yelled and signed "more" frantically. I had to carry him kicking and screaming back to the house because he wanted to be there on that boat. Whenever he was given a chance, he would make a run for the dock so that he could try to climb onto the boat.

I'm thinking we have a real water activities lover in William. He LOVED swimming in the pool too. He seemed to think he could swim on his own and would try to take off while he was in my arms. The whole time he was in the water (regardless of how cold it seemed to Mommy), he laughed and splashed around joyously. I'm thinking swimming lessons are in order ASAP.

William loves climbing into boxes and wouldn't think of leaving his blanket behind.

bathing in sinks is fun!!

Daddy is holding on super tight to his little boat lover.

Holly and her super awesome Dad, Andy Treiber.

Holly's Dad let William "drive" the boat!

video of William on boat