| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |

Journal Key:

Green = Steve | George = navy | Janet = Purple | Evelyn = Black

Owen and I were leaving YBR this afternoon from the back porch. As he was about to start down the stairs, Miss Minal came out and bent down to give something to him. "You know what it is? Give it to Mommy," she said. Owen was very pleased. He had his lunch box and a Mother's Day gift. He looked down at his hands. Then he gave me his lunch box to carry.

He was really delighted about the Mother's Day present. Halfway to the car, he asked me to open it for him. He refused to give it to me. Figuring that he hadn't been willing to listen to Miss Minal or to me, I told him to bring it to Daddy when we got home. Steve could untangle him! "I give it to Daddy!" said Owen. He liked this idea.

When I put him in the car, though, we opened the present. The gift was a sort of strange plastic bottle decorated with paper and holding pipe-cleaner flowers, but the card was very cute. Owen liked showing me where he'd put dots in it and where there was a photo of him. We looked at it together, and then he told me about it again on the way to get Cara.

It was a beautiful day, so we went over to Juliana's house to play for a while. The kids frolicked in the grass and generally ran around. Owen ran on the front walk and told us, "I ran really fast!" He stomped in puddles. He told us that a monster was coming, and then he spent some time being monster-like and some time telling a monster to go away. Both kids made "grass angels" on the lawn and had to be helped up.

Owen is very invested in doing things that are his idea. The other day I put pants on him in the morning and offered him a choice of shirts. Neither shirt was any good; he opened his drawer and grabbed the first thing he touched: "I wear this one!" It was a pair of shorts. He carried it downtsairs and in a few minutes I picked out a shirt and put it on him. Tonight, he wasn't interested in tacos for dinner. He wanted crackers, which we didn't want to give him. I offered a few things, including yogurt. No. In a few minutes, I got out ham and yogurt and offered them to Steve, who didn't really want them. "I want yogurt!" cried Owen. Oh, OK, Honey.

5/12/12 (Saturday)

We had a lovely Mother's Day weekend planned that involved a movie for me and Cara, a sleepover for both kids, and brunch in Middletown, but Cara's a little under the weather and so we've had to switch gears and have a lovely Mother's Day weekend at home.

We actually spent a lot of time outside. In the morning, the kids and I did some planting while Steve mowed the lawn. Fortunately, Owen was distracted by the matchbox cars from his sand table while Cara used the hose to water things. We went and visited Juliana and showed her our little dump truck. Cara had her red baseball cap, and once in a while she and Owen would trade cap for truck. He always opened the velcro at the back of the cap and put it on, but it was so huge that he had to hold onto it the whole time. Cara went back inside and Owen and I took the dump truck for a ride in his wagon. We went all the way around the block, and every time I looked back at him he had both hands on the brim of the cap.

No one but Em and I remember this, but we've had a Mother's Day tradition for a few years of cleaning the cars. Cara and I got started while Owen was napping, and when the ice cream truck came we got treats for all of us. We were sitting in the front yard on a blanket eating ours when he woke up. We'd gotten him a Bugs Bunny ice cream popsicle thing, and we got him all set up with it with a bowl and some napkins nearby.

It was good that Cara wasn't finished with her Powerpuff Girls popsicle, because she could model for him what to do with it. Licking proved to be somewhat beyond him. We got him to stick the ears into his mouth once in a while. It began to melt, and Owen would offer it to Steve as if to let Steve clean it up for him, but then he'd pull it away and laugh. He didn't like it when it dripped on him, though! Eventually we got him to put it in his bowl, and Steve fed it to him with a spoon. Those cartoon character ice creams are strange: this one was mostly grey but was fruit flavored.

Fortunately, no one was still sticky when we went back to work on the cars. Owen and Cara came over while I was working on the inside of the Buick and climbed in. They got a kick out of sitting where they weren't supposed to, though at first Owen was pretty sure he was supposed to climb into his seat and he did seem to suggest, once, that I should buckle him in. When we'd gotten past that and he'd traded places with Cara, who was in the passenger seat, he happily turned all of the many dashboard knobs.

Juliana came over and sat on the blanket with Owen, feeding him some melon she'd brought, while the three of us washed the cars. Cara went through every one of the eight or so possible settings on the hose.

It got late, and we ate takeout for dinner in the living room, watching Phineas and Ferb. Owen, for whom it really was getting very late, was out of his mind. He kept climbing around on my lap, while I tried to eat around him. He almost sat in my hamburger wrapper. Sometimes, when he lies down in my lap, I lift him up as if to put him behind my head. He really liked that tonight. He would come back from wandering around and throw himself down, asking to be put on the couch. On the couch, he found the phone. I was surprised when he didn't object to my taking it from him, but he wanted me to help him with it, it turned out. "Hi to dramma!" he said. We talked about it and he clarified a little: he wanted to talk to Grandmom. We gave her a call.

It must have been eight thirty when we got him down. He'd had a lot of running around, plenty of dinner, an active social life, and a post-ice-cream bath. For a sick day at home, that's not too bad!

(Oh, and: I've read Go Dog Go to him twice today. He informs me that most of the big dogs are Pickles the Fire Cat. It started out with one specific dog, but now it's most of them. I think that what they have in common is that they are also animals who walk upright. Some of the dogs are also yellow, and some also wear hats.)

