Spring break, crawling and other new adventures

A few weeks ago, Brent, Myles and I went on our first family vacation for Spring Break. We drove the 1000 miles to visit Brent's sister Chrissy and her husband John in Apollo Beach, Florida. I was really concerned about how Myles would do in the car on such a long trip, but I think he actually did pretty well. Of course, he definitely had an "I'M DONE" point, but overall he was pretty good. He slept and played and slept....and eventually freaked out when he was ready to be out of the car seat. But, we were able to make the trip over the course of two days, so it wasn't tooooooo bad.


It was great to visit with Chrissy and John, and Myles had lots of fun snuggling and playing with Aunt Chrissy and Uncle John. :) On Sunday we went to the beach and Myles got to experience the sun and surf for the first time. AWESOME! He was so stinking cute in his little swim trunks and sunglasses. Adorable.



Coming home was hard, especially going back to work and sending Myles back to daycare. However, there are only 6 more weeks left of school and then we can all hang out all the time again! :)

Since we've been home, Myles has REALLY started being mobile. He's army crawling still (belly on the floor), but that kid can MOVE! He's very fast, so we really have to be on our toes at all times. He's also been trying to pull up. He can pull up pretty easily on us using our hands as leverage, but today he actually used his crib rails to pull himself up to standing in his crib! I watched the whole thing on the video monitor, which was pretty cool. I went in to get him and he just grinned this HUGE grin because he was so proud of himself. :)

He's also "talking" more and more. Dada is still his phrase of choice, but will occasionally say Mama. If you try to prompt him to say Mama, he'll usually shout DADA back at you. Not sure if he thinks he's saying Mama when he says that or if he just is telling us that he prefers to say Dada....

We just got his 9 month pictures taken and this was by FAR the most challenging photo session yet. The photographer would set him down in a sitting position and Myles would flip over and start crawling...cute, but not exactly good for a picture. Eventually she gave him a bouncy ball to play with, which kept him occupied long enough to get a few cute shots. We also took a family photo, and we had a rough time getting that one too. He's been really into sticking his tongue out lately and he did that pretty much the whole photo session. So....our family photo that we ended up with totally cracks me up. Brent and I are all cheesy and smiley and our goofy son is trying to touch his nose with his tongue.... Hmmmmm.....wonder where he gets that goofiness from???? LOL

I'm a big kid now!

In the past few weeks Myles has taken some major strides toward being a "big boy." While I am very happy Myles is growing and becoming more and more independent, it also makes me kinda sad to see some of the baby things go by the wayside. :(
1 - Myles is no longer nursing. I guess I scared him by my reaction to him biting me, so he just decided he was done. We officially now have a formula fed baby.
2 - We had to lower the mattress on the crib. He was starting to grab and pull at the top rail. Uh oh!!!
3 - The swing had to be retired. One day he was reaching up at the mobile and then decided to hang his upper body off the side of the swing to get a better view. Uh....not ok. Bye bye swing.
4 - He's moved up to size 12 months clothes. Yup...he's not even quite 8 months and he's in 12 month clothes. He's tall. Thanks Grandpa Gary :)
5 - He's now had his first official (non-cold) illness. He had a stomach bug this week. Since he's been born, I've been wondering how I would know when spit-up isn't spit-up and is actually vomit. Now I know.
6 - Myles went on a few trips to the grocery store actually sitting in the cart instead of in his car seat. We bought a "cart doily," as Brent calls it, to cover the seat of the cart so he doesn't get the bubonic plague. The cover also has a harness to help him sit when he starts to tip.
7 - He's sitting really well and for much longer periods of time before wiping out.
8 - He can army crawl....kinda. He still prefers rolling as his mode of transportation.

Bittersweet. Love that boy....

7 months

Myles is 7 month old now, which is totally hard to believe. My baby is inching closer and closer to not being a *baby*. :(

We had an ice storm a few weeks ago, and we were out of school for almost a week. During that time, Myles got to have lots of practice with sitting up, and so he learned how to sit on his own! :) This is a very fun and important milestone and we are excited to see it!



When we got his pictures taken, we also got a pic of Myles in a similar pose to a pic of Brent from infant-hood. I wish I had a scanned copy of Brent to post to compare them, but they are soooo similar!



Well, Myles is almost 20 pounds now and is in about the 85th percentile for height and weight. Big dude! He's doing very well and is enjoying all of his solids that he continues to get.

