Crazy week for the superfriends...

My friend Jay said it best when he posted the following on his Facebook page (I hope he doesn't mind that I am using it):

In the last 24 hours, one of my good friends lost a mother and another good friend became one.

I spent yesterday worrying about work – about press conferences and town halls and what's happening in Congress – but these two amazing women spent their days in hospital rooms facing great pain, great sorrow and great joy.

This morning, a wave of emotion came over me as I read through the string of messages from our group of friends that included the news of both the passing and the birth. These emotions were only compounded by the fact that my friend who lost her mother was also the one who announced the birth.

There is something about our mothers that keep us grounded in reality, and there is something about children that loosen a mother's grasp of reality. When my mom looks at me I know that she still sees me as the baby that she spent a day in the hospital for nearly 30 years ago. She sees the first steps, the first “MaMa” and countless scraped knees and elbows. She sees the first car, the graduation gowns, and the wedding tux. No matter how old I get or how far apart we are, it's humbling and inspiring to know that someone out there sees me that way.

It's the same way I know that my friend Fran will see her new baby, Jude, 30 years from now. It's the same way that my friend Jenny's mom saw her as she held her hand in the hospital yesterday and slipped quietly away.

Waiting for baby...

Well, I had my 38 week check-up today and while things are progressing (I'm dilated to a 4) we don't expect that the baby will come this week. Hopefully next week!! In the meantime, Owen and I are trying to keep busy doing things that don't require me to chase him around. It's raining pretty hard today so we're staying indoors and playing trains, games on the iPhone and whatever else we can find to occupy our time. I hope this week goes by fast! We are very anxious to meet little Elliot!

Quiet time

Craig took Owen to the park so I am enjoying some quiet time. I won't get to do that much in the near future, so I watched some TLC, took a nice, long shower and thought I should take a picture of the belly while it was still here. Here I am at almost 38 weeks.

So, it's been a long while...

I haven't posted anything in a long time and I'm not sure this is the best time to start since we're expecting a new baby very soon but hey, I'll give it a shot anyway.

Owen has grown up a lot since my last post. He's still a talker and it happens quite a bit that people comment on how much he's talking at his age. Since I stay home with him, I'll occasionally notice the difference between his speech and that of another child his age but we really don't have that much interaction with other kids so I can't really tell. It is what it is.

Owen has always been a lover of music and his recent obsession is the drums. He's made up his own set at home from old oatmeal tubs and plastic buckets and uses wooden spoons as drumsticks. Craig and Owen can often be found playing Guitar Hero together and Owen will either drum along to the music or use one of the Guitar Hero guitars and act as if he's playing along. As seen in the photo, he loves to go to Best Buy and use their Rock Band set-up.

We've been prepping Owen for the arrival of his baby brother for some time now. It will be interesting to see how he takes to the new little guy. Owen has had some limited experience around smaller children and babies and he always seems so gentle and caring and he usually tries to share his toys with them. We'll see what happens when he realizes that this new baby that is coming will be STAYING with us full-time. It won't be an easy transition for him but in time, he'll get used to it!

Bad blogger

Since I am getting nasty-grams from my family for not blogging enough... this is for them. Don't get used to it though, I don't usually bow down to threats that easily! You just happened to catch me at a good time. Craig and Owen went to Target so I have about a half hour to blog just for you, Patrick : )

Owen continues to do just great. We're about 3.5 weeks out of surgery now and at this point there isn't a thing we do differently with post surgery Owen. He climbs, wrestles, jumps and everything else he wants to do without anything bothering him. Oh, and did I mention potty training?

So, about a week or so ago we bought Owen his first potty chair. He's seemed interested in letting us know when he poops or pees at times so we thought we'd slowly introduce the chair and see what happens. We took it out of the box today and Owen was fascinated with it. I told him it was his very own potty and he constantly pointed at it and said "potty... pees" or "poop".  He sat on it a lot with his pants on which is fine. I expect this to happen very slowly and I don't want to pressure him at all. Towards the end of the day I asked him if he wanted to use the potty again. "YEAH!!" was his reply. I thought that was pretty cool so we went inside and I asked him if he wanted to take off his pants and diaper so he could put some pee in the potty. "YEAH!!" was his reply again so off they came. Well, he never peed but he sat on it a lot. Lifted up the lid, closed the lid, would sit on it again. Kept pointing to the inside and would say "pee".  And so it begins.   

Sentences. Well, kind of.

Owen's vocabulary is expanding quite rapidly at this point. We've lost track of how many words he knows (upwards of 50?) but what has been fascinating lately is to listen to him start to put them together to make sentences. 

Here are some recent examples:

(right after surgery)

"Where Elmo go?"

"Night, night mommies."

(when referring to the TV being turned off)

Owen: "Elmo off?"

Me: "Yes, Elmo is off"

Owen: "Elmo on!"

Craig: "Owen, what kinds of food do you like?"

Owen: "Pizza, bock-bock (chicken), cheese, crackers...mmmmmm."

(after waking him up from his nap)

"Bye, bye nap."

And here are a few of the words he's kind of made up:

"Newt-newt" = Fig Newton

"Laquers"=Crayons or colors

"Boot"=Spoon (no idea where that came from)

"Applesop"=Applesauce (he's close!)

"Debbie"=used for any word he doesn't know. 

What pacemaker?

You wouldn't know that Owen had surgery just under a week ago. Other than having some difficulty sleeping through the night, he's back to his old self. Laughing, playing, talking up a storm and is always on the go. The doctors said that we'd probably notice an increase in energy and that Owen would probably have more restful sleeps because he'd be more active during the day once the surgery was over. He was such an active kid to begin with that there might be very subtle hints that his heart is beating twice as fast as it used to but overall I haven't noticed much difference. Time will tell but I think the doctors are used to seeing kids who are very much affected by their heart condition prior to surgery. We caught Owen's so far in advance that he was showing little or no signs of anything being wrong.

His scar from the surgery is about twice as large as I was expecting...around 6 inches which looks huge on a toddler. Fortunately, even though the scar will be quite large, the surgical team did a beautiful job stitching him back up and we've had no issues with it bothering Owen too much. The only complaint we get every once in a while is "itchy".