We've Moved!

Check it. The Baby O blog has moved to Letting Our Light Shine.

But don't fret! Be sure to update your bookmarks and follow us at this new address: www.lettingourlightshine.blogspot.com.

Disney "Dream" Vacation

Well, we not only survived our first major vacation (including air travel) with Owen, but we had a blast! Can't say enough good things about the Disney Dream cruise ship. It was beautiful and amazing! I've never been on a cruise before, so I can't make any comparisons (I've never even been to a Disney park, for that matter), but everything just seemed so well thought out (and clean!)

We left last Wednesday on a direct flight from Moline to Orlando. I was very worried about how Owen would behave on the plane, but he did great! Thankfully, the flight was just under 3 hours long and actually seemed to fly by (pardon the pun). I relied on a few of the items out of his carry-on bag to entertain him, but by far, the most useful were snacks and the DVD player (with a Yo Gabba Gabba disc, of course.) Having his car seat on the plane (a decision we agonized over for a few weeks) proved to be a smart move. He seemed to understand that he had to stay in there and didn't even really fuss about wanting to get out.

We stayed in Orlando that day/night (hanging out at the hotel with the rest of the Peterson clan) and then caught a shuttle to Port Canaveral Thursday morning. Mickey Mouse was there to greet us at the port terminal and we were fortunate enough to see him show up just as a line started forming to meet him. We jumped right in and Owen was lucky enough to meet the big man nearly right away. Here he is holding hands with "Mimi."

Check out this amazing ship... It is gigantic!

It wasn't long before we started seeing more Disney characters. As you can see from this shot with Goofy, Owen was not afraid to just reach out and say hi!

Day 2 on the ship brought us to Nassau in the Bahamas. We debarked for a little while, but since we didn't have any excursions booked that day, we headed back onboard pretty quickly to take advantage of the ship's pools and water slide.

Owen enjoyed splashing around in the shallow part of the pools even though he was not technically allowed in them. (They have a rule against non-potty trained kids in the pools.) Only his feet touched the water (well, except for maybe once or twice when he decided to sit down and, really, what was I gonna do?) so I figured it was ok.

The ship (it is SO amazing!) has a movie theatre that plays various Disney movies (of course!), several restaurants and other dining options, nightclubs, kid zones designed for kids of different ages, a fireworks display one night, lots of different "shows" going on all over the ship, and a full theatre (which seemed to me about the size of the Adler Theater in Davenport). We certainly did not get to do or see everything there was to do and see (partly because it was only a 3-night cruise, and partly because we have a toddler), but we did see two of the three shows - Villains Tonight and Believe. They were late shows - 9:00, which is late for Owen anyway - but he seemed to enjoy them, particularly the music and dancing!

Day 3 took us to Disney's own private island, Castaway Cay, which was gorgeous and super fun! Right away, we met another old friend, Pluto.

We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon on the beach. Owen did not care for the sand under his feet at first. When I tried to set him down, he would lift up his feet and say, "owwww!" as if it hurt (which I am certain it did not.) So I just plopped him down on his bottom and gave him a shovel and eventually, he started to play in it, piling sand up on his legs.

There was also a splash area for little kids where water shot up from lots of different spouts in the ground and, OMG...I mean to tell you, my kid was squealing with delight! He went bonkers for it! He was giggling and running around as if it was the greatest thing he'd ever experienced. I took him back a second time to try get video of the pure joy that so melted my heart, but of course the video did not accurately capture his giddiness, so I did not bother to post. But here's a pretty cute photo anyway. I think we will be getting out the sprinklers in the backyard this summer.

So, I'm skipping over a lot of other details aboard the ship - like the exquisite food, very comfortable (and surprisingly not as cramped as anticipated) living quarters, and extremely friendly and helpful staff. But needless to say, this was a vacation that we shall not soon forget (ok, well maybe Owen will. In fact, sadly, I'm sure he already has.) But we greatly appreciate the Petersons for splurging on this family trip and owe them a big fat THANK YOU!!!

We debarked on Sunday morning and, since our flight home wasn't until Monday, we had another day to kill. Completely unlike Ryan and me, we hadn't actually made any definite plans for how to spend that day. We'd tossed around a few ideas, but eventually decided that morning to just spend the day at Disney's Magic Kingdom. I am proud to say that after 30-something years, I have now been to Disney World!

Owen did not appreciate the long lines to get on the rides (does anyone?) and had a tantrum (or ten!) while waiting in them, but he did rather enjoy the rides themselves.

Despite his distant look in the photo above (he refused to smile for pictures that day), he enjoyed the teacups, It's a Small World ride, Aladdin's magic carpet ride, and a Winnie the Pooh ride, as well as pizza, hot dogs, and ice cream. It is "the happiest place on earth," right?

