Pumpkins, pumpkins, everywhere

Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more photos of Owen and pumpkins, I did. The pumpkin patch was ripe for photo ops.

 

Let’s flash back one year ago to October 2008 at the same pumpkin patch. Here is sweet Devi and me. (Little Owen is there too, if you look hard enough):

And here is Little Owen again, a little more obviously, hanging on and defying gravity:

Happy fall!

10!

Happy 10 months to Owen!

About three weeks ago, he waved for the first time. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I’ve never been so proud of anybody for any thing they have ever done. My little boy is connecting. Look at that, he’s waving. His eyes are lighting up, for even he knows that he’s doing something magical.

He’s turning into a little person.

Orange you glad …

What to do when you have a pretty Saturday afternoon, a pretty pumpkin and a pretty baby boy?

My 2 cents

What a whirlwind. Owen cut his first teeth and started sitting up during the weekend of July 4. (Did I already tell you that?) Then he began crawling whole-heartedly the last week of July. Now he’s pulling up, cruising a bit and teaching his parents (hi, third-person) the importance of caffeine. Oh, and his front top teeth have debuted. So there you have it. On to the inaugural post for the feature “My 2 Cents.” It is likely that this feature is never re-featured, so get it while it’s hot.

More than pajamas

Last week, my mother stayed the night with me. I walked through the living room after she had gone to bed, and she emerged from her room to go to the bathroom. I didn’t expect to see her, so when I caught her profile in my peripheral, I screamed and danced a manic jig. Naturally.

Owen awoke in the middle of the night a few weeks ago. I got out of bed to tend to him. He wasn’t settling down, so I pretended that changing his diaper would help and I took my post at his changing table. I felt a shadow in the doorway. Holding Owen, I turned and screamed into his ear because his dad was in the doorway. Horror of all horrors.

You might find it contradictory, then, that sometimes I feel brave.

Name That Gene, the 6-month edition

It’s time for Name That Gene part dos.

Amy: 6 months

6 Months

Kyle: 6 months

And we’re back!

It’s evident that my blogging comes and goes like Owen’s ability to eat solid foods, which is to say that some days are appetizing like sweet potatoes and others are more like “butternut squash + spitup down my shirt.”

I’ve previously expressed my fear of introducing Owen to solid foods since doing so would bring with it an entire new set of challenges and time commitments. I was correct.

H2Owen

One year ago I was floating in the pool, worrying about things like

• bathing suits + bloated bellies
• whether or not sun’s harmful ways can penetrate skin and amniotic fluid, and
• homemade ice cream and unpasteurized eggs

If only I knew that perfection was just around the bend:

On daycare

Owen has attended daycare since March 2. In fact, he’s attended three daycares. He started his third daycare a little over a week ago.

Daycare 1: Precious baby sleeps in swing all day. As in, sleeping in swing all day. As in, never awake. As in, one day, when they let Owen’s milk dump out in the refrigerator for the second time and needed more, they left me a profound terror-inducing voicemail saying only: &#@$*. [Symbols represent the name of the daycare ... or an expletive. It's all the same.]

Daycare 2: Our angel. Our sweet reprieve. Lots of babies being hugged and kissed and showered with words like “precious” and “precious.” But it was only a temporary stop in our transient world of childcare. Kyle and I work downtown, and Daycare 2 is not downtown. But since downtown isn’t overflowing with daycares, it’s exceptionally difficult to get into one. But we finally got into one. So, bye, Daycare 2, the land of so much precious.

Daycare 3: Beautiful, development-focused, and all lovey too. On Owen’s first day, my little 6-month-old was asked: “Owen, now what are your skills?” Now that’s the kind of pressure preciousness I like.

Bed ahead

Help!

One year, six months later and we are finally … decorating our master bedroom! Getting a new bed and, most importantly, a new mattress. Putting life onto the walls. If we’re feeling extra-productive, we might even vacuum.

I’ve actually refused to sleep in our bedroom for about the past week. It’s a horrible, horrible place in which insanity is bred. There I sleep anxiously, bracing myself for the night that the mutant bed bugs will finally emerge to eat me.

Before you get freaked out, don’t worry. I am not typing this from my bedroom. Even if I were, I don’t think that bed bugs can travel electronically.

So, the point of this post: I need help. We’re working with a very slim budget to do all this extra decorating. Here’s the formula for calculating “very slim”:

(What you think it would cost for nightstands + wall hangings + lighting + extermination) / (2) = X
X – 0.5X = Very Slim

So there you have it.

Here’s the quilt I purchased from Overstock:

The bed arrives today. Yay! It’s a chocolate-y platform bed.

We need help thinking of creative wall decorations, and, the biggie: a TV stand. We’ve moved my dresser into our closet, which means the TV needs something new upon which to sit. But we can’t make things easy on ourselves and get a standard TV stand. No, siree. We like to make things difficult and creative. All suggestions are welcome.

I’m hopefully going to get motivated and pull out some paints and a blank canvas so I can go all “abstract” on it. Fun, scary times ahead!