5/13/12 (Sunday) - Happy Mother's Day!

In the morning Ev took Owen to the store, where he had a lot of fun with his poking stick. (Actually this is, I believe, a back scratcher that Cara bought at her school store at some point.) We drove down to Evelyn's parents' for a nice Mother's Day brunch. Owen stayed awake and goofy through the car ride. At the house we discovered the new guys that Grandmama and Grandpapa had acquired for him. They are tall, very poseable wrestlers, plus a Mr. Incredible figure. Owen liked them OK, and I also very much enjoyed playing with them. He went for a walk and did some playing on the playground. Brave, brave Grandmama also let Owen try some painting, since Cara was doing it as well. She discovered he has a sort of swatting paint method.

He had a short nap on the ride back home, but woke up when we arrived. In a little while, I took him to the grocery store for some real grocery shopping. He brought his little Transformer toy through some freak accident. I was very amused when he quoted part of a subtle Transformer-related line from the He-Man/She-Ra Christmas special. ("They're changing into other forms--what evil robots!" In an extra bit of strangeness, this line is spoken by a flying horse.) We've noticed lately that he's quite a mimic, to the extent that we might have to start being very careful about exactly what we say in his presence.

The buddy seems to have been very energized and, frankly, crazy this weekend. Hopefully Evelyn enjoyed that he insisted on having Mommy read to him tonight.

5/14/12 (Monday)

Owen went to school wearing his neon monkey shirt today. He came home wearing a plain white T. He explained to Steve that he'd spilled water on his shirt. Apparently he likes to use regular cups, not sippies, for his water at school. Once again, hooray for peer pressure! Hooray for daycare doing our parenting for us!

5/15/12 (Tuesday)

Owen was playing with trains when we got to YBR, with a big toy meant for cars which had a spiral ramp. He was happy to see us, but he stayed put while I went and got his lunch box. When I got back, both kids were playing with it. It was a nice toy. Cara and I tried starting to leave, but Owen seemed disinclined to come with us. I ended up going back to pick him up.

At ballet, Owen and I picked out three books and sat down. We did not get up until Cara came out of class: he sat in my lap on the floor while I read to him for 45 minutes. We had our old favorites, the Bugs Bunny one and Fluffy's Valentine's Day, but I'd also pulled out a big Mother Goose collection. That book must have lasted us over twenty minutes! There were all of the old favorites, plus a lot I'd never heard. Each was on its own page with a big picture. Owen liked the animals in the pictures, and he liked the rhymes, too. I'm delighted to have found an actual good book to read there. My hips were sore when we finally got up, though.

Owen's favorite drink is apple juice, and he really runs through it fast. Figuring that we have a hard time enforcing moderation, I've decided to just not open any more. For a few days, we've been offering him just water or milk--he's been getting better about accepting them. At dinner, after I got him some milk, Owen started to explain to me that there was juice down in the basement. Soon, he got up and headed off to find some. Fortunately, some obstacle or other got in his way and he ended up in the play room rather than in the basement pulling things out of the pantry (where there is one solitary bottle of juice left).

5/6/12 (Wednesday)

Today Owen had his six-month checkup at CHOP so they could look at his ear tubes. We dropped off Cara early and fought through the traffic to the doctor's office.

He was very good on the way down and in the waiting room. Usually when I go there we sit down for like one minute and then get called in, but this time things took longer. Owen got a chance to mess with the bead thingy in the corner, which he was happy to do. Then in the room when we finally got into it, we took out all his guys. We had brought several He-Mans, some bendy Santas, and the Green Guy. I was trying to save some for in case he got bored, but he looked into the bag and saw them and took them out. Then he took out the wipes package, and a couple of diapers. The guys started jumping on the wipes package. I think they said something like “We are bouncing on the diapers!” Then he found a book in the bag. He very carefully put all of the guys, wipes, and diapers back into the bag, and we read the book, which was about four pages long. Then we took all of the guys, wipes and diapers back out again to find another book.

He was really pretty good about letting them look in his ears. He was very good for the nurse, possibly because she first checked Beast-Man’s heart rate with her stethoscope, and I didn’t exactly have to hold him down for the doctor, either. They didn’t really check his ears at all, beyond looking in there with a light to check if the tubes were still in. The nurse or the doctor said, “His hearing checked out fine last time, so we don’t have to do that.”

Thankfully there was no horrible rush hour traffic on the way back, but by that time (and I think this is true of every time we go on these appointments) Owen was tired and not happy at having to be back in the car again. He kept saying that he wanted various things, so that by the end of the trip he had his three Santas, a book, and his cup in the seat with him—and he still seemed to want something else. At YBR I suddenly realized that we were going to have further problems, since he would have to leave his He-Mans in the car.

But anyway, his checkup went well.

Tonight was playdate at the Loefflers' and Owen wandered off with the other kids. Somehow he managed to get a hold of PJ's latest lightsaber toy, which is an incredibly large, double-bladed affair that spins. It was too big for Owen to wield in the approved fashion, but he managed to drag it up and down the hall. I believe he referred to it as a "laser gun" later. Eventually we got home and had a tub, he got out a pair of mermaids and kept insisting that I had to play with one of them while he had the other.

| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |