ONE

Happy First Birthday Owen! I can not fathom that you are one whole year old today. This time last year I was on my first hour of pushing, with no pain meds. I was so anxious to meet you! 

You were born at 1136pm weighing in at 8 lbs 13oz and 21 inches long.

It was a rough day, but were so happy to have you with us finally!

Fast forward a year.....

So Mr. Owen what are you up to these days?

~ You are 19.1 lbs (I will know exact stats next week)

~ You are in a size 4 diaper and 12 month clothes. A size 3 shoe.

~ You have 8 teeth, 4 on top, 4 on bottom. You are currently teething getting ready to cut some one year molars. 

~ You are a talkative boy, I sure wish we could understand what you are saying. Right now you say, Ma-ma, Da-da, Poppa, Landon (la da), yes and I think that's it.

~ We just found out this week you are allergic to milk. So far you are doing well with out it. 

~ You are off formula. You had your last bottle of formula last night. I am kinda sad, but happy to not pay for it! You like the soy milk which is a good thing.

~ You usually go to bed about 8 now, and are up for a bottle between 4-6. Just depends. Some times you don't want one. You are up for the day anywhere between 6-8. Just depends on how tired you are and how much your teeth are bothering you.

~ You are down to one nap a day. You usually go down between 12-1 and sleep anywhere from 1-2 hours. It's nice. 

~ You are doing better with eating table food. I keep trying it all, and throw in some baby food to make sure you are eating. 

~ You love crackers. Ritz crackers, graham crackers, your Gerber puffs, cereals, oatmeal, toast, banana's, blueberries, peas, ham, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and applesauce. 

~ You love your sippy cup and I am not worried about cutting the bottle out. I'm sure it'll be soon

~ You are starting to want to walk every where. Us holding your hands. I think you will be taking off soon! 

~ Your favorite things are cords, things plugged in, phones, remotes, your musical toys, books, blocks and balls. You love to take things out and put them back. (Like drawer's and stuff)

~ You love your baths, A LOT.

~ You eczema is still bad. We got you a new cream, cut out milk and started you on Zyrtec at night. It seems to be drying up, I'm hoping it'll be gone soon. 

~ You still dig your big brother.

~ You got to spend your first birthday with friends and family. Gammie and Poppa Bob were here, it was so much fun!

~ Your hair is coming in, and it has a tinge of red to it. Yikes :)

~ You are still a totally mommy's boy. You love to snuggle, give hugs and kisses.

Owen, you are such a funny little guy, smart and some times rotten. You make us laugh and keep up busy. We love you more than you'll ever know. I can't wait to watch you learn to walk and talk even more. I still can't believe you are a year old. The year has flown by, way too fast. LOVE YOU LOTS BIG GUY!

Birthday Party

A little sneak peek from Owen's first birthday party today....

Such a wonderful day!

Scare

Owen is pushing his one year mark and It's been on my mind about weaning him off of formula. What I've been thinking about is, Do I put him on regular milk? Or soy milk? He is currently on Soy formula. He hasn't had too many dairy products, a lick of ice cream here and there, no cheese and no yogurt. He eats breads, crackers and stuff with milk in them and seems fine. 

I bought some YoBaby vanilla yogurt a few weeks back and decided to try it. I gave him a bit and he liked it. I also gave him some apples. He picked the apples and fussed. I gave him another bite and then gave him some Cheerio's. I noticed he started itching his throat area and his eyes were a tad red and watery. I gave him another bite. He munched on Cheerios while I did dishes, I kept an eye on him. I noticed he was really digging at his chin and throat. So I looked, he was very red. I figured I'd better go wash his face and lube him up. As I got upstairs and laid him on his changing table he had welts all over his right side of his neck and behind and around his ear. Oh my goodness. I panicked. I wiped the area and applied a lot of Aquaphor. I ran down stairs with Owen and grabbed my phone. It looked really bad. I called Greg and he got us an appointment. 

He had maybe 4 bites of this yogurt. I wanted to try it to see how he would handle milk products. Well, he didn't handle it well at all. I got ready and Greg came home and I took Owen to the clinic. They were able to get me in right away and that eased my mind. Turns out he is very sensitive to milk (or Milk protein as she stated) and to not give him milk, yogurt, cheese or ice cream. Pretty much dairy. I asked about crackers and breads with milk in them, she said those should be ok. She said the welts were his body's way of telling us they didn't like the milk and he can't have it. I am so relieved that that is all that happened. Poor guy. 

