No Captions Necessary

Just cute pics..

Highlights Reel

So, I am way behind on keeping Owen's reading public up to speed on all his developments. But, cast no aspersions on me, the poor mother, who is suffering from terrible insomnia, and raising a spitfire of a boy who wakes up at 5am and now only takes one 1 hour nap. Yes, you read correctly..5 am..one 60 minute nap. That means that the boy and I are fortunate enough to have approximately 13 hours of together time everyday. This does not leave much time for the blog. So, here is a highlights reel to show what we have been up to lately. You will see pics from..

* John's parent's visit - we had a lovely time visiting and taking advantage of such willing babysitters. I had a massage, John and I went on a date, and Owen ate up all the attention.

* Ken's visit - John's great friend from college, who now lives in Sweden, spent the week with us before he and John jetted of to San Fran for the wedding of their other good friend, Landon. Poor Ken may have been is worse shape than us since he was jet-lagged and Owen-lagged.

* My mom's 18 hour visit - My mom and Nelson stopped in for a night on their way back from Canada. They came at just the right moment, as Owen and I had had two days on our own without John and were a bit desperate for a break.

* Some other Owen highlights - Owen is now saying "nana" for banana or any fruit in general, "ba" for ball, "bu" for book, and "mampa" for the entity that is his mama and papa.

* John and I both had hamburgers this past Saturday. Yes, hamburgers (John even had bacon.) The first in oh, say, 10 years. I am seeing an acupuncturist/chinese herbalist for the insomnia, who explained to me that, after growing and nursing a child, my heart is deficient and is incapable of providing a comfortable home for my blood or life spirit to rest in each night. He went on to say that what I need most to heal my heart are 1)acupuncture, 2)tuning fork treatments, 3) Flowery Knotweed, and 4) a big fat steak twice a week to begin. So, I did it. Did I sleep? No, but I already have my next medicinal burger place staked (ha ha) out.

* Owen may or may not be the victim of hand-foot-and-mouth disease (not the be confused with hoof and mouth.) But this is much better than a twisted bowel, which is what the doctor was worried he had. How do we know it's not? Oh, because we had to take him to Children's Hospital where they strapped his head, body, and legs down to a board (John had to restrain his arms), rotated him sideways, pulled a tunnel-like camera over his body, and asked me to get him to drink a barium shake out of a straw while he was suspended in this position and cryong hysterically. Needless to say, he FLIPPED out and John and I, well, I don't know what we were, we still haven't quite recovered. It was the longest 30 minutes of my life. But, his little bowel is just where it needs to be, thank goodness.

How Greenbeans Are Like Babies...

So, I just spent the last 20 minutes writing a humorous, though poignant meditation (I can say that because you will never know that it was maybe just mildly interesting) on how the growing of green beans is similar to that of raising Owen and with one swift key stroke, the whole thing disappeared. I'm sure there is another analogy to draw there, but I am too distraught to find it. Sigh. Anyway, we are coming off of three weeks of visitors and I will put pics up from those adventures, but here are some of Owen in the garden and today's harvest of greenbeans (we had just as many from yesterday!)

Happy Birthday Mr. Nellie!

Oh my gosh, you are how old,
Mr. Nellie?Here is a tribute to Mr. Nellie, Owen's grandpa who we are so happy to have in our family. Owen obviously shares a passion for blackberries with Mr. Nellie, who has been known to hop a fence for a few juicy gems.

Happy Birthday, Nelson! We love you!

Happy Birthday Auntie Erin!

I tried to get Owen to hold this little sign (it says Happy Birthday Auntie Erin, I swear!)
But he kept tossing it aside. He knows a sign is no substitute for wishing you a happy birthday in person!

Happy Birthday, Erin! We love you!

Marnie and Auntie Erin Visit

The stars and planets aligned the previous weekend to allow both my mom and sister to come visit the favoritest member of the family, Mr. Owen Joseph. They watched him weeble and wobble all over the house and exclaimed for joy when he let them hold him for more than 35 seconds. Owen was so thrilled with all the attention that he started every morning around 4:30 am, which, fortunately for them, was really 6:30, but for me and John it was very definitely 4:30. Sleep deprivation was nipping at our heels once again and John and I both lost our heads and used the f-word in front of my mom on two separate occasions. Apparently she only heard it out of my mouth, of course, but I ratted John out, so we both got our mouths washed out with soap.

I love the pictures we took from their visit, as not a single one turned out because Owen was moving so fast. I just heard that Michael Phelps was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age and believes that swimming gave him focus and skills for living with attention deficit. If that is the case, look for Owen to make a clean sweep of gold medals in, oh I don't know, all track and field events in upcoming Olympic Games.

FrankenOwen

I know I should have something meaningful to say about this momentous film clip, but Owen is doing some crazy sleep stuff again and my brain is just too sluggish to absorb the import of his development.