A Boy and His Blog

Owen had his two year check up on the 19th of June.  All was well.  He saw a new doctor, because his old one went to a different clinic.  He wont have to be seen again until he is three.  He does have to get two more shots though, so we will still need to go in for those.

Weight:  24 pounds 10th percentile

Height:   33 1/2 inches 25th percentile

Head Circumference: ?  50 – 75th percentile

The following are some recent funny stories about Owenowski;

Daddy was giving Owen a bath.  Owen was being cranky and didn’t want to be in the tub.  Daddy said “can you wash your arms?”  Owen said “uh-ah!” (meaning ‘no’), and gave Daddy a dirty look.  Daddy said “can you wash your legs? “  Owen said “uh-ah!”  Daddy said, “can you wash your tummy?”  Owen said, “uh-ah!”  Daddy said, “can you wash your penis?”  Owen gave Daddy a dirty look, grabbed the wash cloth, and very begrudgingly washed his penis.  I guess some things are just impossible to say no to.

Owen has been loving Daddy a lot lately.  One day Mama let him wait on the stairs outside for Daddy to come home from work, and now Owen thinks that Daddy will come home if he just goes and sits out on the stairs.  All day long he asks to go sit out on the stairs.  When Daddy does come home, Owen wont leave him alone for one second.  One day Owen was just hugging Daddy for about 15 minutes after he came home from work.  Mama was starting to get a little jealous, so at dinner time she asked Owen, “who is your favorite, Mama or Daddy?”  Owen said “MaDa!” and then started laughing.  I guess he’s a little diplomat.

Owen was eating toast in his bumbo seat at the table.  I heard him say “roar, mama, roar”.  So I turned to look and he held up his piece of half eaten toast to me and said, “rooooaaaaarrrrrrrr”.  He was right, his piece of toast looked exactly like a dinosaur!  I don’t think he chewed it into that shape, but he saw the dinosaur in it once he happened to eat the shape into the toast.

When I change Owen’s diaper he points to his penis.  I say “yes, Owen has a penis”.  Then he says, “Deeda”.  I say “yes, Daddy has a penis too, Owen and Daddy have a penis because they are boys.”  Then he says “Mama”.  I say, “Mama has a vulva, because Mama is a girl and girls have vulvas.”  Then he makes an “L” with his hand, which means “Cousin Lyric” and I say “Yes, cousin Lyric has a vulva too.”  These are the only people he has ever seen naked, which is why I think he uses us all as examples of the differences between boys and girls.

Owen brings me his cowboy boots now whenever I say “go get your shoes”.  He wanted to go outside and wait for Daddy, and since this time it actually was around the time Daddy was due to come home, I agreed to it.  I dressed him in shorts and a t-shirt because it was hot out.  Then he brought me his cowboy boots.  I tried convincing him to wear his crocks, but he was not agreeable to that option, so cowboy boots it was.  We sat and waited for Daddy, and then after Daddy came home Mama and Daddy began doing some work around the yard while Owen was playing around us.  Daddy was in the backyard and I was in the front yard.  Owen was with Daddy in the back, but then Daddy came to tell me something.  I went to the backyard to check up on Owen and he was just standing in the middle of the pool with his cowboy boots on.  It took them two days to dry out.

Daddy and I were working in the garden.  Owen wandered over to the neighbors house to play on their playground.  Daddy was facing the neighbors house, so it was assumed he was keeping an eye on Owen by Mama, but that was a faulty assumption as it turns out.  Suddenly I popped up my head and said “where’s Owen?”  Not for any particular reason, just because he sounded very far off in the distance.  He had been saying “eee, eee” very loudly and emphatically, but now I could barely hear him at all.  Daddy nonchalantly said “I don’t know” and continued weeding.  I jumped up and walked to the play ground at the neighbors yard and started to call for Owen.  I couldn’t see him anywhere.  In the far distance I could hear a very faint “eeee, eeeee, eeeee”, which is Owen saying “wee” which means “playground” in Owen language.  Daddy said that I should check the front yard, but I said “no, I hear him over here” and I started crossing the neighbors yard towards the street that intersects the one we live on (their yard faces the other street and backs up to the side of our house).  Daddy wasn’t too sure, and so he got up himself to check the front yard.  I kept yelling, “Owen, Owen, Owen” and every so often I would hear the faint “eeee, eeee, eeee” in return.  Finally, after what seemed like forever, I crossed the neighbors yard and came to the sidewalk.  I walked out onto the sidewalk and looked down the street.  About another house distance away, there was Owen, walking down the sidewalk towards the playground that is across the street in the Church’s yard.  As soon as he saw me he started pointing and saying “eee, eee”, as if I didn’t know what he wanted by this point.  I was glad he didn’t go into the street, but not too happy that he had wandered out of the yard and totally out of our site.  Daddy came over just then and brought Owen to the playground, which maybe wasn’t the best way to show Owen that he can’t wander away from us, but he DID tell us where he was going, we were just too busy to pay attention!  And he DIDN’T cross the street, which I was grateful for since cars and motorcycles constantly buzz past our house.  I wish we had a fence!

