first skate

Owen went for his first skate today...from the comfy cozy luxury of the stroller!

the party

We celebrated Owen's 1st birthday on Saturday with a little gathering of friends.  Owen LOVED eating his birthday cake!

chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and bananas in between the layers = yummy!

cake = sticky hair

wanna lick it clean?

post cake stripped down 

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Owen!  One year ago today you were born and we have loved every minute of watching you grow from a tiny, cuddly, completely helpless newborn to the smiley, laughy, independent 1 year old you are now.

Here is a bit of what you are like at one:

You eat really well.  You have eaten lots of different cuisines already - Indian, Ethiopian, Mexican - to name a few.  You haven't met a dairy product you don't like, particularly milk.  You used to drink a max of 4oz at a time of formula, now you can down an 7oz sippy of milk no problem!  The only thing you consistently refuse to eat is avocado.

You occasionally sleep through the night, but usually still wake up once sometime between 3 and 5am. You nap twice a day if you are at home for anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours at a time.  At daycare you consistently take 50min naps, once a day, sometimes twice.  

You are a very happy kid.  You smile all the time, and laugh a lot!  You are very ticklish and have an infectious giggle!  You are happy to play independently, but also love some company...particularly if it's your Mama.  You like playing with toy cars, magnets, and blocks at the moment.  You LOVE the kitties...although they are not always enamored with you, they sometimes let you pet them, but more often than not they run away to where you can't reach them.

You have 8 teeth, and no discernible words...although I think you might be saying "kitty" sometimes.  And you definitely cluck your tongue to call the kitties when you hear us doing it!  You use mamamama and dadadada, but not necessarily toward us...hopefully soon!

You aren't walking yet, but you definitely crawl up a storm!  You pull yourself to standing on everything, and will cruise a bit, but you seem happy enough to crawl to get from A to B.

For your birthday, we went to the doctor...how novel actually having your one year checkup on your birthday!  Here are the stats:

height: 30 3/4 inches - 75-85%

weight: 19# 12.8 oz - 25-50%

head size: 45.2cm - 25%

Owen got his first taste of ice cream today after dinner - he'll have to wait until his little party on Saturday to have cake!

as stated - never met a dairy he didn't love!

Yesterday, Owen and I went for a little walk on Lake Harriet to play with his new sled and then to the park! 

wheeeee!!!!

chocolate marshmallow...with legs

Happy New Year!

 Happy New Year everyone!  We wish you all much love and happiness for 2013!  We celebrated new year's in London (so at 6pm instead of midnight) with good friends.  It was a nice night, and we are excited to see what new adventures the new year will bring!

Happy New Year!

pre New Year trip to the MIA - my what a big dog you are!

We went to the zoo today, and they were having a "Happy Noon Year" celebration for the kids at, you guessed it, noon!  There were various kids activities, all for older kids, but nobody is ever too old or young to stick their head in a hole for a picture!

Owenhawk and fauxhawk

Great Horned Owel - ha!

Merry Christmas!

We had an excellent first Christmas with Owen! Grandma and Grandpa came from Calgary for a visit and Owen had a treeful of presents from all his grandparents, aunts and uncles (both Great and regular - although still great!) and cousins to open...or rather, watch me open!  All sorts of toys and clothes - what a lucky little guy!  In addition, the special cold fairy also brought him a double ear infection!  Merry. Christmas.  So sleep has been a bit of a luxury (and really has been since about 1 day after that post where I was bragging about him sleeping through the night...I jinxed it by talking about it...), but he is on the mend now, and seemingly much more himself once he started on some antibiotics on boxing day.  And it meant that for the first time since Grandma and Grandpa arrived, he allowed somebody other than Mama to hold him...albeit not for long!
Here are some pics from the past couple days!

Christmas morning, pre opening...about 95% of those gifts are for Owen

opening presents!!

playing with Grandma!

reading books with Grandpa!

notice the yule log on the TV...arguably one of my favourite parts of Christmas

mastering the busy ball drop!

something, something, dark side
something, something, jedi

kitty!

got your ear Grandpa!

high five Grandma!

Bye Grandma and Grandpa, thanks for a great visit!

snow monkey

Well, winter finally arrived here with a bang on Sunday.  There was a bit of snow Friday through to early Saturday morning, but not even enough to shovel.  Sunday morning however, we awoke to lots of snow and it came down all day without a break.  In the end, the accumulation was between 10 and 15 inches, depending on which part of the metro you were in (10 south of us, and 15 north of us...so I'm guessing we got about 12 inches at our house).  Which has meant a whole lot of shoveling!!  While Dave was doing the big job of the driveway and sidewalks (we live on the corner, so we get double sidewalk duty...plus we have a bus stop and a fire hydrant we need to dig out in the front) Owen and I tackled the back patio.

 Smallimus cutimus - a social and intelligent
 animal - active during the day.

they have been known to use tools to forage

the snow crunched down under his belly here and
he got stuck...like a "stomach turtle"

all bundled up in cousin Will's old snowsuit! So cozy!!

"what's all this white stuff?"

sleeping baby = happy parents!

So way back when, there was a post titled "slept through the night". And just in case anybody out there was like "why won't my baby sleep though the night?!?" rest assured, that was MONTHS ago and it had happened exactly one other time after that...until this Tuesday.  Now that Owen is approaching 11 months...and I have spent many of those months with very non-PG thoughts as I read parenting forum post after post about how so and so's baby slept through the night starting at 3 months, yada, yada, yada...he has finally succeeded in sleeping through the night regularly!  By which I mean, he has slept through the night 4 nights in a row...and it has been glorious! Let's hope it continues, because sleep makes me happy!

And now some pictures...

he is cute in toques...especially when they are ours!

Happily on a walk in the classic sock monkey toque

two, two, two toques in one - my toque on top of sock monkey

Wearing Dad's toque...which looks all puffy on  his little head,
especially with it tucked behind his ears...it makes me
think "Rasta"....perhaps some baby dreads are in order....

And his new favourite activity is getting into the buffet in the dining room.

"these handles are great for standing"

"hmmm...what could be in here?"

"oh, just serving dishes...boring!  But I'll
 check again later to see if it's changed"