Sleep deprived as could be after several days of disruption to his normal schedule, he hung in there and did take a short nap in his stroller.

The last "ride" we took him on was the train, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Again, you'd never guess it from this photo, but he loved every minute of the ride around the park and stared wide eyed at all the scenery as it passed by, "choo-choo"-ing along the whole time.

Finally, we ended the day by watching Disney's electrical parade (and eating corn dogs and french fries!) - another favorite moment for Owen. He watched with glee as each lighted float passed by and he danced along to the music from his front-row stroller seat. They finished the parade off with an awesome fireworks display (which we watched from outside the park because Ryan was in a hurry to "beat the crowd"). All in all, a very good day.

Indeed, a very good vacation!

V-Day Update

Sorry for the sporadic blog posts lately. We've been busy around here! The weekend after our painting project, Ryan tackled a new one for us - kitchen tile backsplash. It took a little longer than expected, but otherwise went fairly smoothly. I give Ryan ALL the credit (he did awesome!), though I helped keep Owen away from the mess, which was a pretty big job in itself! We are delighted with how it turned out!

And for the big reveal....our kitchen is finally complete! (Oh, except for those shiny, new, stainless steel appliances we hope for someday.)

Here's a "before" from when we first moved in.

(Well, even this isn't a completely accurate "before" shot. We had already replaced the gaudy, brass overhead light fixtures and tacky cabinet hardware here, but I don't have an earlier photo of the kitchen than this one.)

In other news, Owen has another cold. (Dear winter, we are DONE with you! Go away already!) Apparently his cold symptoms manifest as gunk in and around his eyes, poor baby! He looks much worse than I think he feels, though.

He's into climbing now. He's expert at getting up on things, but hasn't quite mastered the getting down part. Ugh.

Getting jazzy with buddy Matthew (and Mom's pal, Mary with baby Owen [oh yes, it's true!] in the background.)

Two fun activities - coloring and eating Hershey Kisses - sadly, don't mix well.

We've recently discovered the joy of balloons!

And we attended Owen's very first Hawkeye sporting event - a (lost) basketball game.

He espcially enjoyed all the clapping and cheering. Fun stuff!

It's hard to keep up with all of Owen's new vocabulary because he will really attempt to say most words now, but here are a few worth noting:

• Elmo - "Eh-Oh" (which is distinctly different from "uh-oh.")
• Help - "How"
• Kinnick - "Kiki"
• There you go... - "Dehgo" (which, apparently, is something I say often, as in, "You can do it, there you go.")
• Water - "Wah"
• Thank You (sort-of) - "Day-day"
• Please - "Peeeee!"
• Snack - "Sack"
• Color - "Cuh"
• Bird - "Bird"
• Car - "Car"

We leave for our Peterson family Disney Dream cruise on Wednesday. I am VERY nervous about the flight primarily, but think I've done as much prep work as I can at this point. (I have a bag of tricks fully stocked to hopefully alleviate any major tantrums aboard the plane.) Pictures and details to come upon our return next week.

Happy Valentine's Day all!

Painting project

As promised, here's the finished product after a weekend of major painting...

Before

After

Here's a slightly better picture of the actual color,

but truthfully, the walls look completely different in all kinds of light. During the daylight hours, I get a little bummed because the color is so bland-ish and really not all that different from what it used to be (especially for all the work that went into it!) But in the evening when the artificial lights come one, I love the rich, but still subtle greenish "greige" (to borrow a term from my sister) that appears. It really looks sharp!

We painted the living room, kitchen, and hallway (our main living areas). All of that space has beautiful white crown moulding, two large window bays (7 windows total), two built-in shelving units, a fireplace, kitchen cabinets, and a total of 8 doorways, all of which needed to be taped and hand-painted around. The entire project took about 20 hours, including prep time (i.e. TAPING trim, spackling cracks, etc.) We used 5 rolls of Frog Tape (which I highly recommend. It is the BEST anti-bleed painters tape!), 4 gallons of paint, 2 roller brushes, and various other materials, much of which we already owned. Total cost was $145.72, not including the nine different sample cans (at about $3 a can) purchased in the weeks leading up to our color selection.

All in all, it was worth it. I am glad that we decided to do it ourselves instead of paying a professional painter. And, on the plus side, it makes all future painting endeavors (because I now officially have the bug!) seem like a piece of cake. A big thanks to both sets of grandparents for taking Owen off our hands for the weekend so we could get this done. There is absolutely NO way it would have happened with him around.

Here's the little guy enjoying an oatmeal raisin cookie, feet up in his high chair, watching Yo Gabba Gabba, no doubt. He truly rules this roost!

Feeling inspired

As I stare at the blank walls around me (smattered with various paint swatches in completely random places), in preparation for the weekend-long painting extravaganza ahead of me, I can't help but daydream about all the other rooms in this house that need some color and pizazz. The previous homeowners must have either been extremely non-committal, or they really, really liked beige, (I'm betting on the latter) because every room in this house is utterly, boringly, beige.

(That is, except for Owen's room, which received a fun makeover before he ever stepped foot in it!)

Anywho...the color we decided on for the kitchen/living room/hallway (our main living areas) is called "Castle Path" and it is what I consider (and hope will be!) a "safe" color. (It is the kinda gray-ish one on the left, right above the light switch in the picture above.) We are working in a large area of the house that everyone who comes into our home will see, so I'd rather not go too bold (although it MUST be bolder than beige!) I figure we can always accessorize with other things (like our dark wood floors, dark granite counters, and dark leather furniture - hardly "accessories," but it's what we're working with here, people.)

There are three little rooms off of the main living area - a front entryway, a small bathroom, and the laundry room - that are not being painted this weekend. I am excited, however, because I think I can do something really fun in those three areas. I've been looking at other blogs for all kinds of decorating ideas and am in love with this.

Fun, right? I found this stencil here.

Stenciling a whole room will probably be more work than the hubs will approve of, but I think I can probably handle it on my own. I am thinking of doing this (or something like it) in the front entryway, which is a pretty small space. We'll see how it goes.

Maybe I outta get this weekend's project out of the way first. Pictures to come...

18 months (warning: long post)

Here are Owen's latest stats from his 18-month check-up a couple weeks ago.

Height: 32 1/4 inches (44th percentile)

Weight: 26 lb., 12 oz. (60th percentile)

Head Circumference: 48.3 cm (63rd percentile)

Pretty average! (Although I think he's pretty extraordinary!) Here are some of his latest accomplishments:

New words creep up every day, so it's getting hard to document them all, but here are a few I have noted recently:

• "Chee" (i.e., "cheese") - mostly accompanied by a great big grin for a photo!
• "Chaya" (i.e., "chair") - he LOVES climbing into all chairs, particularly those that are kid-sized. I've been thinking about getting him one of those adorable leather wingback chairs for his next birthday.
• "Baa" (i.e., "bath") - which he now really loves! He tries to climb in the tub whenever we're in the bathroom. He does still HATE having water poured over his head, though.
• "Beh" (i.e., "bread") - a favorite at dinner time.
• "Chewww" (i.e., "Cheerios") - a staple in our house.
• "Awtaaa!" (i.e., "Awesome!") - a la DJ Lance on Yo Gabba Gabba! ("Listening and dancing to music is...Awesome!")
• "Ppp-ppp" (i.e., "poo poo") - I thought he might be an early adaptor to potty training since he seemed to recognize when his pants were dirty by repeating me when I asked him if he had poo poo. Turns out, he says it when he toots, too! He actually has no idea what it means, I'm afraid.

The other day, he handed me his book, Tickle Monster, and then lifted up his shirt to reveal his tummy (ready to be tickled!) and slowly started backing away from me. We never actually make it all the way through this book, but he sure is fun to tickle anyway!

Lately, I find Owen "reading" books to himself. He likes to sit and flip the pages back and forth and spout off a bunch of gibberish that I have to assume is his way of "reading." It is SO cute! I haven't captured it on video yet, but I'm working on it.

And speaking of video, here's a funny (albeit kinda gross) one I took of him tonight, enjoying his after-dinner dessert, butterscotch pudding with bananas. We are working on perfecting his use of utensils, but we've got a long way to go!

Quite the domestic gentleman, Owen watches Mommy doing lots of things that he likes to try, too. Like wiping down stuff. Give the boy a paper towel and he will go to town wiping down all sorts of surfaces – like the carpet, the cabinets, the piano bench, his toys, etc.

Here, we see him "reorganizing" the kitchen utensil bucket. This is a new favorite pastime that I like to make use of to occupy him while I'm cooking dinner.

Putting items inside something and then taking them out (repeatedly) continues to be a favorite hobby for Owen. Tonight, he discovered a deck of playing cards in a little tin box. Oh, boy!

As I've mentioned before in a previous post, I have pretty much stopped reading all the emails and books updating me on what milestones my child should have reached by now and what new activities I should be working on with him. However, I do still receive these emails and occasionally I will glance at one. Last week I discovered that (gasp!), Owen should be proficient in his crayon coloring skills by now. (That is to say that he should be moving beyond drawing random lines and begin drawing "discernible shapes.") I felt a little ashamed to admit that I had really never even given him crayons to practice with up until now. I did try once or twice, but the crayons always went right into his mouth, so I figured he just wasn't ready yet. Anyway, I've been trying a lot harder this past week and, although he still prefers to eat the crayons than draw with them, he does ask me to color ("cuh, cuh"), and will occasionally make a few random scribbles on the page. Hardly the level that babycenter tells me he should be at, but I can't blame him for that. Maybe I ought to go back to reading those emails, huh?

Or maybe I don't really need the extra stress.

I had been debating for a while whether or not to document on this blog what I'm about to say. (And I actually decided to go ahead with it some weeks ago, but just kept forgetting. Plus, most people who read this know anyway.) Here goes...

On our anniversary (New Year's Eve), we were over at my parents house, picking up Owen after his sleep-over with Grandma and Papa. After changing his diaper upstairs, I let him start down the steps, which is something he's been doing (by sliding down on his tummy) for some time now. He sort of got off at a weird angle and, as I bent down to try to straighten him out (I was still in front of him at the top of the stairs, about to make my way to the step below him), he just started tumbling down, down, dowwwwwwn the stairs. (Boy, this is really hard to type out because I've been trying to avoid replaying it in my head ever since.) My parents live in a two-story house, so this was a full flight (probably 16 steps, or something like that) and I watched in complete horror as my little baby tumbled sideways over, and over, and over, and over, and over, until he abruptly stopped (with a bounce or two to the head) on the vinyl-floored landing below. And then it was over.

I (the only one who witnessed the terrifying event) remember weird details about it - like how I kept thinking in my head, "stop, stop, STOP!," but just kept saying screaming, "oh my God, ohmyGod, OHMYGOD!" And how I was reaching out, wanting my go-go gadget arms to magically extend far enough so I could grab him. As it was, I somehow ended up at the bottom of the stairs (still don't remember getting there), freaking out in a way I have never freaked out before. I thought for sure there must be blood gushing out of his skull and he was never going to be my same sweet little boy. I insisted that he go to the ER, although I, myself, was in no condition to drive him. After a LOT of consoling (me) and urging (Ryan) to take him to the hospital, we all got in the car and went. By the time we left, Owen was no longer crying and actually seemed fine. He played with the toys in the waiting room and, although he did not like being examined by the nurses or doctor, he behaved quite normally the whole time. Long story short, he was fine. Nary a scratch or bump on him (save for one small bruise on his leg).

I, on the other hand, am not the same. Immediately afterward, I went through a brief period of shame, remorse, and complete self-loathing. I was embarrassed to tell anyone about it, I did NOT want to talk about it with those that did know about it, and I was convinced that I should not be responsible for the care of this child. I cried out to God, feeling guilty, unworthy, and scared. I had long talks with Ryan, my mom, and God. Then, nearly two weeks later, I (tentatively) shared the story with a group of other mom friends and, low and behold, learned that several of them also experienced a child falling down the stairs (or some other similar accident). They all reacted to my story with lots of "pshhh, that's nothing" type of comments. It made me feel TONS better. I know that I am human, flawed, and will always make mistakes while raising this child. But I feel redemption in knowing that I do the very best I can, and am immensely grateful that Owen was completely unharmed (and will likely never remember any of it!)

But I am not the same. I feel more cautious now, particularly about potential falls. I have a hard time taking my eyes off of him at play dates and I can't get the image of him toppling down those stairs out of my head. I have nightmares about it, actually. But maybe that's good. Maybe I needed a reminder to be vigilant about keeping after him. He is so delicate and precious. But so daring and FAST!

Dear Lord, please watch over Owen and keep him out of harm's way. And please provide his mama with the wisdom to protect him to the best of my ability and the strength to handle the bumps and bruises along the way.

Martha vs. Mary

Exactly three times in the past week, the Biblical story of Martha and Mary has been presented to me in one way or another. I knew I had read this story before (it is very short!), but I had never really given it very much thought. But just now, after the third time in one week that it has crossed my consciousness, I am beginning to wonder if God is trying to tell me something.

Am I being too much like Martha and not enough like Mary? Of course I am! That's obvious. But how do I switch that around? I know I should expend more time and effort on developing relationships with others, spending time in the Word, and hearing God's message for me, than on cleaning my bathroom (which I should be doing right now), preparing meals, and paying the bills. BUT, those latter things all need to be done, too. Today, I am searching my heart to find a way to balance the "Mary" and "Martha" aspects of my life. Suggestions are welcome. :)