On the 14th of June Owen turned 25 months old.  This month has been very fun for us.  Owen is cute and funny and sweet.  Like in the picture above, Owen has discovered dressing himself.  He doesn’t actually put the clothes on himself, but he will insist on wearing certain items at times.  He is very particular about shoes, and has been known to make us put on one pair, and then bring us another pair and make us change them right away.  He is especially fond of wearing his cowboy boots, even in the hot summer, even if he’s just going to play outside.

We had Owen’s pictures taken at a photo studio this month, for his two year portraits.  They turned out so cute that we spent way too much money on them.  It seems the photo studio agreed with us as they printed out, framed, and hung a photo of Owen up in their Mall studio right in the window so everyone can see it when they walk by.

Owen is so funny with giving kisses.  He doesn’t like to kiss right on the lips, he never has, if you say “gimme a kiss” he offers his cheek!  So, Daddy came up with the great idea of eskimo kisses (rubbing noses), and for awhile, every time one us left, he would point to his nose so we would give him an eskimo kiss.  Well, if it is someone he feels really close too, now he will also point to his mouth, because he also wants a mouth kiss.  Then one day, after Grammie went through the routine of “nose kiss”, and then “mouth kiss”, he pointed to his eye!  So Grammie fluttered here eyelashes up against Owen’s eye, which we now call an “eye kiss”.  For a couple weeks, he was satisfied with mouth kiss, nose kiss, and eye kiss, but then he added “ear kiss”, which is just us putting our ear up against his ear.  One ear kiss is not enough, he insists on both ears being kissed.  And finally he has added “head kiss” which means we have to lightly bump heads too.  So, we look like weirdo’s when we kiss him goodbye, because we have to do; nose kiss, eye kiss, mouth kiss, head kiss, ear kiss, and then other ear kiss.  It’s like our family’s secret handshake of kisses.  The things that kid comes up with are so funny.

Also, we have been watching repeats of The Addams family.  Owen loves the beginning song, with the snapping of the fingers.  He opens and closes his fingers to try to snap.  If we are downstairs he “snaps” and points to the TV so that we will show him The Addams Family.  Sometimes he sees the new M & M commercial with M & M’s Addams, and he loves to watch that too.  One day we were watching a movie on TV while Daddy was working overtime, and someone in the movie mentioned the Addams Family.  Owen laughed and looked at the TV and “snapped”.  I had no idea that he even knew what the show was called, I thought he just recognized it when he heard the song, but nope, he recognizes the name “Addams Family”!  His receptive language never ceases to amaze me.  He is way above average with receptive language, it’s just expressive language that needs a little work with him.

Speaking of language, his speech is going fine, he is picking up words and signs and inventing new signs all the time.  His cranio-sacral therapy is going really well too.  We are starting to see big improvements with his anxiety levels, his sleeping, and his speech.  One concern is that his cranio-sacral therapist noticed that he is walking on tippy toes a lot.  So we immediately incorporated some foot massages into his routine too deal with that.  That is a sensory issue I believe, and is very common with autism spectrum disorders.  Owen is definitely not on the autism spectrum, but he does have a few questionable sensory issues that we need to take care of now.  Of course, Daddy has a few questionable sensory issues too, and so does Mama, so maybe it is just inherited.

Owen now calls himself “boy”.  He learned it from his signing video, where they sing “I’m a boy!” and “I’m a girl” along with the signs for boy and girl.  Owen says “boo-ey” for boy and he calls himself that as if it’s his name.  It’s like we are Tarzan, Jane, and Boy, except we are “Deeda, Mama, and Boo-ey”.  He calls other little boys “boo-ey” too, and he does the “L” sign for little girls or babies, because that is how he says “Cousin Lyric”, who of course is a girl and he seems to think she is still a baby even though she is fifteen months old and chasing after him now.  He says “boo-ey” if he wants something, or he wants to tell us that something belongs to him, or if he wants to tell us that he wants to do it himself.  It’s his word to assert his independence.  He also says “Uh-oh” finally, but he pronounces it “uh-ooey”.  And he says owey too, but pronounces it “Oo-ooey”.

Owen is totally in love with “Deeda” this month.  He starts asking for him from the moment we get up in the morning until Daddy comes home.  One day I let him sit on the stairs outside and wait for Daddy to come home, so now at random times during the day Owen wants to go outside and sit on the stairs because he things Daddy will come home if he does.  He says “Deeda, eeeee, baba”, which of course means, “Daddy is coming home and he is going to bring me to the park and play with balls on the slid with me.”  Or is that just obvious   As soon as Daddy gets home, Owen cocks his head to the side and looks intensely at Daddy and starts saying “eeeeee”, “baba”, “eeeeee” so that Daddy will immediately bring him to the park.  And Daddy of course does it, because Daddy does everything that Owen tells him to do.

