The Proof is in the Potty and Other Current Events

Well since our return from spring break in Texas time has flown by! Every time Owen awakes from a nap he is literally bigger. We couldn't really understand this phenomenon except for the fact that he is nursing through most of his naps and the night, so it is indeed conceivable that he awakes bigger or at least with a fuller diaper.

Owen has had such an eventful month that I'm not even sure where to begin. Here is just a brief list of his activities over the past several weeks. I think we might have to save this list for future evidence incase he ever makes the claim that he didn't ever do anything fun as a kid.  Yes we are already anticipating the future parenting challenges where we will no longer be the most exciting, wonderful, and cool parents ever. As of now, our ability to blow raspberries and play peekaboo hold us in high regard with the little guy. That and I'm the lady with the milk.

Over the past month, Owen went to:

1.  Joni's 30th birthday in Los Angeles, an elite event for baby hipsters complete with Martha Stewart inspired tree decorations and designated stroller parking. Owen got to hang out with his best bud Noah, where they swapped strategies for sleep resistance I'm sure one of them learned through a back channel from a baby with connections in the Bush administration.  Yes sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Ask any mom with a teething baby. The day was capped with the boys nursing as the warm April day turned dusky and cool.  We then headed back to the Surette-Nelson pad where Noah and Owen shared a tubby, and yes, we have the pictures for future blackmail.
2. World Cultures Fair at San Diego City College. Owen has become a regular at mom's campus events, where he already has a following of groupies. Owen especially loved the latin drummers and dancers. He bounced his legs as he had an afternoon snack provided by mom. Once he was done nursing, he was thumping along to the music while I held him up standing.  We can pray at this point he developed from some recessive gene a sense of rhythm, but I'm a glass is half empty kind of realist, so the odds are not in his favor based on his pairs lack of dancing ability. 
3. The next day-Earth Fair.  Owen and I learned all about the different types of Terns from the volunteers at the Famosa Slough booth and promised we would come for a clean up day soon, since the Slough is literally in our backyard.  Owen made a dashing impression in his Kermit the Frog "It's Easy Being Green" organic onsie from his great grandma Joan and his bowler hat. We got organic heirloom tomato and squash seedlings from the college's garden and planted them in pots on the balcony. Considering Laila's track record for eating our vegetation during emotional distress (this is was the fate of last years tomatoes, squash, green beans, two avocado trees Drew grew from seeds, and a rosebush). I'm also not so optimistic, but Owen likes watering and observing their growth while they remain in the natural world.
4. San Diego Art Walk in Little Italy. I would officially say that Owen missed most of this event since he spent the majority of the time either snoozing or chowing down under my nursing cover, although he did take in some of the art and people watch.
5. First visit to a fine restaurant. After the art walk, we headed to Balboa Park where we ate dinner at the Prado. Owen didn't choose to cooperate with the fine dining experience, and I spent most of the time walking the perimeter of the outside patio nursing him watching Drew eat my dinner from a distance. It could have been nice.
6. Body Works show. After dinner we headed to the Body Works show at the Natural History Museum, one of those traveling exhibits with all of the preserved cadavers.  Owen was really fascinated by it. Although, he was confused as to why the people he was talking to didn't talk back. He also liked the echo of his own voice in the large halls. Owen has since returned during his daily visits to Balboa park with his grandma Eleanor, and he was interested in different aspects of the exhibit on his second trip.
7. Almost weekly weekend trips to Los Angeles.  Owen has become a true trooper when it comes to the almost weekly trips we have been making to Los Angeles.  A combination of factors have been pulling us up on the weekends.  Drew and my brother Neil are starting a t-shirt company and have had a lot of work to do. Check out www.adrenlnindustries.com or find them on facebook. I have been going to see the chiropractor I have been seeing since childhood to fix my bulging disk since I haven't been able to find a decent one in San Diego. And then there was the recent addition to the equine family. Yes that's right, my mom bought Owen a pony.  We haven't posted the pictures yet, but promise to do so soon. Miss Misty Star, that's what happens when three people name a pony, is a handful, but we've never had a horse that wasn't, so there's nothing new there. She and Owen have already begun their love affair. Her favorite game is run away and chase me, but when Owen is at the fence she comes right up to him. When Grandma Eleanor was riding her she bucked and hopped, but when Owen was on her back for a cruise around the neighborhood she was a careful as she could be.  Owen loved every minute of it, as he happily babbled and drooled. He alternated clutching her mane and attempting to lean forward and much her withers.
8. Cinco de Mayo. Owen loved watching the beautiful flowing skirts of the dancers at City College's festival. 

