Easter!

This year, Easter was a pretty relaxing day.  We gave the kids baskets in the morning before church and they had an egg hunt after church.  Jackson was sure to tell us several times that the day wasn't about candy, but about Jesus raising from the dead.  :)  He wanted to be sure we remembered!  He has shown much interested in Christ lately, and for that, I am very thankful!

 "Tintin!!!"

 Cheese!

 This was our only family photo together on Easter.  Notice the robe?  Nice.

 Cousins!

 Yea for egg hunts!

Owen @ 11 Months

It feels as though Owen is running a marathon and I am running with him, only I need to stop to catch my breath and he keeps on running.  He is only a few short days from running that marathon of his first time circling the sun.  I know.  Sounds like a lot for his first year of life, right?  His eleventh month has been a milestone for him.  He started walking this month.  He also started saying  few more words ("nana" for banana," and he continues to say "ba" for ball and "keekee" for kitty).   He began to explore more things, which keeps me on my toes!  Yes.  He opens every cabinet, especially the pantry, several times a day, and will get into trash cans, toilets, or cat bowls, if given the opportunity.  Of course, I take those temptations away from him by closing bathroom doors---yes, we learned the hard way on that one---and getting trash cans and cat bowls off the floor.  I need to put locks on the cabinets, but have yet to do that.  

As you may guess from his exploratory behavior, he is interested in EVERYTHING.  He is a curious little boy with facial expressions to show off that curiosity.  He makes a "monkey face" when he gets excited about something or finds something of interest.  The "monkey face" I am referring to is when he gets wide eyes and puckered lips while making the sound "Ooooh.  Ooooh."  

In addition to the words Owen is speaking now, he also has learned some "signs."  I don't practice a huge array of sign language with my kids.  I just teach them "more," "all done," and waving goodbye.  He now does all three.  Oh!  And he started clapping this month as well!  We are working on blowing kisses.  So far, he just pats my mouth to blow the kisses. :)

Another thing that stands out in Owen's personality as an 11-month-old is that he is extremely cuddly and he loves to cuddle with his daddy.  When Troy comes home, Owen walks (or runs) to him and holds up his hands for Troy to pick him up.  Then he just sweet lays his head down  on Troy's shoulder and keeps it there.  It is so sweet.  When he gets up from naps, he cuddles me in the same way.  I really do treasure that.

I know that this time when he is small enough to hold in my arms is such a short time, and it still amazes me how fast it goes!  It doesn't seem like a year ago that I was a few short days from delivering my little Owen.  But, at the same time, it seems like life has always been with him.  He is such a part of our lives!  We thank God for the blessing he is to our entire family!

As with every post, here are some photos from this month to enjoy!

Owen's favorite thing to do: get into the pantry.  On a side note, the Gyro bowl doesn't always work the way they say it will in the commercial. 

 Owen never liked to be IN the walker, but it loves to hang around outside of it!

Owen also learned to clap this month.  Here he is clapping for his cornbread.  Like father, like son.

 Owen's first Easter basket included a board book about Jesus, a Sesame Street bath book, some organic cereal crunchy things, and an O ball.  He was impressed.

 Yes.  Most of Owen's baby pictures are with food.  He really likes food and is in his highchair eating quite a bit throughout the day!

 Yea for clapping!

 One of Owen's favorite chores is helping Mommy with the dishes.  :)

Owen and his daddy!

Owen when he first was walking.

And again. 

Owen likes to put food on his head.  I keep washcloths by his highchair for this very reason.

Again, his favorite place to get into is the pantry.  This time, I wasn't fast enough!

Owen @ 10 Months

I can barely believe it myself.  My youngest child, my last little baby, is only two months away from turning one.   Owen is ten months today.  He is still such a sweet little baby.  I am trying to cherish these last days that he is an infant, but he seems to want to become a toddler all too soon!  He still is crawling, although he took a couple steps on his own this month.  His main goal of crawling it to get to an object to pull himself up on.  He loves to stand next to his brother and sister while they play or watch TV, like he is one of them.  It is so cute.  Owen gets such joy out of his siblings.  I know I say that every month, but the expression of his joy keeps increasing.  When he sees his brother and sister now, he makes a deep chuckling sound.  Certainly it is a sound of satisfaction because he does the same thing when he discovers he can climb something or open a new cabinet.

