11 Months Old

Can it really be that there is only one month to go before Owen turns one??

 

I always felt that time flies by, but since Owen's been born it's even more apparent.

He is now pulling himself up on anything and everything he can, which makes taking these 

monkey pictures a little more difficult.  Why one earth would he want to sit still 

when he can so easily crawl over, pull himself up and see me face to face?

And speaking of his little face, he has a total of 8 teeth now.

His top 4 and bottom 4 teeth are fully in giving him the cutest little smile.

He can crawl up our entire flight of stairs.

Going down is a little more tricky, so we just have to make sure we are behind him to

catch him if he decides to bail on his climbing efforts. 

He babbles a lot more now and has introduced new syllables to his vocabulary.

MaMa, Baba, and just recently started with G sounds.

 He is going through a little bit of a mama phase.
If I'm not around, he does fine.  But if I'm in the room and I walk out, his mood quickly shifts.

While he clearly loves his mama, the fun part is he is able to recognize other familiar faces.

We Skype with Grandma, Grandpa, Aiden and whomever else happens to be visiting

at the time.  As soon as he sees Grandma's face pop up on the computer

screen he gets the biggest smile.  It's cute to see him get so excited.

I also love to watch Owen interacting with other little kids.

He LOVES playing with his cousins and his friends.

He watches them so intently and gets so happy when they are around.

Favorite Toys: Activity Table, Wooden Puzzles, Any simple toys he can carry around or chew

We have a large selection of toys that light up and make noise,

but the ones he always goes towards are the simple ones.

When we were in WI over Christmas, he sat for almost an hour playing

with the original Fisher Price Farm house from 1968.

Favorite Food:  String Cheese, Grilled Cheese, Pancakes (3 of his mom's favorites too) ;)

We're still working on fresh cut up fruits and vegetables.  He'll eat one

small piece, but then shifts his attention back to his favorites.

Thank goodness he loves the purees so much so he gets 

his fair share of fruits and vegetables that way.

 

We love you more and more every day little buddy!!

Only one month to go and you're officially one!!

 

Owen's First Christmas

No better way to experience Owen's first Christmas than via pictures....

The word chaos comes to mind when looking at this next picture.

We typically have to open gifts in waves.

 

 "Hello.  Santa?  I approve of this year's loot."

 My mom made Owen his very own color, ABC, and photo books.  So cool!

I'd say this little guy made out pretty well for his first Christmas.

And we can't forget the walker and learning table.  These are two of his favorites.

And no Christmas in WI is complete without a little Packer paraphernalia.

 

Once the gifts were opened we jumped right into a game of Headbands.

You ask Yes and No questions to figure out what is written on the card on your forehead. 

 Then the older boys spent the majority of the afternoon practicing on their new pogo sticks.

We even got a very special show at the end of the night.

We are so thankful to have such an amazing family to make days like this extra special. 

Merry First Christmas Little O.

 

Christmas Eve

Our family tradition when we are in WI over the holidays is to spend

Christmas eve at my dad and Sharon's house.

 The night always starts off with a few glasses of wine,

then moves into annual family Christmas pics,

A few silly pics along the way,

 And of course gift opening.

 Another successful Christmas Eve!

Thanks Dad and Sharon.

Stair Climber

Owen has learned a new trick which makes it pretty much impossible

to leave him alone for longer than 20 seconds.

Crawling up the stairs is not the problem.

 

Once he gets up, he's just not real sure how to get down

 

So he typically just makes a jump for it.

 Lucky for him he normally has his mom there to catch him.  

 

Santa's Elf

Say hello to santa's littlest elf.

 

Holiday Playdate

What better thing to do right before the holidays

than get together with some of Owen's favorite little buddies.

Though it doesn't show by his expression, Owen LOVES getting together with his friends.

Truth be told, his mom loves it even more.  ;)

Olivia and Ava decorated and baked sugar cookies and played with homemade peppermint scented playdough, while Graham and Owen crawled around and played with whatever they could get their hands on.  I love watching the two of them together.  

It has become quite funny because Graham loves to wrestle and is not shy about tackling Owen.  Owen will be crawling or playing with a toy and Graham comes up behind him

with such a cute playful grin and crawls right onto his back.  As a mom maybe I should be protective, but all I wanted to do was get my video camera to catch all the hilarious footage.

Plus, Owen has no siblings to rough him up, so it's good for him to help toughen him up.

What a fun day to lead us right into the holidays!!

 

Ornament

We decided to decorate our tree tonight

and a very special ornament was the first one up.

Merry Christmas Little Owen!!

We're so excited for you to experience your very first Christmas.

 

Little Explorer

Thankfully this is as close as he's made it to the tree.

 

He'll crawl over, reach out and touch the branches,

but then he's good.  That's enough exploration for him.

And who needs a tree anyway, when you have such an amazing green bowl to play with.

 

Cruisin'

Look who's Standing...

That's right.  Owen started his new cruising phase about a week or two ago.

He's been pulling himself up on anything and everything that he can.

Nothing is safe anymore.  

I had already cleared out the bottom level of shelves,

now we've moved up to another level of mischief.

And how is it that he knows exactly what he shouldn't touch, and goes straight for it?

Zoo Cutie

Owen and I have been doing our best to take advantage of these 

uncharacteristically warm December days.

With the temperature in the upper 50's yesterday I decided to go walk around the zoo.

Hopefully Owen is amused by all of the different animals he gets to see,

but at the very least, it is a nice change of scenery.

 

The highlight of the day was seeing the 3 week old giraffe.

 Here is a picture of him with his mom to give some perspective on how tiny he really is.

He is, by far, the cutest thing I have ever seen at the zoo.

He alone made our trip completely worth it.

I kind of want to go back today just to see him again.  :)