1 Year Old!!

To my dear, sweet Owen,

You truly are such a joy in our lives. I can not believe how quickly a year has passed for us and how happy you have made us. You have been, without a doubt, the easiest baby from the second we brought you home from the hospital. A lot of people credit it to our easy going personalities, but I think it's just because you didn't want to scare us off too badly from having more kids. :)

At 12 months, you are a ball of FUN. You are an attention stealer. You fear NO ONE. A complete stranger can hold out their arms to you and you will go in for a hug and let them hold you. Occasionally you get a little shy and hide yourself behind me and I love it. I ADORE shy Owen. It makes me laugh so hard because you are far from shy. You smile at anything and anyone and love to laugh. You think dogs are hilarious and you can mimic our emotions. I figured out one day that if I pretended to cry, you would copy me. You don't just kind of whimper…you FULL ON CRY with giant tears. I've showed a few people the trick and they think I need to get you an agent. I kind of agree. It's the funniest, yet saddest thing anyone has ever seen. What kid cries on cue?? Seriously!!

Photoshoots are hard with you these days. You are CONSTANTLY moving around. You are ALL boy in that respect. You just never slow down. I have to be quick about catching a picture or find some distraction for you or we can forget about getting a good picture of you. 

You have 2 bottom teeth. They came in within 2 weeks of each other. You didn't skip a beat when they popped, which is just another example of what an easy going baby you are. Your way of getting through teething is sleeping. You take 3-4 hour naps right before you cut a tooth. No crying, no crankiness…nothing. Just sleep. Can we ask for anything more?

You eat like a rock star. I am still feeding you pureed foods that I make for meals, but you eat a LOT. I should probably attempt to feed you our normal table food, but it's hard to get us sitting down for dinner at an acceptable time to feed you. So you wind up eating the baby food I make you. It's probably a good thing because you are very sensitive to texture. If that baby food isn't pureed to the exact texture you like, you will spit it out or gag. Ridiculous. You won't try anything we are eating unless you see us actually eating. It's like you think we poison the food and you have to watch us try it first. I don't know why you think we'd feed you anything you wouldn't like!! 

Right before your birthday, I completely weaned you from breast feeding. It was bitter sweet for me. Your Dad was impressed I made it this long. I knew I always wanted to try to do it until you were a year and I am glad I did. I didn't have any nursing issues (no infections or bad blocks) with it at all and am glad we had that long of a stretch to bond. I will never forget the nights I got to feed you and rock you to sleep. Those were our special moments and I will cherish them forever. You are now strictly on formula and whole milk. You didn't seem to notice the whole milk in your formula, but it's a work in progress on the full transition. You are so easy going that you didn't even blink when I got rid of your bottles. You only use sippy cups now and it doesn't phase you at all. You seem to like them a whole lot actually! You like to take big gulps and pop the it out of your mouth and shake it like you've seen me shake them. You smile and laugh when you do this. Thank goodness for leakproof sippy cups!

Your vocabulary is still the same. You say Dada, Daddy, Baba, bye bye, Mama and have picked up na-na, which is your way of saying no. You only really say Mama when you are upset, cranky or crying. You scream Daddy really loud to Daddy and anyone else you see. But you know who Mama is and I love it. We have tried to teach you hand gestures and sign language, but you get frustrated when I try to force your hands in certain ways. I think it's your way of telling me you do things on your own time. You love to shake your head and say na-na. You think it's hilarious. You will push things away and shake your head if you don't like something. I had no idea babies could verbalize NO so early on, but you sure as heck can! If we ask you to say no, you will very excitedly shake your head. It is hilarious and we will probably regret laughing about it later on!

You take 2 naps a day still. I have tried to cut it back to one long nap, but you are just not a morning person. It takes you 5 seconds to fall asleep when we put you down for that morning nap barely even 2 hours after you wake up from a 12+ hour night. If we could push that morning nap back another hour or two, we could probably cut your naps to just one, but I don't think we are quite there yet. On good days you will sleep for almost 3 hours for one of the naps. On bad days, you only give us about an hour for each. You still consistently sleep through the night with zero issues. We put you down between 7:30 and 8 and you sleep until almost 7 every morning. On lucky days, you sometimes sleep until 8 or 8:30 and it makes us feel like a million bucks. Thank you for those mornings!!

You are cruising around like crazy now. You can pull up on anything and claw your way to anything you want. We have to be careful of your strike zone now whenever we are out and about. You are so quick and we need to work on our reflexes. Poor Hurley hates that you can get into his personal space on the couch now, but you think it's hilarious when you wake him up. I think you will be walking before the end of the year if you want to. I always hear that boys will do things on their own time, so I'm not in a rush to have you do anything. I know you will surprise us overnight. 

You are in 12-18 month clothes and size 3 diapers during the day and 4's at night to cover your long stretch of sleep. You love bath time like it's Christmas morning. You squeal when you see the water being drawn and you are all smiles even when we are pouring water over your head. I keep telling everyone we have a swimmer in our family because of this. 

You are OBSESSED with balloons. When you see a balloon, you will hold out your arms and start to flap them and hyperventilate. Literally. We have never seen a baby get so excited about a balloon. You got a punch balloon in a party goodie bag awhile back ago and played with that thing for weeks until it deflated. I found 4 more at Walmart for 99 cents and you love them. You literally will hold onto a balloon and crawl around with it holding it tightly in your hand and never letting it go. Great pincher grasp practice!! 