Owen's other developments include rolling around and inching round on his tummy. He is really serious about figuring out this crawling thing. He continues to babble non-stop, some of it more intelligible that others. I'm "Mim." Drew is "Da." Grandma and Grandpa are "Gra." And Laila is "Laila." We have been trying to teach Owen to say "Puh" for potty since he is learning how to use his little potty. 

Yes that's right. A week before he turned 5 months, Owen began regularly using his little potty. You can look at our Flickr account if you don't believe us, and yes you know who you are you doubters.   Some may argue we are setting up Owen for years of therapy or some deep-rooted Freudian issues, but there is actually a lot of research suggesting that infants can use the potty long before they are conventionally potty trained.  We didn't know any of this when we got him a potty. We just figured since whenever we took off his diaper he peed, we would get him a little potty and put him on it.  This was two weeks ago and he generally pees in his potty 7-10 times a day. Sometimes the stats are much lower.  We have had lucky stretches where he goes with a dry diaper all afternoon and will wake up from long naps or at night with a dry diaper and head straight to the potty, but he still has plenty of wet diapers, which is fine. We are still learning his cues, and we don't always make it there in time.  The biggest challenge is convincing him that it is okay to go pee before nursing when he wakes up. He is convinced it a ploy to starve him, but if he pees first he'll keep his diaper dry otherwise he ends up peeing while he nurses.  We have a very low stress attitude about the whole thing.  Drew after all learned positive reinforcement training with his work during the dolphins, which is what we use, but Owen's own greatest reward is in the pot. He loves to look at how much pee or poop is in it and watch it get poured in the big potty. Interestingly, he has pooped exclusively in the potty minus one time when we were out since we got the potty. This certainly makes cleaning cloth diapers a bit easier. Grandma Eleanor keeps an extra little potty in her car for Owen to use on their daily trips to Balboa park.  Owen is becoming quite a regular on the museum circuit. He has officially been to more museums there than Drew or me.

When Owen was in Texas, he was in the throes of teething hell.  At least it was probably hell for the people stuck on a plane listening to him scream. It made us sad that he wasn't as outgoing and happy as he usually is and he was much clingier than normal. Since our return, the teething had stopped and we had a merciful reprieve from the fussiness, although the chewing and drooling remained constant.

Only this past Thursday did the teething return, but for some reason right now Owen is sleeping his first quite night in days, which is why you are able to read this marathon blog posting dear reader.

Well there is more to report, but it the clock is about to strike midnight, and I might actually turn into a pumpkin if I don't go to sleep so I can get up and grade papers and teach in the morning in addition to all of my mothering duties. I am happy to report that I a spoiled by grandma Eleanor who makes the coffee and my almond butter toast in the morning while I am in the shower. Although, without her help I probably would just starve and would have lost 5 lbs by now so it is a toss up.  

I hope I will have time to write more soon and continue to update on our precious, precious angel.  His laugh might be single-handedly responsible for the melting of the polar ice caps. It is that great. I swear it turns even the most frigid into cooing puddles.

Puppy Love

Well it has been a hard, long, lonely four months for Laila as she adjusts to becoming a big sister, especially since Drew had his surgery and I hurt my back, which has substantially decreased her visits to dog park and beach.  As of late, Laila has had to count on the mercy of visiting grandmas to get walks and beach visits, but as this picture clearly demonstrates, she and Owen are quickly falling in love.  

How much does he weigh?

You may be asking yourself as you scroll through the pages of our flickr photos, "How much does that little tubby weigh these days?" I can report that in a very unscientific method of Dad standing on the bathroom scale with Owen that he weighed 15lbs a week and a half ago, which means who really knows how much Owen weighs now. The one thing the pictures prove is that we clearly have no breastfeeding issues, unless you consider me wishing I had a life outside of breastfeeding an issue-Owen certainly doesn't think so. And don't worry we're not those overly sensitive new parents who will freak out if you discuss our kid's chub, as long as we keep the discussion of chub focused on Owen and not his mom. 

We've Got More Guilt than a Catholic School Girl

Hello friends and family and fans and followers of Owen-

Well we admitted at the beginning of this adventure in parenting that Drew and I were a bit of deadbeats when it comes to taking pictures. We have reformed our record a bit, but haven't been much better at adding them to the flickr account. In our defense, since we last posted pictures or blogged at the beginning of February, we got married in Vegas; flew to Alabama to visit Drew's grandparents and aunts, uncles, cousins; Drew had major surgery and spent a week in the hospital; Annaliisa developed a pinched nerve in her back which renders her domestically useless; Drew has been slowly, painfully recovering with a cast up to his armpit (screws, pins, and all); Annaliisa has been teaching the masses to read, write, and think- this is also a painfully slow process; and we spent spring break, Easter, and Drew's 25th birthday (yes I know this makes me a cougar) in Houston with a good-old fashioned crawfish boil; and now it is the middle of April and Owen is bigger than ever and we are enjoying every minute of his development. He is a non stop chatter box, drooling, constant teether sometimes crabby teether, and so busy he is ready to go somewhere in a hurry.

