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.