Owen - 21 Months Old

Owen turned 21 months last Thursday. It's amazing the changes we continue to see just in a month's time. The time just flies by. Two years ago at this time we were at our lovely baby shower for him in Austin. Now he's closing in on 2 years and we're about to add a sister. By our blog for 22 months we'll have had Abby for a few weeks - it will be interesting to see what Owen stories we have then! We're pretty sure that he's going to call the baby "Abby's Room" for a while at first. If you ask him what's in mama's belly, he'll say "baby sister." And if you ask him what her name is he'll say "Abby's Room." I guess decorating and getting that room ready made an impression.

His class had hand-foot-mouth disease this month. Owen oddly got some bumps on his hands, but no where else and no fever. So our doctor did not think he had it - thank goodness! Unfortunately he's also teething at the moment. All 4 canines and possible a back molar. So during the hand-foot-mouth time it was a little tough to tell if any "symptoms" he was having had to do with teething or getting the virus. He's finally had one of the canines pop through (giving him 13 teeth total so far). Just waiting on the rest at this point.

He's starting to be more interested in TV which we try to limit. His favorite show continues to be Elmo (just the Elmo's World part of Sesame Street). But now he loves to watch the movie Cars and has added the Bob the Builder show to his list of requests (he calls it Bob, bob, bob, der, der). He has also started singing a lot. He has his favorite songs (The Wheels on the Bus which he calls the school bus song, and EIO which he calls the tractor song, and the Alphabet song which he calls "ABC"). He only hits the main words. For example in the school bus song, when we get to the "all around the town" part he sings "all" and "town."

Our little man is getting pretty bossy. He loves to tell his little friends at school to "walk away." This can mean anything from, move so I can see the book to get away from my toys. He'll grab us by the hands and tell us to "get up" so that we can go "run around." He is learning the concepts of "mine" and "my turn." He'll share turns sort of. For example, if I ask if he wants to close the garage door (push the button) he'll say "Mama's turn" but as soon as I reach for the button he says "my turn" or "Owen's turn" and then he gets to go. So other people's turns last about 2 seconds.

He has created a whole list of stalling techniques that he runs through regularly. Robbie currently does his bedtime, and Owen will ask to "Mama, kiss" multiple times cause he knows I'm a sucker for any attention (he's still such a Daddy's boy that I'll take anything I can get). We also suspect that he can poo on command to stall bedtime. Robbie's had evenings where he's changed Owen's diaper 3 times before getting him down. At meal time, if he's not interested in what we're feeding him he'd rather get down. But he knows he has to wait until we're all done with dinner. So he'll ask to "clean up" which is the last thing we do before getting him out of his chair. You know he's desparte when he's requesting diaper changes and hand/face washing.

We continue to be impressed by his language skills. He's putting together some decently complicated 5-7 word sentences. All time spent with him is running commentary - stream-of-consciousness. He's really got his shapes down - circle, square, rectangle, triangle, star, oval, and recently added his new favorite of octagon. He knows stop signs are octagons (loves to point them out) but will identify most any random octagon that he sees (not that there's tons of that shape out there).

Owen continues to be our little ham. He loves to make people laugh. If you ask him what you do when you're happy, he does this hilarious little fake laugh. He's also started "smiling" for the camera (see all the pics below). He also loves to tell us "Owen funny" when he thinks he's being very funny. We actually do find it pretty funny. :)