Where do I even start?

I can't keep up. This kid is just growing up WAAAAAY too fast! And I've been too busy enjoying him to even come and brag to the rest of you. Seriously, Owen really seems to have had another developmental explosion. I continue to be amazed by this little person in our lives. What he's up to these days:

Walking I mean walking everywhere! Owen Stone is officially a toddler. Crawling is just such old news. He wants to walk everywhere we go and is extremely steady on his feet. The downside is that he now fights the stroller, carseat and highchair. Any restraint device is clearly seen as something straight from the devil! Now that he's mobile, he wants to be mobile 24-7 (even skipping afternoon naps every now and then, much to his parents' chagrin).

Talking! Yup, talking. Four recognizable words are in Owen's vocabulary: mama, dada, cat and go. The first two are obvious and now seem to be used discriminately (although dada still gets more airtime than me--go figure). But "cat" was the first real word other than identifying the two of us and he uses it correctly and in context all the time. He has even identified cats on his videos and in books. Today, we were looking at a zoo picture book and I got to a picture of a leopard. He immediately chimed in with "cat!"

The word "go" seems to have been picked up from two of his books: "Go, Dog, Go!" and "Go, Go Trucks". Owen now brings these books for us to read and repeats "go!" over and over again. Just so unbelievably cute.

Signing Owen now uses 5 signs with some regularity: more, all-done, eat, milk and car. I can't tell you how amazing it is to watch an 11-month old tell you he'd like some milk or sign "car" in response to hearing the word read in a story. It just blows my mind every time it happens.

Hmmm, what else can I tell you? When we're ready to go downstairs, he has learned to stop at the top of the stairs and lie down on his belly (instead of just walking off the first step like he's invincible). We're working on going down backwards all the way to the bottom--not quite there yet. He can correctly identify ball, book, and bear and can retrieve the named item when asked (if he's in just the right mood, of course). The flirting and schmoozing is just off the charts. We can see a sense of humor developing and he LOVES to laugh and play "coy" all the time.

I've gotta say this is the best stage so far. We are having so much fun watching this little guy learn and grow everyday. It really is incredible how much they pick up in such a short amount of time! Coolest job I'll ever have. I love this kid.

But it's not all fun and games. He's finally learning to pull his weight around here too! No more fun until the chores are done!



I promise we'll get some videos and more photos up soon. Right now, we're enjoying playtime far too much! For those of you trying to view old clips, sorry! The archived clips were being hosted by our old internet service provider. No worries, we'll get things back to normal soon enough.