You can climb stairs. You scared your nanny, Brooke half to death because I forgot to tell her you can do that. She was making you lunch and turned around and couldn't find you. Come to find out, you were going up the stairs. Opps. Mommy should have warned her. We now have to make sure you are not near them so you won't go all the way up. At the top of the stairs is your baby gate. You love to pull up on it and look down. I like to play peek a boo with you from downstairs. It is your favorite game. You squeal and laugh so hard. I guess that's why you figured out how to go up stairs. You wanted to get to that baby gate! 

Owen, you are the most amazing baby any parent could ever ask for. This year has flown by, but it has been the happiest we have ever been. We love being a family of three and soak in every second we get together alone. We love seeing your smiling face first thing in the morning and it erases all the thoughts of exhaustion and stress from our every day lives. We can not wait to watch you grow up and learn new things every day. Thank you for bringing so much joy to our lives.

Owen's Birthday Party!

On October 20th, we had Owen's first birthday party! What made the weekend even more special was having some out of town guests here for the weekend. One of my best friends from college, Maggie and her husband came into town for a visit. And on the day of the party, another one of my friends from college, Lauren and her husband and her 1 year old son, Henry also came into town. It was SO much fun to have some of my dear friends I met at UT to come to Owen's LONGHORN themed birthday party!! If it weren't for their help, I probably would not have been able to get everything ready in time for the party!!

We had all of our close friends we've made in NC come to the party and Owen had a blast. He had the cutest jersey on that had a number 1 on it (courtesy of his friend Kasion) and was just in awe of all his friends! It really is funny how much changes in a year. A year ago, not many of our friends had kids and at Owen's birthday party, we had several little ones! 

Owen was spoiled beyond words. He got so many toys that I think he was totally overwhelmed. He is definitely all BOY because he was OBSESSED with the balls and cars he received for his birthday. I think he is set for years on toys!! In the midst of the craziness of the party, I totally forgot to take pictures of the set up of everything. I made a ton of cute decorations and didn't get ONE picture. How awful! BUT…I did document Owen disliking his smash cake. I should probably note that Owen rarely ever gets dirty. He kind of hates it. In fact, when he gets anything on his hands while he eats, he will hold it up for me to wipe off. So, smashing into his cake was NOT fun for him. He made a face of disgust the entire time he was exploring the cake. He actually cried to get down from his highchair because he didn't want any of it! It was pretty funny! 

Thank you to al of our friends for sharing our little man's first birthday with us. We are so blessed to have such amazing friends.

First Professional Haircut!!

Owen was born with a FULL head of hair. I had very little hair for a long time as a baby, so he MUST get this trait from his Dad. I've cut his hair once and botched it pretty badly and vowed never to try it again. So on October 10th, I decided it was TIME to get Owen a haircut! His hair was coming over his ears and his bangs were getting WAY too long. He was ALSO getting mistaken for a girl more than I care to have happen. SO…it was time…and I didn't want to screw it up. There is this place called Peek A Do near our house that does haircuts JUST for young children. I am SERIOUSLY in the wrong business because their haircuts there were pricier than my haircuts (though I don't get the best haircuts to begin with)!! We still decided to go through with it though. Their baby seats were cars so that the kids could play and stay distracted from the scissors and razors that were grazing their face. Owen acted like it was his 100th haircut. He sat in that car, leaned into the steering wheel and stared at the tv straight in front of him. I'm definitely partly to blame for that because the kid LOVES tv. It's the only way I occupy him by myself in the morning while I get ready for work in the morning. You gotta do, what you gotta do!! Anyways, he handled the whole experience like a champ and looked SOOOO cute afterwards! I was so proud! He looked like such a big boy afterwards!!

Charleston

The day after Owen popped his first tooth, we had a planned road trip to Charleston. In retrospect, that was probably not the smartest thing to do, but we really needed the vacation. My old co-worker lives in Charleston and has a 20 month old and offered to let us stay with them. It was too good to pass up because it meant we wouldn't need to stay stuck in a hotel room with Owen while he slept.

The few days leading up to the trip, Tommy had his worst stretch of hours at work. He was BARELY home and I was actually contemplating not going on our road trip. We were both so exhausted and I just wasn't sure we were up for it. We had been really wanting to visit, so we drank lots of coffee and got on the road on Friday, October 5th. Owen did great on the car ride down. We timed it right during his nap and he slept for 2.5 hours of the ride down. It was great! By the time he woke up, we were close enough that he didn't mind being in his car seat! Success!!

The rest of the trip was a little bit of the blur after Friday. We realized quickly that Owen is at a point where he doesn't like to sleep in unfamiliar places. He was NOT liking sleeping in a pack and play. On top of that, he HATED not being on his normal nap schedule. He didn't know how to function not getting his morning nap and has never fallen asleep in his stroller, so he was one sleep deprived baby. So needless to say, the exploring on Saturday was rough on our little man. We loved seeing the city and having our friends as tour guides was incredible. Prior to this road trip, Owen had always been an easy traveler, but this kind of put things in perspective for us and taught us a really good lesson - don't mess with this kid's nap schedule!!

Thank you Jessie and Adam for being such great hosts and showing us around Charleston! We definitely want to come back in the spring so that we can enjoy the beach!!