First Date

Ten years ago today Erik and I had our first date. We had known each other for a few weeks, and had spent a whole night hanging out and talking at a friend's house. But October 20, 1999 was our first actual date. We went to BB Rover's on Jollyville in North Austin for beer and nachos. This is probably not your typical first date. But it pretty much fits us, seeing as we're really not so typical. It seems odd to me that we started dating ten years ago, and yet our only child is going to be 18 months on Sunday. We waited SO long to have kids (the first few years by choice, but the last several years were full of pain and misery over not being able to get pregnant). We've been through many ups and downs, and we are by no means perfect (no matter what I tell Erik in regards to myself). But we're making it even with our mistakes, or perhaps because of them. In a world where it seems that there are more divorced people than married ones, we tried to make sure we got it right the first time. Erik is an awesome husband and an even better dad. It's been a pretty crazy ten years. And I'm looking forward to the next ten!

Words

We're still working on the C25K thing. While we're still in week one (for the third week now), at least we're still keeping at it. I think that's better than nothing, although maybe I'm just fooling myself.

Owen's doing great. Although I did get told yesterday when I picked him up that he needs to learn to keep his hands to himself. Apparently he pushed a girl down over a toy he didn't want to share. First, this was surprising because Owen has traditionally been an awesome sharer. Second, he's been a little nutty lately with hitting and biting (gosh I wish all his teeth would just COME IN), so I really wasn't too surprised that he did this. But then I got to thinking about it. I don't want my kid to be a bully. But how the heck are you supposed to tell an 18 month old boy he shouldn't hit, bite, or push? You can't reason with him, YET. We constantly say no hitting, only kissing! We're pulling his arms away when he does it, and we try to get him interested in something else so he doesn't hit or bite. But what the heck else can we do at this age? It's kind of hard to sit down and say, "Owen, you need to behave at school and don't touch other kids." Although this morning he shocked me. I had turned off his crib music toy because he was playing it when he was supposed to be sleeping. And he was playing it this morning. I asked him how he turned it on when I had it off. And he walked over and slid the button over that turned it off and on. He may only speak four words, but he understands like a bazillion.

On that same topic, I read an article yesterday about toddlers and their vocabulary, about how girls speak sooner than boys. The article said that girls at 18 months have a 90 word vocabulary and boys at 18 months have a 40 word vocabulary. My son is a few weeks away from being 18 months and says FOUR WORDS. What's the deal? Is the article totally off? Is Owen totally behind? I hate measuring him by others and what books tell me. But this kind of weirded me out.

Owen's Halloween Costume

We have known Owen is going to be a penguin for some time now, but it's taken a while to find a costume we liked that fit him well. From the time he was a little baby I tried to get him to love an animal, and he never did. He would throw them out of his crib. One day we were in a store and saw a display of beanie babies. I asked him to pick out one, and he chose the penguin, who we named Percy. He absolutely adores Percy and will not sleep without him. He's also a dancer. He dances whenever he hears music. (This has been the case since I was pregnant with him.) If you ask him to do his happy feet dance, he'll do a crazy little dance, stomping his feet. So penguin Owen it is. I'm sure we'll take pictures on Halloween, but here are a few of Owen when we tried on his costume... I couldn't resist!