Nap time!

How not to spend your summer vacation

We went to a remote Maine island this week for a much looked-forward to vacation with Nana. At least, that was the plan. I try to keep things positive here on the bloglet, but I am human. A timeline of our week:

Saturday - depart at 7:30 am after late night packing, arrive on island 4:30 pm. exhausted. unpack.
Sunday - it's foggy and cold, but beautiful and relaxing. take pictures outside. owen says "teeth ow" - thanks to molars (4?) pushing their way through.
Monday - owen gets sick. fever hits and climbing fast.
Tuesday - finally a sunny day - but spend it completely stressed out, on phone figuring out logistics of medical care and medicine delivery to remote island. fever spiking regularly to 103. i know an ear infection when i see one. try unsuccessfully to convince doctor from home to call pharmacy on mainland to prescribe meds that could be delivered to us on ferry. owen gets conjunctivitis in afternoon (was prepared for this, as it's been going around the daycare. have eye medicine.)
Wednesday - owen wakes with green gunk from eyes and nose all over his sweet, hot, miserable face. try, again unsuccessfully, to convince doctor from home to call pharmacy on mainland to prescribe meds for ear infection that could be delivered to us on ferry. she instructs us to go to the mainland to see a doctor, but it's too late in the day to do that. maybe owen is getting better? pack up just in case.
Thursday - not better. say teary goodbye to nana, leave at 6 am for 6:45 ferry, but it is full - i have to plead medical emergency and have doctor call to get on the boat. getting a spot on return boat seems impossible. hightail it back home to see doctor at 2pm (rather than spend all day in the emergency room and then have to drive 6 hours home). doctor says it's an ear infection (no! really?), maybe two, and prescribes sacred antibiotics.
Friday - finally some relief from the fever. spend all day trying to get an exhausted owen to sleep, but it's july 4th in cambridge and cannons are fired outside our window every 20 minutes.
Saturday - owen is much better. still cranky (did i mention he's teething), but sleeping.
Sunday - and now i'm sick.

Fortunately, all the camera saw was this (flash movie):

Feeding frenzy

Owen loves to feed himself these days. Not surprisingly, dinner is usually followed immediately by a bath. Especially when he eats macaroni and beef with tomato sauce.

Summer solstice

Here we are, kicking off the summer by watching the sun set on the longest day of the year.

Many thanks to Leigh, photographer extraordinaire!

A baby human

Learning to walk and talk are big events in the life of 1+ year old, and most developmental checklists seem to focus on those areas. But it seems to me that there's another way in which Owen has been making huge strides recently, and it's also one that reflects his status as a baby human: tool use. At first we thought he was just really into personal grooming - he loves to brush his teeth and his hair, for example. But he also really gets a kick out of using spoons and bowls. And like all babies, he loves keys, cellphones and remote controls. It's obvious with some of these items why they might be appealing in their own right - sometimes the TiVo remote makes a great noise! - but babies don't just like them, they are obsessed with them.

Owen has discovered a new favorite object to be obsessed with - nail clippers. I'm lucky if I can clip one nail before he wrests them from my grasp. At first I never let him have them, because I was worried he'd cut himself. I eventually gave in after a particularly vigorous struggle, to watch what he would do. He very carefully touched them to each of his toes, one at a time. We started saying "click" each time he moved to a new toe and he laughed and laughed, looking at us with a look that said, "that's right, that's what I'm trying to do!" and now he says "click" while he does it. "Clipping" his toenails is something that absorbs him for several minutes, attracting all of his focus and bringing him great joy.

Suddenly it is clear to me that these obsessions are about more than personal grooming, fun gadgets, or imitating Mommy and Daddy. They're about Owen establishing himself as baby human, tool user.

... but enough about us!

When we started the bloglet, I really didn't think it would last very long. I thought you'd get bored with it; I thought I'd run out of things to say. But it's been over a year, and here we all still are. We're thrilled that it's given us a way to keep so many of you up to date about our adventures with Owen. But we want to know more about you. Do you have a blog? Send us the link (or post it to the comments), and we'll add it to the new linklets section on the right. (Even if you think we already know the link, please drop us a line and let us know it's OK to post it.)



Update: Of course it doesn't have to be a blog - any website or flickr account you're willing to share will do!

More! More!

Owen still uses some signs to communicate, which we taught him back before he could talk. His favorite one, depicted at warp speed in the animated picture, is "more". He now says it and signs it simultaneously, and is very careful to do it well, since it seems to be the most important concept in his life. With just a wave of the hands, and a sweet little sound "moa! moa!", he is able to get us to keep doing whatever it is that we're doing to make him happy. He almost always means more food, more singing, or more bubbles. His first two word combination was "more bubbles", followed quickly by "more milk" - which was interesting because he can't say milk, he can only sign it (squeezing his hand like he's milking a cow). Update: I slowed the animation due to popular demand... hope it's less frightening now!

O-O-O-Owen & O-O-Obama

More than a few of you have noted the conspicuous absence of political references here on the bloglet. Don't be fooled - we are just as obsessed as you would expect us to be with this exciting primary season. I've resisted all temptation to mention it until now, but alas, I have my limits. On Friday we learned that Barack Obama had agreed to step in and give Wesleyan University's commencement address since Teddy Kennedy was, sadly, not able to appear as scheduled. With us being huge Wesleyan fans, and huge Obama fans, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to spend this gorgeous Memorial Day Sunday on Andrus field. It was a day filled with beautiful memories of my own graduation (can it really have been 12 years ago?)...

the joy of watching Owen explore a campus that still feels like home...

and the thrill of seeing and hearing the next President of the United States.

...extra points for anyone who can name a faculty member (or count the undercover secret service agents) in the picture above!

Also check out a more official writeup here.

May showers

Those of you with an eye for these things might have noticed that I got a new camera, which means lots of new, higher quality photos of Owen. Soon I hope to be good enough at using it to be able to take fewer than 140 pictures of him splashing in a puddle before I'm confident that I got some good ones. For now, though, it's very useful that when he likes something, he enjoys doing it again and again and again!

Head, shoulders, knees and toes...

Owen has been learning his body parts. He loves the song "Head, shoulders, knees and toes," and would be happy if we sang it to him all day. I happened to have the camera in hand the very first time he did the motions himself, after some training from Daddy. If we sing very slowly, he can switch from his head to his toes by the end of the verse (leaving out the more advanced shoulders and knees, for now).