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.