She gave me a RX for stronger cortisone cream and some Zyrtec to give him daily to help with the itching and stuff. I am anxious to see how it helps, his poor eczema has been BAD these past few weeks. I thought we were getting better at one point, but not so much. Luckily this little guy is handling it well....he never really got upset or anything, just rubbing and scratching his neck. 

When we got home Landon was very concerned since he'd seen his neck. I explained what was wrong. Greg went back to work and we headed to the commissary. I grabbed some soy milk for Owen since his dr said to start weaning him on the formula. I got a few snacks and some of this for Owen's bath tonight. 

So now I have to be aware and careful with Owen and milk stuff. I've always been leery about giving him milk products since he was on soy and didn't do well on the milk based formula. Now I have my answer :( Owen was super tired so I put some soy milk in with his formula and he sucked it down. Don't have to worry about him not liking it! 

Now to get some more party stuff taken care of and then Landon has his first T-ball game tonight, he is beyond excited!

Seeing Red

Party planning is in full force around here! I can't believe Owen's first birthday is next week, and his party is this weekend. I've been busy the last few weeks getting everything together, scouring stores for Mickey stuff, searching online for ideas. It's something I really enjoy doing. Stuff like this doesn't cost too much, especially if you already have some of the stuff on hand. Plus I wait til most of the stuff is on sale or I use a coupon. So far the most expensive thing is the cake, that was $30, plus that's including the smash cake. 

I ordered the invites online, Etsy actually. I sent them a picture and the info and they sent me a file to go get them printed where ever I wanted. That was $10.95. I got 25 printed at Walgreen's for just $3. Not too bad. I did have to buy envelopes, only to find some when I was going through stuff. Oh well. I should have been prepared. I LOVE how the invites turned out.

I've made a few banners, and am in the process of making and I Am One banner for his highchair. I've got some of the candy jars filled already.....

And my laundry room is being over taken by party stuff. I made some tissue pom pom's, which were super simple. Just a few bucks for the tissue paper. 

I got the red food stuff at Walmart, they were $1 each. I got all the paper goods at Hobby Lobby. They were about double the packs for cheaper than what I could get at the party store or Walmart. So all in all we haven't spent too much money. I of course will get lots of balloons on the day and the cake. I can not wait to see how the cake turns out. I hope it's what I have envisioned. I showed the lady a picture, and she did a great job with Landon's cake, I am sure this one will be just as good.

When my mom gets here we will be making Owen a shirt to wear during his party, and he'll get back in to his tie and diaper cover for cake time. I'm still trying to figure out games. Do I do games? There will be lots of older kids. Maybe just a pin the ears on Mickey game? A pinata? Water balloons? I don't know if I want that tracking in the house though. I haven't got that figured out yet. I am sure I will by the end of the day. I am still trying to get numbers on how many kids will be at the party. And the other thing is favors. I still haven't decided what I want to do. I hate all the cheap plastic stuff you get at parties. It usually ends up in the garbage. They have 6 packs of bubbles (big ones) for pretty cheap. I may do that with some Mickey fruit snacks in a clear sack with some ribbon. It's mostly going to be boys, so I can't do cute things darn it. Some much to do and think about. I love it though. I've been having dreams about it. Crazy!

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day! First off I wanted to say Happy Father's Day to Greg. Landon and Owen are so blessed to have you as their father. You are so patient, loving and fun with them. They love you so much and just adore you. I know Landon already wants to be just like you. And I am sure as soon as Owen is older he will be the same. Thanks for being such an amazing father to them.

This morning Landon and I got up and made breakfast. We made some pancakes and bacon and cinnamon roll waffles. You take the cinnamon roll and put it in your waffle Iron and cook it, yummy!

Then we got ready and went for a quick hike. We went back to Red Rock Canyon. This time we took a different trail. We walked 1.9 miles in about an hour. It was fun. 

Owen loves this backpack thing. It also puts him to sleep!

It was around 10 when we got there, maybe a little after. It was hot. The sun was beating us. It was nice though. There was a ton of people out today, lots if families. 

We decided to go a different way today. We went through these big rocks. It was pretty awesome. 

I know there are snakes here. Someone saw a rattlesnake on base the other day. Ugh,. I thought we got away from that stuff on base. But it was out towards the fields. Doesn't mean one can't get to us, but, ew. So I was on alert when we were out. We were in the rocks and in their territory. But, we stayed on the paths and it was all good. 

This was a pretty fun walk/hike. We were climbing steep rocks and taking all sorts of small paths. It was fun. 

Owen fell asleep after a bit. Took a good cat nap.