No other new news. But he's continuing to grow and get strong!

Love to you all,
Kara :)

Myles is 6 months old!

Well this past week Mister Myles turned 6 months. Time has totally flown. I seriously can't believe he is half a year old, or that in another 6 months he will be A YEAR OLD!!!

We got his picture taken for his birthday, and they turned out really well. We've been taking him to have his picture taken at Kiddie Kandids inside Babies R Us. They are really nice and produce great pictures that don't really cost all that much. No, I do not have a side job working PR for them. :)




We have been continuing solids with Myles. He is really enjoying it and is starting to lunge toward the food and try to steal the spoon. He's very entertaining. :) We're continuing cereal which so far appears to be his favorite "solid" but we've also started peas. He likes these too, but he's super picky about the temp of the peas. Not so much with the cereal - it can be stone cold and he'll still eat it. Hmmmmm.....

Yesterday we discovered that Myles is cutting his first tooth. I didn't notice this because of any of the "normal" reasons. I have a friend whose daughter is about Myles' age and her daughter is cutting two teeth, so I got curious and stuck my finger in there to feel around. Haha But I did discover a sharp thing on his lower gum and after further investigation, we found that there is indeed a tooth starting to emerge. Exciting! Not sure how this is going to effect nursing though...I predict this could be quite painful for me... But now that we KNOW Myles is teething, suddenly he is emitting buckets of drool. Was he just waiting for us to notice the tooth before starting to act like he's teething?

He's also started making some attempts at crawling. It doesn't really look so much like crawling, but he kinda face plants and then uses his legs to shove himself toward a toy that's out of reach. I don't know what's to call this since it's not exactly crawling and is kinda more like playing "wheelbarrow" with no partner. LOL

So....to try to include something non-Myles related (CLEARLY my entire world revolves around my son!), I thought I'd finish up this post with some funny tidbits of dealings with my middle school students in the past week. Both stories relate to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. since we were reading and watching some stuff about him this week to prep for his birthday.

Story 1: Brent walks into my classroom while we are reading a bio of Dr. King. He and I have a short conversation and then he leaves. A kid says, "Whoa! I didn't know you were married to him!" (Mind you, this kid has known both of us for quite a while AND knows both of our last names are Owens - duh.) Another kid hears him and turns around and yells, "OMG! You were married to Martin Luther King?!? AWESOME!" WOW. Ummmm....no. I thought the aide in my classroom was going to fall out of her chair at this point. Hahaha

Story 2: A different day, we were watching a video of clips of Dr. King. There was a clip of him walking at a rally wearing sunglasses. A kid says, "Dude! He totally looks like Kanye West!" I said, "Well, I'm not entirely sure Dr. King would've been flattered by that comparison." He didn't understand why. I finally ended with telling him that Kanye West is kind of a jerk and Dr. King was......not.

Ok, clearly I suck at updating this blog

Well....Myles is nearly 6 months old now and I'm just now getting around to updating again. WOW. I suck. In my defense, I have returned to work and have a very active little one on my hands!

So....here's what's new...I am back at work and enjoying it, though I hate that it cuts my time short with Myles. Some evenings I only get like an hour or two with him before he goes to bed, which makes me sad. :( But right now we are on winter break, so I'm getting LOTS of Myles time, which I loooooove!

Developmentally he is doing really well. He rolls both front to back and back to front and he does it a LOT. He has also started using his legs to propel himself backward while he is laying on his back. We find this quite hilarious. :) He's really verbal now and "talks" all the time. He says "dada" a lot, but I'm not sure he knows what it means, but we like to think he does. :)

We started Myles on rice cereal this week and he is getting pretty good at figuring out how to eat from a spoon. We think peas or green beans might be around the corner! Pretty soon he'll be ready for steak! (That was a joke, by the way...)

Myles had a great first Christmas and really enjoyed all of attention he got. He got a lot a great gifts, including an AMAZING toy chest that my dad MADE for him! It's beautiful!

Our five year anniversary is tomorrow. I can't believe that Brent and I have been married for five years! Time has flown. I still feel like we are newlyweds. :) My mom has graciously agreed to come babysit so that we can have an overnight date, and this will be the first time we've been away from Myles overnight. I am both very very excited and very very nervous! I know he will have lots of fun with Mimi but hope she doesn't mind sending me a bazzilion picture messages of what he's doing. LOL

Well, here are some fun pictures of Myles from recent weeks. ENJOY!

