Dear Owen: {almost} fifteen months

Dear Owie Bowie -- my sweet little Owen.

As I write, you are sitting in your crib, recently moved to Bobby's room, watching him looking at books on the floor in front of you.  You've been like this for a while now, just happy to be in his presence.

fast forward 48 hours or so.  i had been waiting for you to accomplish your morning poop, and then you did, and then i had to tend to it, and now here i am at my next chance to write.

You are one sweet, happy baby at fourteen months -- almost fifteen now.  You do get very MAD when you can't have something you want, or when you can't do something Bobby's doing.  Oh, but you try.  You follow behind him mimicking his every dangerous deed.  Well, not all of the deeds are dangerous, but too many are; I don't know how you'll survive your second year!

Sometimes your copycatting is just plain cute.  The other day Bob spilled something-or-other and got a towel to clean it up.  When he went to return the towel you were right at his heels; you grabbed it and bent over to wipe the ground at your feet, then struggled to reach high enough to hang the towel up again.  Earlier today there was a similar scene involving a dust pan and broom.

Up until last week you've spent most of the time sleeping in mom and dad's bed.  We {I} love to snuggle you up as much as possible while we {I} can, but we {Dad} would like to be able to fit in our {his} own bed once again.  It's true: the nighttime menacing of your little feet ranges from annoying {slow and steady push into the bladder} to painful {a donkey-kicked heel to the eye}.  So far you're taking the transition to a shared brother room pretty well.

You like music and you like to dance.  I'm pretty sure you get your dance moves from me because you resemble a hunched sideways old man with a cane that's too short and he alternates between leaning on it and waving it around his head.  But you love it.  You do a little singing, too -- mostly mimicking Bobby's rendition of the fireman sam theme music.

Your kisses are too perfect and possibly the sweetest thing on earth at this moment.  You dole them out pretty freely -- to mom, to dad, to Bob, to your two baby dolls.  You're a sweetheart with your dolls, hugging and patting and yanking their diapers off.

You enjoy sitting at the table to draw; "daw" is one of your best-pronounced words.  Mom, Dad, nah-nah (for nurse), Baaaab (for Bob), bah-beh-ball (basketball), dog... You use a few signs too -- "nurse" (you've gotta have two ways to say that one), "all done", "please", "hurt", "bath"...  And the rest of the time you jib-jabber on in your cute little baby language.

You are growing so much in so many ways!  At times it seems your bubbling personality is just exploding out of you.  A few nights ago you simply couldn't sleep; you were running around the house like a madman until 11pm making your little jokes; you found yourself so amusing you could hardly stand it.

We all feel SO lucky to have YOU in our family, my son.  Bobby says it a dozen times a day: "I wuv Owie.  He is my best fwiend eveh."  Your toothy grin makes us all really happy every single day.

xoxo, mom.