Owen and the Rhino

Happy Easter

Today someone asked me, "does Owen make you happy?"


Yes, of course he does... but why? I've been thinking about that all day, trying to figure out exactly why he makes us so happy. There are a few different reasons. For one, we love him, and he loves us back, and it's a wonderful thing to be building a loving family. Also, he's a lot of fun. Watching him play, explore the world, and learn new things is hugely entertaining. But the biggest reason is simply that he is happy, and his happiness is contagious.

What a difference a year makes

I remember so clearly, a year ago today, celebrating Owen's first month-day. I dressed him up in his St. Patrick's Day onesie for a photo shoot, and it was so exciting that he was awake and alert for the whole thing. At that time, it was hard to get a good shot of him because he was asleep all the time. Now, it's hard to get a good one because he's always on the move - and if there's a camera, he's usually lunging at it and crying because he can't have it. But here is Owen today, and Owen a year ago, wishing you a very happy St. Patrick's Day!

Leaps and bounds and steps and words

Owen started saying "mama" and "dada" to us yesterday and kept it up today. He is so clever, he even knows which is which! He's really in the middle of a language explosion - he can point to the nose of his stuffed dinosaur if you ask him to, he has continued to acquire new animal sounds and uses for them (like roaring at a picture of a lion that is roaring), he can walk to different rooms on command - the list goes on and on.

Hang on, did I say "walk"? Well, as it turns out, yes... Owen can walk... sort of. As with many of his newly acquired skills, though, it's not quite happening the way I expected. He can walk, but... he can't stand. He will freely let go of a support and walk up to 10 steps to another support. But if there's nothing there to catch him (or for him to use to catch himself), then down he goes. His balance isn't quite up to keeping his center of gravity over stationary feet, but he's absolutely fearless and a silly little inability to stand just doesn't get in his way. I guess it's really true that all babies develop differently!

What does the baby say?

Owen had his 1 year checkup this week. Between the measurements (31.5 inches, 21 lbs 9 oz) and the shots ("WAAAAH!") the doctor wanted to know what he's been up to. "What's he saying?" turned out to be a difficult question. He says "down", as I posted before. What other words does he have? Well, what counts as a word? "What does the cow say?" was such a success that within days he had learned to not only moo like a cow, but baa like a sheep, roar like a tiger (and a dinosaur), click like a dolphin, wail like a siren (he's a city baby, after all), open and close his mouth soundlessly like a fish, meow like a cat, hiss like a snake, and sing a song ("la la la"). We taught him some of these tricks, and some he learned at daycare. We try to pair the sounds with pictures, so now, for example, he says "baa" not only when we ask him what the sheep says, but also when he sees the picture of the sheep in his bedtime book. The noises are clearly starting to take on meaning, as he learned last weekend to say "aaa" (either "cat" or "meow", we're not sure which) whenever he saw Nana's cat.

Most startling of all, a few weeks ago he picked up a fire engine puzzle piece and starting wailing like a siren. We were shocked. Nana had taught him that the noises he hears outside at night were sirens, but here he was visually identifying the source of the noise, which we had never taught him. More than that, he had generalized; having been trained on "what does the siren say?" I was so impressed by his identification of the puzzle piece that I asked him later that night "what does the fire engine say?" and he wailed again. Figuring that someone must have taught him this, we asked his daycare teachers, but they hadn't either. They did point out, however, that they regularly go for walks past fire engines, so he could have figured it out himself. And so he has. He has grasped the connection between the mysterious noises outside his bedroom window, the big red trucks that go by making the same noises, the picture of that big red truck on a puzzle piece, and the words "siren" and "fire engine".

For the record, when the doctor asked, we said he had two words, "down" and "cat". For all that that siren noise communicates to his scientist parents about his consciousness, thought processes, and capacity for representational language - in the end, it's still just a siren noise!

Happy 1st Birthday Owen!

Happy Valentine's Day!

This year I have two sweethearts... lucky me.

The baby in the mirror is growing up!

Still cruisin'

Lots of the pictures we take of Owen don't actually look that much like him - the camera angle is strange, or he's making a weird face. But this one does. This is just exactly what he looks like these days. Potbelly and all!

What's up - and down - with Owen

Owen has become an expert "cruiser" - pulling himself up on furniture and walking along holding onto things. He's less dependent on us for his constant walking, since between cruising and crawling he can get almost anywhere he wants. He seems very close to walking on his own, but first he has to learn to stand still unassisted, and that's proving to be a deal breaker - why stand when you can walk? With the newfound mobility come the inevitable bumps and bruises (you can see some on his nose in the picture to the right). He has also grown 4 teeth - one a week for the past month. It's a hard time for him, but we can't help but be grateful for the extra snuggling that this normally fiercely independent baby is allowing us.

Perhaps the most exciting recent development is what appears to be the very beginnings of spoken language. Owen hadn't shown any interest in talking - again, why talk when you can walk? And then a few weeks ago, we learned that his friend Meredith was saying "duck." This caused a minor panic as we realized that Owen had probably never even heard the word duck. So as the overeager parents we never thought we'd be but we have of course become, we immediately made sure his ducks joined him for his baths, and changed the way we talked to him and read books to him, focusing on simple nouns, especially the names of his favorite things, and repetition. We've been working on duck (not just Meredith's, but also my first word), doggie, cat, cow, sheep, bath, book, bottle, mirror, light, and of course, mama and dada. This week, though, I was playing one of his favorite games with him, where we lift a toy "up up up" in the air and then drop it "down, " and he started saying "daaaan" when he dropped the toy. It was hard to tell, because he says "da da da" almost all the time, especially when he's happy, but it sounded a little different and he seemed to be doing it appropriately. There's now no question that he says "down," both when he drops a toy, and when he wants you to drop one. He also answers the question "what does the cow say?" with a very sweet little "moo."

Now that he's mastered the concept of "down" and the vocalizations of bovine creatures, we're hoping he'll put some effort into figuring out "mama" and "dada".