Love,
Kara :)


Myles opening his Christmas gifts




Myles' new toy chest that Grandpa built for him




Myles playing with his new toy from Grandma Betty




Myles' 5 month photo




Family photo December 2010




Myles on his new toy chest




Myles trying rice cereal for the first time - kinda messy!

Time has slipped away...

Well I haven't updated this blog in almost a month. Whoops. I really have very good intentions, but my free time has become less and less in the last few weeks. Mom stayed with us for three weeks after Myles was born, but then she had to go back to work. Then last week Brent had to go back to work. So for the last week and a half, Myles and I have been hanging out just the two of us - thus less free time (but also very enjoyable to get to chill just him and me).
So...let's see. At his 1 month appointment, Myles weighed in at 11 pounds 12.5 ounces (2 pound 10.5 ounce gain from birth) and measured 23 inches (1 inch growth from birth). He's in the 95th percentile for both weight and height - he's going to be a BIG BOY! I expect he'll be taller than both Brent and me. Here's Myles' one month picture:

Also since I last updated, Brent's younger brother Gaven, who is in the Air Force, and his wife Jillian came home on leave. It was the first time they got to meet Myles. So Myles got to hangout with Uncle Gav and Aunt Jilli - very fun. :) Of course, my camera battery died before I could get very many pictures, but here are a few.


As far as milestones go, Myles has gotten pretty good at holding his head up for several seconds when he's on his tummy and has just started to smile and laugh in response to us. Of course, Brent got him to laugh first (what would you expect when one parent is a comedian?), but I got him to do it too. :) Myles also has now taken a bottle a few times, which is new because I'm nursing. It's pretty cool for Brent to get to be involved with his feedings too, and Myles was much less confused after the first time. :)

So tomorrow I have my 6 week postpartum check up with my OB doctor, so I will officially be considered recovered from delivery. I feel really great, so it almost feels a little silly for me to need to be "released" back to activity. I've even resumed some of my cheerleading coaching responsibilities. :) But it will be nice to no longer be considered an invalid. Hahaha :)
Also happening tomorrow is the arrival of my Aunt Gayle. She is coming to visit us for about 2 weeks. I'm really looking forward to it because I haven't really had a chance to spend much time with her since my wedding week - and that was 4 1/2 years ago! I'm sure we will have some fun adventures and pictures to post later. And hopefully she can help me get the time to post them on here. :)
Alright, it could be a while before I get to post again, so to tide you over, here are a few of my favorite pictures from the last few weeks.

Two weeks old

Myles is 2 weeks old today. I can't believe it's already been 2 weeks.... In another 2 weeks Brent will have to go back to work :( Thank goodness I don't have to go back to work in 2 weeks! I met with the powers-that-be at work and I now get to take the entire first grading period off of work! So I get to stay at home with Baby Myles until October 14th! I know it will be hard to go back even then, so I'm glad I was able to postpone it for a little longer. :)

This week Myles had his first bath - I was so nervous!!! Thank God my mom is here to teach me things like that. He actually did very well and didn't cry at all. In fact, when we gave him his second bath this week, he slept through the first half of it! Haha



Myles has also found a new favorite thing: HIS SWING!!! He absolutely loves it! He is so fascinated with the mobile on it and he seems to really enjoy the motion. He coos and waves his arms while watching the sea creatures on the mobile go by. So cute. :)



On another note, we had some excitement in the house today that was not entirely revolved around the new baby. I have so far lost 27 pounds since giving birth, so I thought I would try to get my wedding bands back on. BIG MISTAKE. They did go ON (admittedly after quite a bit of work), but it became very clear very quickly that they couldn't come back off. I tried and tried, and Brent tried and tried, and Mom tried and tried, and by then my finger was purple and majorly swollen. So...we packed up Myles and went to the fire station to have my ring cut off. The firefighters were really nice and didn't laugh at me at all (at least not until I left). They cleanly cut the rings off for free even though the exact same procedure would have cost us like $500 if we'd gone to the Emergency Room. When my fingers are back to normal, I can get the jeweler to fix my rings. They did a nice clean job. :) So the moral of the story is: if you get a ring stuck on your finger, go the a fire station, not the ER. Actually, the real moral of the story probably is not to force your wedding rings back on your finger 2 weeks after you had a baby.