New Year, New Followers Blog Hop!

We're participating in a really freaking awesome blog hop this weekend! Click the button below and go check out some of the best blogs I've come across.

I guarantee laughter and lots of cute babies.

Now, shoo! Go follow these blogs!

And Happy New Year!

Owen's First Christmas

Obviously, I did something super wrong last week and accidentally deleted all of my images. I'll be working on it as I can over the weekend. Until then, enjoy this post (with pictures!).


Owen's first Christmas was awesome. I don't even really know what else to say about it, except that it was my favorite Christmas ever. Seeing him experience it all was so much fun.

On Christmas Eve, we went to Grandma and Grandpa's (Ross's parents) house.  Owen wore a sweater vest. (Who put me in charge of dressing a child?)

Thumbs up to Christmas!

Riding his new fire truck from his great-grandma.

Trying to figure out the ball popper from Grandma and Grandpa

New hat from Aunt Rachel. I love it because he can't figure out how to take it off.
High five for this one, Rachel :-)

The future of Racer Band?

Owen talking with Aunt Rachel

The best picture we could get of Owen & Daddy

Owen & Mommy (still holding on to that drum stick)

Laying down some beats with Grandma

Reading with Daddy

On Christmas day, we started by opening presents at home and eating breakfast (I make awesome french toast, just so ya know). 

Rupp decided to crash the Christmas Tree picture

Owen & Daddy opening gifts

He's obsessed with his activity table. He dances along with the music.

He stole the Reese's candy cane out of Ross's stocking

And the candy canes off of the tree.

After that, we ran off to Nanny and Papaw's (my parents) house. 

Reading books with Nanny

He kept looking up my dad's nose. Boys are gross. 

Pouting because I wouldn't let him break all of the ornaments. (Notice he stole Ross's stocking candy at my parents' house, too. )

Petting Big Kitty for the first time. Kitty was not amused.

My new favorite picture.

We ended the night at my aunt's house. I suck and forgot to take pictures there, but we had a ball. Owen loved all of the attention he got, and even put on a nice display of his 'tricks' while we were eating supper. 

My favorite part of that night was when my 8-year-old cousin asked me if she could borrow Owen to star in her silent movie, 'Attack of the million foot baby from OUTER SPAAAAAAACE!' 

Did I let her borrow him? Yes. 

They eventually fired him, though, because he wasn't being monstery enough or something. The best part was, they were so serious when they told him they were replacing him. 'This just isn't working out.'

I love my family.

I hope all of your holidays were as happy as ours! Now we're in the countdown (6 days) to Owen's birthday. Unreal.

Wordless Wednesday: Peek a Boo!

He's so sneaky you can't even tell there's a baby in this picture.




 

11 Months

Today my little stink is 11 months old. That's hard to swallow.

It seems like he just got here but, then again, I can't really remember what life was like before him.

My big 11 month old is too busy 'reading' to look at the camera.


 The last few days Owen has been obsessed with books. If you sit down in the floor, he automatically grabs a book and plops down in your lap. This may be my favorite phase so far. I love having him just chill and snuggle with me while we read. It's so rare that he stays still for very long anymore, so these moments are precious.

I had a big losery mom moment today. Driving to work, I was listening to a country station and 'There Goes my Life' by Kenny Chesney came on. I knew I should change the station, but didn't. I made it to the last verse (you know, the part where the kid goes off to college) before I was bawling my eyes out. I can't think about him being a grown up yet.

I can't even handle that he's going to be one in a month.

Christmas Picture Outtakes

We've talked about how much of a fail our little Christmas card photo shoot was the other day. Today, I finally got around to actually uploading the pictures.

Even though none of these will be gracing the inaugural Miller family Christmas card, I thought I'd share them anyway because, let's face it, Owen is adorable.

Yeah, the kid wouldn't even look at me. We're trying this again this week, though, so *finger crossed* maybe we'll get some decent ones.

Color me stunned: Owen behaves (mostly)

You've all read my tales of my stinker of a child and his shenannigans. Well, today he was awesome. A perfect, well-behaved child.

Except for this:

It's a miracle Rupp has not destroyed Owen by now. I have the most patient cat on the planet.

O did too many awesomely adorable things today for me to recap them all, but my favorite was when I was sitting cross-legged in the floor playing with him. He walked across the room, grabbed a book and then sat down in my lap and handed me the book. He wanted me to read to him.

We read a book about a very helpful bunny (the one he picked out) and then cycled through his wildlife board books and Aladdin. He loved every second of it.

I'm so glad I have a child who seems to enjoy books (at least so far).

The rest of the day was easy and fun. We rolled around in the floor, watched some Baby Einstein, chased each other around the living room, read some more books and made silly faces at each other. AND he took three naps. Three LONG naps. Heavenly.

I seriously have the most awesome little boy on the planet, even if he's a stinker 90% of the time.

Well, that didn't go as expected...

I had high hopes for my post today.

This was my to-do list today:
1. Make handprint ornament
2. Take picture of ornament for blog
3. Take Owen's Christmas card picture
4. Post cute pictures on blog

This is how things went down:

The Ornament
I made the salt/flour dough for the handprint ornament and stuck Owen in his high chair with some puffs to entertain/distract him. I rolled it out into a circle and then went in for the print. I honestly didn't think it would be a big deal. I figured I would distract him, grab his hand and smush it into the dough.

I was mistaken.

I grabbed his hand and pushed it into the dough. He closed his hand and ripped a chunk out of the middle (of the dough, not his hand). Well, crap.
Tried again. Same result.
I even tried pinning one of his arms under the high chair tray so I only had to deal with one grabby baby hand.
Yeah, so that's not as effective as it was a few months ago.

Eventually, I did get one alright handprint. Popped that sucker into the oven to harden.

Dammit! I forgot to poke a hole in it to hang on the tree!

I pulled it back out and it was already beginning to harden. I scraped the best hole into it that I could using one of those random little pointing things that came in our knife block (what are those things for, anyway?).

It didn't look awesome when it came out, but hopefully painting will improve it because Lord knows I'm not trying it again.

The Pictures
I wrestled Owen into his Christmas pajamas (seriously, dressing a 10 month old is the most frustrating thing on the planet). Owen, I promise no one is trying to kill you. People wear clothes. You can't just be naked for the rest of your life. It's socially unacceptable. Stop biting me!

I finally got him dressed, and then attempted to put his Santa slippers on. Nope. Not having that.

If Owen could talk, this is how that conversation would have gone:

Owen: "Hey, let me chew on those!"
Me: "No, they go on your feet."
Owen: "I'm going to chew on them, ok?"
Me: "No. Just let me put them on your feet."
Owen: "Fine, but I'm going to bunch up my toes. Good luck."

More wresting ensued.

Ok, so now the kid is dressed. I set him in the play pen and removed the Christmas tree barricade:

The barricade

 I handed him a present with a bow in the hopes that it would distract him from the tree. Then I sat him under the tree and all Hell broke loose.

First, he started tugging on a sparkly green reindeer ornament. I took it away from him. Then, he started using the present as a weapon. His was beating the Christmas tree with it.

I kept snapping pictures, hoping he would eventually turn and look at me (or that I'd at least get a cute candid shot). Nope. Nothing.

Then my camera battery died.

Sigh. I'll try again tomorrow.

I promise adorable Christmassey Owen pictures in the near future. It will happen.

I hope.

I am ashamed (not really, though)

Today I did something that I'm ashamed of.

I used hair product on Owen.

Owen woke up from his afternoon nap with the most ridiculous case of bedhead I've ever seen. His hairbrush was lost months ago, so I usually just smooth his hair down with my hand. That wasn't enough to combat this bedhead. It needed something more, so I busted out the pomade.

This was the result:

Mean face mohawk


I know, I know, it's ridiculous and cliche (I guarantee that at least 101% of parents have given their child a mohawk as a baby), but there's a reason so many people do it. It's adorable. I may do this to his hair every time I take him out in public.

I also finally got a recording of his Chewbacca noises. Ross ruined the end of it, though, so you're not allowed to judge the fact that the video ends with him saying, "They're gonna do it!" (We were, as usual, watching the Walking Dead, which is what the inappropriateness is about.)

Here are some more Owen shots from the last few days:




Drooly, smiley little guy



Mean face!



Snuggling with Daddy



Just chompin on this puff can. Nothing to see here.

And one more of the mohawk.

My Two Dudes

Ross and Owen are best friends.

There's no denying the connection they have, and I just wanted to share some of my favorite moments between the two of them.

The first picture I have of the two of them. Owen was only a few hours old here.

Having a conversation before we headed out to Grandpa's retirement party. (Almost 3 months old)

Playing at Applebees (6 months)



6 Months (Photo by Dianne Lisette Photography)

6 Months (Photo by Dianne Lisette Photography)

Like father, like son

Owen loves sitting on Dad's shoulders. He also loves pulling hair.

<3









Owen makes a mess (imagine that)

There are few phrases I hate more than, "Look what your son did."

Today I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business and watching Zombieland while Owen played on the floor. That's when Ross said it.

Look what your son did.

I'll preface this by saying that the last couple of days Owen is obsessed with opening and closing things. The door, wipe boxes, the diaper pail (ew) and apparently Gerber Puff containers.

I looked down and the floor was covered in puffs. Owen took the lid off, dumped them in the floor and then started alternating between waving his arms around like a madman and shoving puffs into his mouth. (Again, ew.)

Witness the excitement:

Owen and Ross thought this was hilarious. I'll admit, ok, it was pretty funny for a few minutes. It stopped being funny when puffs started getting crushed into the carpet.

At least Owen had a good time. He likes eating crap off of the floor, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

We Have a Walker!

If we're facebook friends or you've had the pleasure of running into me lately, you may have already seen this, but Owen took his first vertical journey across the living room last week.

Ignore my squeeling. I was obviously excited.

Since he's figured out he CAN walk it's all he wants to do.

It's so unreal to see him doing his little drunk baby walk as he follows me around the house. This new-found skill has lead to a sharp increase in Owen injuries, though. I've lost track of how many times he's gotten a little overly ambitious and fallen head-first into the coffee table. (Speaking of, does anyone have a rec for a bumper for a large coffee table? I ordered one on Amazon not long ago and it doesn't fit my massive table.)

Ross and I have been watching too much Walking Dead lately, and like to yell, "OH, NO! A WALKER!" when Owen is walking toward us. Luckily he's not old enough to understand how nerdy we are.

He has also continued to ignore me when I tell him 'no.' I had to take all of my books off of the bookshelf in the living room because I finally got fed up with him pulling all of them off. I think I may have to put all of my books on his bookshelf (which is high-up and built into the wall) and move all of his board books into the livingroom shelf. At least he can't tear those apart.

He has also been 'talking' more and more. My favorite is when he just starts yelling, "Yo! Yo! Yo!" My child is hip.

Other favorite Owen noises include (but are not limited to):

"Dee Dee Do!"
"Mum. Mum. Mum." (<---- Mom!!)
And, of course, his new Chewbacca noises. I'll make a point to try and catch those on video to share because they are freaking hysterical.

He has also spent a significant amount of time wrestling/ eating the gigantic teddy bear my mom bought him when he was born. When she brought that thing to the hospital, my first thought was, "Where the hell am I supposed to put that thing? There's no way he'll play with it." (Sorry, Momma! Love you! haha) But, as usual, my mother knew what she was doing. He will spend 15 or 20 minutes at a time rolling around in the floor with it (that's an eternity in baby attention span time).

The bad thing is that he also enjoys eating the bear. No, not chewing on it. He will literally rip mouthfuls of fur out of it. I'm constantly checking his mouth to make sure there's no bear in there. I think it's his way of asserting his dominance or something. Hell if I know. I just know it's gross.

This next part is gross. I'm warning you. It's about poop. (When you have a child, you'll realize how much of your day revolves around bodily fluids. It's awesome, let me tell ya.)

So, on Saturday the three of us went back home for a memorial service for my uncle. Owen had no pooped all day, so I brought an extra change of clothes along just in case shit went down (pun intended) while we were there.

Luckily, nothing happened while we were there. Well, we got within about 15 minutes of home when I started to smell it. There was the poop. It had arrived.

Our usual method for deciding which of us gets to change the dirty diapers is Rock, Paper, Scissors. When we got home, I told Ross that if he grabbed Owen that we could RPS when we got inside to see who got stuck with it.

When Ross brought him in, he just took him straight to the changing table and started to undress him. I was in the other room when I heard, "Oh my god. Oh... Oh my god. Oh, Brittney! This is the most poop I've ever seen!"

I ran into Owen's room to find him sitting on the changing table in just a diaper. Ross was trying not to gag. When I got closer, I saw it. The entire back side of Owen was COVERED. There was not a non-disgusting surface on the back side of his body. Now, we've dealt with messy situations like this before, but we were flabbergasted by this.