Anyway, everything is going really well overall this month.  Owen is getting bigger and more self sufficient.  He is very busy this summer and totally loves spending time outside.  He loves playing in water, playing in his sandbox, and helping us with whatever we are doing outdoors.  He is obsessed with balls and insists on taking them with him everywhere he goes.  It is not uncommon for him to have up to three in his hands at all times.  He likes to boss the cats around, and he continues to enjoy bossing us around as well.  He loves to laugh, and believes that everything is a joke.  He makes jokes at every opportunity.

And I will end with one funny story.  The other night I was nursing Owen in the rocking chair in our bedroom in preparation for bed time.  Owen tooted, and I said “oh, Owen tooted, stinky!”  And then I said “stinky, stinky, stinky” with a hand gesture as we often do, which Owen usually thinks is very funny.  This time Owen wasn’t so amused.  He gave me a look and said “uh-huh, Deeda”.  I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I said “Daddy is downstairs”.  Then he made himself more clear and said “Deeda” and then signed “stinky, stinky, stinky”.  I said, “oh, did Daddy toot?”  He then laughed and said “ahhhh” like does when we have finally figured out what he was trying to say.  Ever since, Owen has been blaming his toots on Deeda or Mama.

We had Owen’s birthday party on the 13th of May.  His birthday was the 14th, but that was a Monday, so we had it on Sunday, which was also Mother’s Day!

We told Owen weeks before what a birthday party was, and what would happen there, and how to blow out his candles.  He practiced blowing out his candles often, and whenever I mentioned birthdays he would blow into the air.

As the big day approached, I talked to him more and more about it, reminding him that there would be presents, and a cake with candles, and we would sing “Happy Birthday” and then he could blow out his candles.  He just stared blankly as I described this, and then when I got to the candle part he would blow into the air.  I didn’t know if I was getting through to him or not.

Then, the day before the party, I told him that tomorrow would be his birthday party and I told him who would be there.  I went through the list of names, all people he knew well, and listened as I rattled them off.  Then he looked concerned and said “Deeda?”  I said, “oh, yes, of course, Daddy will be there too, and Mama”.  I just thought that was a given, but I guess I need to specify.

That day I put Owen down for a nap, and I told him it was his party today and when he woke up everyone would be here.  And when he woke up, Uncle Mike and Aunt Diane had already arrived.  Our other guests arrived shortly afterward.  Grampy and Grammie, Aunt Berta and Cousin Lyric, and Gege (Great-Grandma).

I was very proud of Owen, he acted very polite and grown up the whole time.  We all sat in the living room and his presents were piled on a table near him.  Owen nicely asked me if he could open them by pointing at them and cocking his head to the side and making a soft questioning noise.  We all agreed that it was his party, and if he wanted to open his presents now then that was perfectly fine.

He got a lego Thomas the Train, and Diego set.  He got a motorcycle that really drives around, and an outfit.  He got puzzles, and a pad of paper and crayons.  He got a real acoustic guitar.  And he got a turtle sandbox!  We bought him a microphone (for his speech), a teddy bear, a toy that has four balls that get hammered through a see through tunnel and then fall back out the bottom, which we promptly lost the yellow ball to, and also, coincidentally, sand toys (we didn’t know about the sand box).

Owen loved opening the first few items, but then got tired of it, so Mama had to help for the rest of the things.  We then ate dinner, and Owen sat like a perfect little gentleman at the dinning room table and ate.  Then he stayed put, knowing what was coming next.

I then brought the cake out while Daddy video taped and Grammie took pictures.  We sang “Happy Birthday” and Owen sat there smiling shyly.  Then I set the cake in front of him and we all prompted him to blow out the candles.  He tried once, but they did not go out.  He tried again, but they did not go out.  So then he tried a third time and this time Mama helped a little and they went out!  Owen then signed “again” because he wanted to blow the candles out again.  I told him it was time to eat cake, and that satisfied him enough.

He then sat and ate cake and enjoyed being the center of attention.  After cake we all went and sat outside.  Owen and Cousin Lyric played in the sandbox and the rest of us sat and talked.  Grampy played a little t-ball with the younglings, and then we called it a day.

It was a very good day, and a great experience for Owen.  He was perfectly behaved, and he had so much fun that day.  It made us so happy that we can now celebrate his birthday with him, and see how happy it makes him to be honored for a day.

His actual birthday was the next day, the 14th, and we did special things that day too.  We brought him to the Mall’s amusement park, and we measured him on his board, and we took pictures of him in his man’s shirt.  I will post pictures of that day soon.