Owen's attachment to me and only me has dwindled a bit, which is nice.  I can still be in the room and not be the one holding him.  Although, he still prefers me, he just doesn't make as big of a deal of it.  He is definitely a social little man.  He thrives on crowds.  He doesn't want to miss a thing, which is why it is very hard to put him to bed when we have guests over.  He is also very content.  He will play on his own in his pack-n-play for 30-45 minutes, as long as someone is in the room with him.  This really helps me get the dishes done!

Owen's favorite sounds to make are "dada" and "ba."  He says "BA!" when he is referring to an object or thing, like our cats.   His favorite things to do are crawling, standing, getting into cabinets, playing with his brother and sister, eating, and going outside.  He makes an "Oh, oh!" and jumps up and down when he hears the keys when we are going outside.  Speaking of going outside, he loves going to the park and swinging on the swings.  He giggles and laughs the whole time.  It is simply precious.  He also likes to bounce/dance when he hears music.  Owen loves to drink from his sippy cup, and everyone else's sippy cup if it is in reach.  He still loves to smile at everyone who he sees.  He loves to eat food in general, but his favorites this month are chicken nuggets, meatballs, homemade beans (Yes.  He now rejects canned beans---in fact he prefers his meatballs homemade as well!), banana spears, sweet potato spears,  and any sort of sliced fruit.  He also still loves broccoli, so much so that I have to hide the broccoli if I want him to eat anything else.  I'm not complaining about that!

Owen is still pretty small in size, but the doctor said he really just thinks he has a really, really fast metabolism.  So, fast, though, that he goes through nutrients like iron quickly.  He was anemic at his 9 month appointment and in a few days he has a iron check, so I'm hoping with all the red beans and meatballs that I've been feeding him, that has improved.  He is just now growing out of some of his 6 month and 3-6 month clothes, although some of that is still too big around the waist.  The doctor mentioned that with boys, their size now may not matter in regards to how big they will be as an older child or adult.  Who knows?  He still could grow up to be 6'2" like most of the males in his family.  He got in two teeth this month, but he seems to be working on a few more.  I will be telling people this for the next 2 years.  :)

It is a bittersweet knowing that this sweet baby only has a few months of infant-hood left.  I am soaking it in as best as I can.  I have seen with my third child how fast this time really goes!  So, without further ado, here are some photos from the last month for your enjoyment!

Owen tried a homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookie the other day.  He liked it so much, he went cross-eyed.  

Couldn't resist taking a picture of this cute diaper-butt!

One of Owen's favorite toys. 

Big boy standing up!

Soak in the cuteness!  :)

Crustless Quiche

I LOVE this recipe for quiche! I promise you won't miss the crust!  Click here to visit my fitness blog, Witness My Fitness, for the recipe.  YUM!!!

Rediscovering George (Foreman)

When my husband and I first got married, we purchased the famed George Foreman Grill.  We used it to grill our chicken breasts and turkey burners.  Trying to be healthy, we cooked a lot of chicken on the grill.  BLAH!  We got tired of it.  Personally, I think it dries out chicken breasts.  Chicken  breasts really aren't bad for you, anyway, so I suppose the George Foreman Grill is overkill when it comes to cooking that.  Needless to say, the grill found it's way to the back of our cabinet and stayed there.  I recently had the thought that I needed to get the grill out to put with the items we are selling at our garage sell.  But, with our griddle going out, I decided to use George for making grilled cheese/turkey sandwiches.  Guess what?  They turned out amazing AND they were pretty much pan-inis!  While making breakfast for dinner (a regular at our house) the other night, I decided to try to cook bacon in the George.  I have to admit that I remembered you could do this because I had just recently watched the episode of The Office when Michael Scott burns his foot on his George Forman grill while cooking bacon at his bedside.  I cooked the slices for 4 minutes on each side and it was seriously the tastiest bacon!  It was perfect in texture and taste, and I am guess a whole lot healthier for us since it wasn't cooked in the fat.  So, I suppose I will keep George a little longer.  He has proven to be a faithful and healthful cooking companion!

