Bubble!

Owen's vocabulary is exploding. He has added at least a word a day this past week. Sometimes the words are things we've taught him, and sometimes they seem to come out of nowhere. A partial, roughly chronological list:
down
cat
up
mama
dada
nana
uh-oh
yum
baa (sheep)
that
no
light
hat
hair
banana
tree
hello
bubble
more
cracker
button
bottle
apple

Apples and trees, revisited

So I was looking at the picture I posted of Owen standing under the rhinoceros statue outside the Biolabs building, and it occurred to me that there was something familiar about it. So I dug out the old baby photos, and what do you know. I still can't tell my baby from my husband! Beyond the striking physical resemblance (cover up all but the eyes and nose to get the full sense of it), there's really something amazing about the expression and the... spirit, that just shines through. And isn't it incredible how things like hairstyles and tilts of the head can be inherited?
From left to right: Megan, Owen, Michael.

Bye bye baby, hello toddler

As I've mentioned before, for months now Owen has been sort of walking, but lacking some key elements of the skill set, like being able to stop. Yesterday morning, though, I put him down in a standing position, and instead of immediately grabbing my leg or plopping down on his bottom, he stayed standing. After a moment of careful consideration, he took off and walked into the next room, as if he'd been doing it his whole life. He kept it up all day. This afternoon I went to pick him up at the daycare, and there he was, standing in the doorway, my little toddler. We met Daddy and the three of us went to get burritos. Once there, Owen wanted to get out of the stroller, so we let him out, and he walked straight to the door. We went outside and he proceeded to walk home. He walked almost the entire way by himself - a distance of nearly half a mile. He refused any assistance, and when we picked him up to give him a break, he struggled to escape, crying "down! down!"... Owen doesn't do things by half measures. It was marvelous - a perfect way to celebrate the first warm, sunny day of the year.

Owen and the Rhino