sweet angry Owen

Owen was on this anger kick one evening, which we thought was hilarious.  Nathan and Jared were egging him on.  Of course, the first time I tried to get it on camera, saying "show me your angry face" this is what I got:

For my dad

Still daddy's girl... just a bit older now.

It was a little hard to find some old pictures.  In particular, I was thinking of this one of my dad and I running in a race (I think I was about 6 or 7?).  We ran together most mornings throughout my childhood.  I didn't always appreciate it at the time; I had several mornings I didn't feel like getting out there to run.  But I sure appreciate it now - that foundation of discipline, of hanging in there when I felt like giving up, of working hard  and just the time with my dad.  When I finally found the picture in one of my scrapbooks, close to it was a quote about discipline.  And while it may not be the very most important thing in success in life (aside from faith), I think discipline is one of my core qualities that I learned from my dad.  He taught me to always do my best, and if I was going to do something, don't do it halfway.  That's carried over in more areas of my life than athletics and education. That discipline now helps me endure the trials of motherhood.

And it's funny (and maybe Mike will agree), I still want to get up and run in the morning.  It just seems like the right way to start the day...  ("...train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" ?)

Thanks Dad for teaching me how to work hard and endure to the end!  (And I'm blaming you though for my bad knee that's holding me back.  Somehow, I think that's your fault...don't you have a bum knee too?)   :)   But I'm pretty persistent/stubborn, so I'll figure out how to keep running.

Happy Father's Day!

We want to be just like you Dad!

Happy Father's Day!

future 6'1" ?

I've heard to predict a child's adult height, you should double their height at 2.5 years.  If that's true, then Owen may be 6'1 or 6'2.  He's almost 37" now.  Looking at on-line height predictors though, most of them estimate 5'11 - likely based on my height (5'5.5) and Alex (5'11.5).  They say that 70% is based on heredity and the other 30% is environmental factors (like exercise and eating habits).

While most predicted 5'11 for all the boys, www.babycenter.com predicted Owen's height as 6'0.  Another website (can't remember which one now) had slightly different heights - 5'11.5 for Nathan, 5'9.3 for Jared, and 5'11.6 for Owen.  That seems the most fitting to me, as I think Jared is a little bit shorter for his age than Nathan and Jared.

Anyway, we'll let you know in about 15.5 years if the prediction for Owen was right...   :)

Mr. Weston

Sunday brought some laughs because of  Mr. Weston... on the way home from church, I gave him a Nutrigrain bar to snack on.   Bad idea.  When I went to bring him in, I saw this...

I debated what to do... clean him off and risk waking this snoozing gem (he hadn't napped all day) or just leave him sleeping in the carseat?  I knew he wouldn't stay asleep very long in there AND he's so heavy to carry in the seat.  So I had to ever so carefully clean him off.  I did it.  This is talent folks.  :)  His toes, by the way, were the only part of him that were still clean.  After his little snooze in the car seat, he still transferred to his bed.    

We also had fun at church.  During the 3rd hour, he was active as usual, not wanting to be held.  I let him get down and explore a little.  I had a hard time keeping him away from the purses on the floor - I particularly wanted to keep him away from the Vera Wang purse (aren't those expensive?).  He was entertained by another baby's car seat for a while, but then he spit up all over it.  Just as I got done wiping it up the best I could, the next thing I saw was a pantless baby standing there.  Weston had somehow crawled right out of his pants.  He looked so funny standing there with no pants.  As hard as I tried, I couldn't hold it together - it just sparked a laugh inside (and my friend next to me) and I had to scoop him up and leave before I made an outburst.  I rushed out of there, redfaced and dying of laughter inside.  I felt bad for the lady who was in the middle of sharing her tender feelings about her son on a mission.  I know we were quite the distraction; someone clear on the other side of the room later mentioned she wished she'd had a camera.  And it wasn't even that funny, but it was just one of those things that sparks a laugh that can't be extinguished.  (It made me think of a Seinfeld episode, the one with Elaine and the PEZ dispenser, about 4:20 into the video).

I love this little messy active boy though - now 11 months old.

vowel e

Nathan is out of school, but we're continuing on with Jared's joy school.  We finished the alphabet, but decided to do the vowels.  We read and made the little red hen (who has ten finger feathers), made soft pretzel "e" rolls, colored short "e" word pages, and played a lemon game.

cousins!

We enjoyed a quick visit from my brother and his family (Nicholas and Ryan, the baby).  It was tough trying to get a picture of all the boys together.  I also tried to get a picture of Weston and Cheerio (the dog) - both Westies.  :)   Westie loved Ryan, but treated him like a doll, crawling over him and trying to poke his eyes and grab at his face.  We had cupcakes for Mike's birthday.  We don't make our kids wait until their 1st birthday for cake, so Westie enjoyed those cupcakes (he'll be all ready for his b-day).