We have added lots of photos of Owen to our flickr account and promise to put up more soon.

The Great Race ... to the Altar!

Here is our wedding story ... a bit late!

For those of you who know Drew well, spontaneous is probably one of the top five adjectives that you could use to describe him.  He has more than once in our two years together decided on a Saturday morning that we should go camping or drive to Mexico.  In fact, he would like to bring his mountain and road bike and climbing and camping gear everywhere with him just incase he has the chance or opportunity to do one or all of these activities.  

So it is only in retrospect that it became abundantly clear that I should have known that the only way Drew and I would get married would be on the spur of the moment.  We decided Friday and got married Saturday, and Drew's parents, grandmother, and brother get a thousand gold stars for jumping on a plane (his parents and grandma from Houston and David from Denver where he was rock climbing) just hours later to be there. My parents and Aunt Maryanne and cousin Noelle and her fiance Rick were also there, but they only had to drive from Los Angeles.  My brothers would have been there, except as Nicholas put it best, they needed more than 24 hours notice to attend one in a lifetime (twice in my case) events (they had prepaid Valentine's Day plans).  My grandmother and Uncle Tom made out best in this hair-brained scheme since they live in Las Vegas.

It was Friday the 13th and after taking the baby to the doctor for his check-up and the dog to the vet for an ear infection and picking up the jeep from getting its brakes done, we decided to get married in Vegas the next day. If that isn't romantic enough, while Drew and Owen took a nap and Laila jumped on and off the couch hopped up on pain killers for her ear, I booked our wedding chapel reservation on-line. We would get married at the same chapel my brother and cousin got married.  There is also a long list of celebrities who have been married there (most recently notably Billie Bob and Angelina) but we all know how long those marriages lasted. 

Saturday morning we loaded up the dog and baby in the Jeep and made the brave 6 hour trek across the desert. Drew called his entire phone book breaking the news as I drove. At one point, we contemplated being stranded until retirement somewhere that made Baker look like a booming metropolis when Owen had a screaming fit and decided he was done with mommy and daddy's wedding weekend.  It was right about then that I perfected the art of breastfeeding while hovering over Owen's carseat (be advised fellow breastfeeders this is probably the technique that helped me develop a pinched nerve in my back).

By the time we arrived in Vegas, it was afternoon and we went straight to the Clark County Clerk's office where we got our marriage license.  They had lines set up around the building like a Disneyland ride to accommodate all of the couples getting hitched in Sin City on V-day (open 24 hours from Friday through Sunday).  We of course were the only ones in line with a baby, but Owen wasn't the only child there to celebrate mom and dad's wedding.  One couple was there with their two children to get remarried after their previous divorce.  

With marriage license in tow, we headed to grandma's house (wedding central). After two trips to the airport (thanks to my Dad!), everyone had arrived. Owen got to meet his great grandma Joan and was surrounded family.  At one point I realized that Owen had three grandmothers hovering over him while I changed his diaper.

After this brief respite, we were off to the mall to find me a wedding dress. That's right, just hours before our 11 pm nuptials Drew, Owen and I were off to the mall to try to find me a dress. It is about this time that I started to regret postponing my postpartum diet.  Never did I imagine I would be weaving my baby and stroller through shoppers and dress racks at a frantic rate trying to find a wedding dress that would not only accommodate a nursing bra but post-baby pudge.  With no time to spare, we grabbed some pizza to go and power jogged out of the mall and into the Jeep in Vegas Strip traffic.

Once we were checked in at the Tropicana (the only hotel on the Strip that had a room last minute-besides the Venetian that had a $5,000 a night suite), we had 20 minutes to shower and dress before we left in the limo for the chapel.  And mercifully Owen slept through all the chaos.  

We then arrived at the chapel and waited for my parents to arrive.  And then we waited some more.  Even though my brother had been married at the same chapel somehow my parents managed to get lost. Even worse, they had my blind grandmother as a back seat driver. As she explained, "I don't have to be able to see to know the difference between a left turn and a right turn!" Drew nervously checked his iPhone.  If they didn't hurry up, we weren't going to get married on Valentine's day.  We sat in the gazebo in the chilly night air, while Drew's grandmother stayed toasty in the limo.  Several couples got married ahead of us as we waited (about 15 minutes).  Even in the middle of the night, there was a steady line of the too young and inebriated getting married on Valentine's day in Vegas.  Our Little Chapel of the West married more than 80 couples in that one day. As I recall, we were the 86th.  