How did he do that? Where did it come from?

We stood there for about five minutes just staring at him. Thinking.

The conversation went kind of like this:

Me: "We need a plan."
Ross: "Alright. What?"
Me: "Ok, first we play rock, paper, scissors."

**insert RPS game. I lost.**

Me: "Damn. Ok. Go start him a bath then come back here and hold him up while I clean him off."

You can imagine the rest.

It took two people at least 10 minutes to change this diaper. That's how ridiculous and inhuman it was.

Owen thought it was hilarious, of course.

He also enjoyed his surprise bath. He especially enjoyed splashing Daddy.

Being a parent is glamourous.

Oh, here's a picture of Owen being pissed at me because I made him wear a stupid outfit to go play in the leaves:



WTF, Mom?



New Tricks

I swear I haven't intentionally been a blog slacker lately. Owen just makes it nearly impossible to get out my laptop.

If I do it while he's awake, he freaks out trying to grab it and rip it in half. If I do it while he's napping, he wakes up the second I get Safari open. (It's like he knows.)

He turned 10 months last week, and it feels so strange for him to be in 'double-digits.' I told Ross the other day that I won't be able to come to terms with it when he turns one. I'm just going to tell people he's 12 months old. Ross asked if I was going to do that until he graduates high school. So what if I do?

Here's a picture of my little Darth Owen in his Halloween costume:

He refused to let me get a good picture. We took him outside to get festive pictures with the pumpkins and stuff and he spent the entire time grabbing them and refusing to look at the camera. Moved him away from the pumpkins. Then he just played with leaves. I couldn't win.

We didn't actually get to do anything with him for Halloween, but we had fun dressing him up and playing in the yard.

His bag of tricks has also grown in the last couple of weeks. He's learning to associate words with actions.

When we say, "Where's your mean face?" he does this:

 The newest thing we're trying to teach him (yes, we spend our free time teaching him tricks. haha) is to throw both of his hands up in the air when we yell 'rollercoaster!' So far, it works about 50% of the time. We'll get there. ;-)

Mostly, we're just having a blast with him right now. He's always been outgoing and spunky, but his little (or big, as the case may be) personality just gets more fun every day.

He's starting initiating games with us. He has invented at least 17,000 variations on peek-a-boo.

My favorite Owen moment so far happened on Sunday. Ross and I were enjoying the day off, watching the first season of The Walking Dead. (Which was awesome.) Owen was playing happily in the floor in front of us.

After a little while he pulled up on the couch, grinned at me and then took off around the arm of the couch. He would hide behind the arm of the couch and then pop out at me. I pretended to be scared and he would crack up. It was the hardest I have ever seen him laugh.

This game went on for at least 15 minutes. It was awesome and hilarious.

Also, (and you're not allowed to judge me for this) Owen and I went on an adventure to Wally World to buy Christmas decorations yesterday. We found a new (cheap) Christmas tree (since Rupp broke ours last year) and lots of plastic (Owen proof) ornaments. Owen got a kick out of playing 'throw the ornaments out of the cart' while we were in the store, but we eventually made it out of there with about 80% of the things I originally put in the cart.

We also put up the tree yesterday (props to Ross for indulging my early Christmas spirit), and now Owen has dedicated his life to trying to destroy it.

Creative suggestions for baby-proofing the Christmas tree are greatly appreciated.

Owen has a Mean Face. And loves Gourds.

Today we took Owen to the pumpkin patch in Princeton. Not only was the place absolutely adorable, but he had a blast. He especially like trying to eat the pumpkins. We got a ton of adorable pictures, too:

Diving in to the pumpkins

Owen & Daddy

He always smiles so big for the camera. Such a little ham.

Again, smiling big for Mommy.

These pumpkins were HUGE. Owen loved standing and pounding on the tops of them.

Owen officially has a 'Mean Face.' When you tell him to do it, he scrunches up his face and snorts. It's hysterical!

Owen and Mater

Owen & Mommy with Mader

Daddy covered Owen in gourds. They both thought it was really funny. 

My child is a gourd-loving fool.

After the pumpkin patch, we went and ate pizza at Nanny and Papaw's (my parents) house. We had a great time, and Owen went to sleep nice and early when we got home. Mommy and Daddy are watching the World Series.

Today = Win