Baby Led Weaning

At just 5 months of age, in an attempt to get Owen to sleep more than an hour and a half at a time, I started feeding him pureed food.  He had shown interest in eating and we, quite honestly, needed sleep.  Badly.  To my frustration, and Owen's, when I tried to feed Owen the pureed food, I could never feed him fast enough, and he would want to shovel it in himself.   I would end up dreading feeding him because of the mess it would make and the fuss he would make when his *large* bowl of pureed sweet potato/brown rice slop was gone.  Have you ever tried to clean dried sweet potato puree off of a high chair leg?  I then remembered that my sister in law, Robyn, did something called Baby Led Weaning with her daughter and it seemed to have worked out pretty well.  The first chance I got, I asked Robyn more details about Baby Led Weaning (BLW).  She gave me some pointers and I started Owen on BLW the next meal!


In case you were wondering, Baby Led Weaning is when you forgo the traditional pureed baby foods and exclusively let your baby feed themselves finger foods.  When I first heard of this approach, I thought, "What?!?!  Won't they choke?!?"  But, as I observed my niece's eating habits, I realized that as long as you keep an eye on your child as he or she eats, it is highly unlikely your child will choke.  Basically, the finger foods you give them at first are soft and "gum-able."  I was very surprised with the variety of foods Owen can chew with his gums!  He is a few days away from 9 months and still has doesn't have any teeth, yet he eats everything from broccoli to beans to turkey and everything in between.  Not only does he like a variety of foods, he eats more than I have ever seen any other baby eat!  I've introduced him to so much more than I did with my two other children who were on pureed food.  I am starting to see that Owen is not picky about what he eats, and my guess is that this is because he has been given the opportunity to try so many different types of food.  His favorite foods are broccoli and blueberries.  I don't know many 9-month olds who LOVE broccoli!  


Along with the convenience of BLW, i.e., letting your infant feed his/herself, there are heath benefits, as shown in a recent study.  A study published in the BMJ Open compared a group of infants who followed the BLW approach to feeding with the infants fed with the traditional pureed food.  The study showed that the BLW infants seemed to like carbohydrates more than sweets, and that the pureed-fed infants seemed to like sweets more.  The study also noted that the Body Mass Index (BMI) of the BLW infants was lower than the pureed-fed infants at the end of the weaning period.  (Find a summary of the study here.)  The website www.babyledweaning.com, recently requested a statement from one of the doctors that participated in the study and she was kind enough to comply.  Dr. Ellen Townsend summarized the study as follows:

“We conducted a survey-based study with parents. Some of whom had used traditional spoon feeding and some who had used a baby-led approach. We asked them about their child’s food likes and how often they ate 151 different foods.

We then compared the groups on their liking for foods in the major food categories (carbs, proteins etc). What we found was that children weaned using a BLW approach like carbohydrates more than the spoon fed children. (In fact they liked carbohydrates the most as compared to the spoon fed children who like sweet foods the most.)

This is interesting because carbohydrates form the building blocks of healthy nutrition (being found at the bottom of the food pyramid). We also looked at health outcomes and found that BLW children generally had lower BMI compared to spoon-fed children. There was a small incidence of underweight in the BLW group but a larger incidence of obesity in the spoon fed group.

Carbohydrates are an ideal first finger food – so what we may be seeing here is an ‘age on introduction effect’ where BLW children are exposed to these foods in their whole food format earlier on. In relation to the BMI findings it could be that BLW learn to self regulate their intake because they are given control of the feeding process. We need longitudinal studies now that can tease apart our findings further.” (www.babyledweaning.com)

I actually saw a brief news segment on this study before I looked it up online.  I was glad to see Baby Led Weaning go a bit more public.  Owen and my niece are the only children I know who did BLW. Owen thoroughly enjoys mealtime because it is fun for him.  On top of three very full meals a day, Owen still nurses every 3-4 hours during the day.  He is also the healthiest of all my children at this age in regards to bowel movement.  My first two children would regularly have problems with constipation.  Let's just say that Owen is very, very, very regular!  As for sleeping longer, he is just starting to 

regularly sleep decently and he only wakes up once to feed between 3:30 and 5am.