We were getting hot so we left. We stopped for some lunch, and good thing we were done, the clouds started coming over Pikes Peak and then it started raining. It got nice and cool now, go figure! It rained off and on all afternoon. We went to the BX and Greg got a hair cut, I made some dinner then we went for a walk around housing. It was a nice day.

I also wanted to say Happy Father's Day to my Dad Rick, Bob and Kenny! Thanks for being such great father figures and grandfathers to the boys!

MIA

I didn't mean to be MIA for so long. Last weekend Greg had a friend that was stationed with us at Dyess, who is now stationed up North come down for the weekend. They had a golfing weekend and I kept the boys busy.

Saturday last weekend Landon took his last free Taekwondo class, then we went roller skating with some friends after. That was fun. Brought back a TON of memories growing up and spending my Saturday afternoons at the roller rink. I quickly forgot how slick skates are, took me a few minutes then I was good. Landon on the other hand had a heck of a time, and took me down with him several times. After skating about and hour, Greg dropped Owen off. I also forgot how tired your feet are from the heavy skates! It was a lot of fun though.

We mainly just hung out the rest of the weekend. It was nice out so we did some grilling, playing corn hole and enjoyed the company. 

Monday night Landon had his first T-ball practice. He is the red team, the team name is the Muckdogs. It's a minor league team in New York, pretty cool. Landon loved it and did a great job. 

Tuesday we went to a splash pad off base with some friends. It had been hot and windy, so it was a perfect morning to go. It was pretty busy too.

This place was at a city park, near the Army base Ft. Carson. It was a big one, and pretty clean too. There was a ton of moms and their kids, guess they had the same idea as us. 

The weather was fine. Nice blue sky, hot, windy. 

We had some snacks after playing and enjoyed hanging out on the towels. 

Then we headed home. We noticed it was getting kinda hazy and it was hard to see the mountains. I figured nasty air, dirt blowing around from the wind. After getting home and eating lunch, I turned the news on and saw there was a fire in Black Forest. That is just 10-15 minutes North of us. Yikes. It was so windy the fire was taking off. Now this area is heavily wooded with trees, lots of nice nice homes with lots of land, like 5 acre plots. They were evacuating people as fast as they could. Some people had no time at all. Lots of these people have animals, or livestock, like horses, chickens, goats and things like that. It was so sad. 

This was looking out our front porch. Not far at all. The air was yucky and smokey, kinda burned your eyes. It was so scary and sad. 

That night Landon's first T-ball game was cancelled due to poor air quality, and then Greg was working nights. He went in at 730am Tuesday morning, came home about 430pm, then went back in at 1030pm and got off Wednesday at 730am. Wednesday morning our house reeked of smoke. The air outside was BAD. They were advising everyone to stay in. The gate guards had on masks, Greg said cops out patrolling were having a hard time breathing. I walked out to get the paper and shut the door as fast as I opened it. It burned my eyes instantly and made me cough. I was scared for the boys, so we headed out of town. I got them ready and we went North (The wind was now blowing from the North which is why were getting the smoke) We hung out around the Outlet Mall in Castle Rock, and after lunch we started smelling the smoke up there, so we headed back. The wind now shifted and was blowing from the south and blowing hard. The fire now took off the other way. On our way home the exit I normally got off of we got off. By the time we got about 5 minutes down the road we were at the fire. It was intense and we were close. It spread so fast. Luckily we turned pretty quick to head down to base. It was surreal to see it that close and to see all the people watching it from their cars, all the news casters with their vans and crew.

We spent most of our days inside, or going to the mall to kill time and get out of the house to let Greg sleep. The wind wasn't blowing the smoke our way so it wasn't bad down here. One morning we went to Chick Fil A to eat and play. Owen loved it. 

And of course, so did Landon. 

We spend the days glued to the TV, Twitter and Facebook. It was a sad, scary and stressful week. And it didn't even affect us. I can't imagine all those poor people that lost their homes and everything, it's so heartbreaking. 

We finally got some rain last night and it was great. I think the fire is not as bad, last I heard it was 45% contained. There was approximately 471 homes lost. And burned around 15,000+ acres. Hearing all the stories and seeing all the burned homes is so sad. Thinking about all the people out there working to put the fire out, especially all the firemen gives me the chills, I think since Greg was a fireman it really hits home. I was just reading on Twitter that if you lost a home to contact the fire chief and he is personally assigning a firefighter to everyone for as long as you need them to help you get to and into your home. That's also given me goosebumps. 

One last note, one week from today will be Owen's first birthday party! I am excited. My mom and Bob will be here at the end of the week, then on Owen's actual birthday, the 26th, Greg's parents will be coming in. We will have both families here for a night, a full house, can't wait!