A Couple of Firsts and Owen version 5.5

At 17 months, Elliott has officially entered into my favorite age range: 15 months to 3 years. During this time, babies become toddlers and then preschoolers. Their personality emerges and blossoms, they learn at break-neck pace and are nearly always happy. Every day is something new. And the language development! That is the most interesting thing to witness. They understand so much and try so hard to get all those mouth muscles under control to say what they're thinking. The simplest actions and words turns into games like peek-a-boo and bye-bye. Elliott's bye-bye game is getting into the kitchen cabinet, saying bye-bye and closing the cabinet door. He'll do it over and over and think he's the cleverest kid in the world.

At 16 months I realized it was well past time for Elliott to start using eating utensils. It's not that I didn't ever let him try. I did. A few times. It's that he made such a huge mess and didn't get very much into his mouth. I don't have time in the mornings to give him a bath after painting himself head to toe in yogurt. So I figured I would wait a little while until he had better fine motor control to let him try again. My plan worked! He's starting to use a fork and spoon without bathing himself in food. Yippee! He has some trouble loading the fork and spoon but at least he's getting it from bowl to mouth without much problem. It's one small step for Elliott and one giant leap for me. I can do other things while he eats his own oatmeal! Oliver and Owen could use utensils much earlier but I had more time to work with them. And really, so what? It's not like he'd end up going to kindergarten not knowing how to use them. But it's one of those milestones we mommies are proud of. Elliott still has so little hair though that he looks like a baby pretending to be a big kid when he uses a spoon.





Oliver was recently in his first stage production at school. It was a musical version of Rumpelstiltskin brought by the Missoula Children's Theater. It only resembled the original story in the vaguest way because they had to stretch it and contort it to accommodate about 50 kids. This version had a king, a queen, a jester, 2 knights, 10 gnomes, 10 or 11 bees and whole bunch of villagers and of course, Rumpelstiltskin. Oliver was one of the bees. The bees had a couple of songs (no lines) and basically provided the "cute" factor as they were all the youngest players. Brian and I were thrilled that Oliver agreed to audition because the last time he was on stage for anything he nearly threw up. We simply can't have stage fright in this family! After the first live performance for the student body, Oliver realized it wasn't so scary after all and he loved all the attention he received. He wouldn't let me wash off his "bee cheeks" until right before his basketball game the following day. He's hoping for a bigger role next year and Owen can't wait to audition as well.





Owen and Oliver both love their hair now. Oliver's is getting too long actually but he thinks he looks like a rock star. He loves slinging his head around when he plays air guitar. Owen's hair is big and crazy and SO suits his personality. I finally took him to get it cut when it was standing about 6 inches off his head in every direction. And even then I had to force him into the stylist's chair! He looked so much better after the trim. So here is Owen version 5.5. (That means he's 5 and a half for those of you who don't get my pun.)