I would absolutely recommend the Baby Led Weaning approach to any parent!  Not only is my child a healthy eater, but my bank account isn't feeling constrained by large purchases of "jarred" baby food and my time isn't being consumed with making the purees myself.  Owen basically eats what we eat at every meal.  And he is happy with that.  Everyone wins!  

If you would like more information on the Baby Led Weaning approach, the following sites are excellent resources:

http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/babyledweaning.htm
http://www.babyledweaning.com/  
http://www.baby-led.com/

Owen @ 7-8 Months

My sweet, little Owen!

This may be a little late, but as they say, better late than never! My little Owen is just that...little! At his 6 month check up, he was is the 3rd percentile for height and the 9th in weight. I visibly noticed him getting a little on the skinnier side and also noticed our scale at home wasn't budging, so took Owen into his doctor for a weight check around 7 1/2 months. He had gained 1 pound and he had gotten a bit longer, which is why he looked skinnier. Now, to be clear, this little boy eats like food is going out of style. I have never seen a baby eat this much! We are doing the Baby Led Weaning with Owen , so we don't feed him puréed food. He just feeds himself finger foods. He absolutely loves feeding himself and he is good at it---very accurate! I will blog about Baby Led Weaning in another post because it really deserves its own post. Back to Owen!  

Now that he is approaching 9 months, he seems to finally be growing out of the last of his 3-6 month clothes and some of his 6 month clothes.  Yea!  He actually seems to be getting longer because some of his 6 months PJs fit him perfectly now and they were a bit big when he got them at Christmas time.  So, even though he eats like he has a bottomless pit for a stomach, he still stays a bit on the small side.  The doctor said he may not be growing much because he doesn't sleep well.  Although, his sleep as really improved in the last month.  He usually only wakes up to feed once at between 4 and 5:30am.  Sometimes he cries a little during the night, but then goes back to sleep.  BUT that is a HUGE improvement from what he was doing.  Perhaps that is why I have noticed growth!  The doctor also said he probably has a fast metabolism.  Hmmm....wonder where he gets that from!  (Certainly not me!)

His favorite place to stand, especially if the DVD player is on!

At 7 1/2 months, Owen started crawling, and now, at eight months, he is trying to stand and he is cruising on furniture.  He walked with his walker/push toy yesterday for the first time.  In hindsight, I should have gotten a photo with that!  He is very active and likes to be in the action when it comes to being with our family.  He wants to wrestle on the floor with his daddy and siblings.  He loves any attention from his brother and sister.  He adores them.  It really is, well, for the lack of another word, adorable!

I may had said it in previous posts, but I have to say it again:  Owen is such a sweet boy.  He is patient and happy and loving!  His smiles brighten up the days of many!  He thrives in social atmospheres and loves to "talk" to people.  (Hmmm...does that sound familiar?)  He is such a blessing to our family!

Tub time!

At 7 & 8 months, his favorite things to do are:
Smile at anyone and everyone
Eat
Play with his brother and sister
Stand
Pull up on furniture
Take baths with his brother and sister
Help daddy work on his computer
Cuddle with mommy, and anyone else if mommy isn't within eyesight
Crawl
Chew on remotes
Open cabinets
Pet the kitties

At 7 & 8 months, Owen's favorite foods are:
Broccoli
Chicken Nuggets
Sweet Potatoes & Sweet Potato "Fries"
Whole grain blueberry waffles
Blueberries
Bananas
Cheerios (Trader Joe's O's)
Cheese
Cooked apples
Almost anything we put in front of him...

Owen's first Christmas (At 7 months)

Owen with two of his favorite people.

The happy boy, himself!