Eventually grandma's car pulled into the parking lot.  It had hardly come to a stop, when I saw my father jump out and race to the chapel doors.  We of course weren't in the chapel yet. The couple ahead of us was, and if he hadn't eventually heard us shouting then he wouldn't have barged in on their wedding.

Well from there those of you who watched our wedding via webcam know the story.  It was about 2 minutes long, our pastor looked like Chubbs in Happy Gilmore, and the memorable moment was when he said that it was time to exchange the rings, and Drew and I turned to him and said, "We don't have any rings!" But then Drew pulled a loner ring from my grandmother out of his pocket and smiled and gave his vows to me. I didn't get to give Drew my vows since I didn't have a ring, I guess. And in a flash it was over. We were Mr. and Mrs. Wilson! 

Back at the Tropicana, Mom stayed in the hotel room with Owen who had incidentally slept until right before the ceremony when the usher tried to move his stroller out of the aisle.  He chugged a bottle in Aunt Maryanne's lap through the entire ceremony.  

After the wedding, Drew and I wandered around the strip for a couple hours, shared Krispy Kream Donut holes (our wedding cake of sorts), and at 4 am when Owen was waking up for his next feeding we headed back to our room.

We snuggled in bed the three of us, a legal family as sanctioned by the State of Nevada, exhausted and fulfilled. We had just completed the Great Race to the Altar and were beginning the next phase of the rest of our lives, a family forever.

The Weigh In

While we were at the doctor for my check up today, we weighed Owen. With his diaper and clothes on, he weighed 12 pounds and 7.9 ounces.  And of course he is nursing while I type this.

The Hungry, Hungry Baby Gremlin

Owen two weeks ago demonstrating some serious chub. In his defense, it is a very unflattering angle.

Owen smiling in the bath with Dad this weekend

When Owen was born at 7 pounds 1 ounce, I thought perhaps he would be a lean baby like his cousin Lucienne.  His legs were even too skinny for the newborn diaper covers that were meant to fit the tiniest babies.  Well that is certainly no longer the case. As you might have read in our previous blog entry, Owen has replaced sleep at night with marathon nursing sessions that have resulted in some serious chub. We all swear that he actually wakes up from a nap fatter. How is this possible?  He is nursing the entire time he is sleeping, which means that mom is not sleeping at all. I usually pride myself in learning my students' names right away, but this semester I don't seem to have the brain cells to remember much of anything, let alone 60 names.  It now appears that Owen will take after Drew in the chub department.  I wasn't a skinny baby either. The neighborhood kids called me Cheeks.

We call him a gremlin because the entire time he is nursing and sleeping he makes these guttural/nasal grunting noises that sound like a gremlin munching electronics in the middle of the ngight.  This doesn't bother me since I have already abandoned the hope of sleep at night, but Drew and Laila aren't fans of this development.  

Owen is gooing and giggling up a storm these days. He wakes up with the biggest smile on his face cooing, unless he's famished. In that case, he will cry "nuh! nuh! nuh!" or "hungeeeee!"  which of course we translate into "nurse" or "hungry." Yes this may be a creative leap, but my mom swears that he is saying nurse or hungry, but the skeptic should keep in mind that she sees faces in banana bites and any number of animals in the contours of clouds. No she doesn't take psychedelic drugs, in case you were wondering. She's just an artist.  It's where I get my flare for the dramatic.

For all the sleepless nights, you would think that Owen is sleeping all day, but in fact he isn't.  Mommy was a serious nap resister, and at 9 weeks Owen has started a grass roots organization to unite with babies everywhere to resist the oppressive sleep regimens imposed by weary parents. Vive le resistance. Their logo is of the single baby fist raised in defiance from the prison bars of the crib.  

In all seriousness, Owen began his radical education (sorry republican relatives) by attending two lectures this past week given by Keith Harmon Snow, who has been working as an independent journalist and human rights witness in the Congo.  His work can be found at www.allthingspass.com and more information about the Ugandan genocide and civil war in the Congo can be found at www.cegun.org.  Unfortunately we learned that these conflicts are being fueled by Western corporate interests.  I am hoping to have my English classes this summer do a service learning project with the Campaign to End Genocide in Uganda Now, which ties in perfectly with the global reader and its emphasis on colonialism and globalization that I currently use.  

In other news, we are still waiting for Drew's surgery to be scheduled. Will keep everyone posted.