Parenting is not for the weak or the lazy

Have I mentioned how difficult it is to parent a 1 year old? The last few weeks have been extremely trying. I look at the pictures above and wonder what happened to my sweet little boy. I frequently wonder if I'm being too strict and and always worry that I'm being too harsh. Our most frequent battles are over not touching the dvd player, throwing everything off the highchair tray and diaper changes. He gets his hand swatted when he disobeys but he cries for 5 seconds and is back to doing what he was just disciplined for. I know he's worse when he's tired so this morning I put him down for his nap a little earlier than normal but he's just screaming in his bed. I'm hoping (probably naively!) that we're just getting the terrible 2's out of the way early. One of the hardest things I think is looking back at the day and realizing that the bad outweighed the good. It's difficult to swallow. As a mom you think it's your responsibility to make your child's day great so when you have a not so great day you feel at fault. I keep reminding myself that this is a season that will pass. There will be easier (as well as more difficult) days ahead. Raising a child is not like babysitting. I'm not always going to be the fun one.

I realize that the above paragraph was mostly word vomit and possibly doesn't flow well but my brain is mush and that's what happens. I am up for any advice from parents on how to handle screaming, discipline and expectations!

Now on to good things! Owen has slept through the night 5 nights in a row! The best part is I didn't even do anything to train him. He's been going down at 7:30 and getting up around 7:00 which is great. He then naps at 9:30 and again around 2:00. Lately the morning nap has been at least an hour and a half and the afternoon nap is maybe an hour.
Owen is also doing pretty well at following directions when he wants to. He was playing with a Tupperware bowl the other day and put it on his head which was really funny. After that happened I started asking him to put things on his head and he will try! Most of the time it just gets to his ear but he tries. He'll drop his paci in his crib when I ask him to and he'll look for his owl blanket.
He enjoys putting things in containers then dumping them out.
He loves playing with my phone and figure out how to push the button that will bring up the photo of him and I.
He's obsessed with buttons. I was holding him the other day and he kept pointing at Pat then we realized that he wanted to touch the buttons on Pat's shirt.
He likes broccoli and pasta but not a lot else. He's still really picky which is frustrating. Even his beloved Cheerios have lost some love.
He signs "more" for everything. Signing "all done" is usually flailing arms and a disgusted look. Instead of signing "milk" he beats my chest and looks down my shirt.
He loves dancing to music.
Banging the cabinet doors is fun but when mom says "bang!" it is hilarious.
I gave him milk for the first time last night. He is not a fan.

Pasta night

Valentine's Eve dinner

Just driving around the mall on my birthday!

I tried so hard to keep his mouth off of that thing but no luck.

1 Year stats

Owen had his 1 year check up today and here are the results:

H: 30.25 in (70%)
W: 22.33 lbs (48%)
HC: 19 in (90%)

He had to get 4 shots today and these were the worst since the very first set. The needles were huge and I should not have watched her shove them into my babies legs. At least we're done for a while!

Birthday Party

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OWEN!!!!

We had a little party for Owen Saturday and I think it went fairly well. It was great to have some of our family here and a couple of friends over. They were all so generous! We are very blessed to have so many people that love our son.

A few months ago I had grand ideas for a great party (if you follow my Pinterest boards you would know!) with cute theme and decorations; cute photo invitations and pictures but somewhere along the line I said "Who am I kidding?? This isn't going to happen!" and kept it simple. I took too long with invitations so I sent an Evite 10 days before his party. I found a printable on this site to decorate Owen's highchair and hung Owen's monthly pictures on some twine with mini clothes pins above the fireplace. I had realized that having a themed party with lots of decorations wouldn't have been for Owen. My desire to have a cute party would have been so people would come and be impressed with me and what I had done. Thus the party would have stopped being about Owen and become about me and I do not want to be that mom. Ever. I'm sure I will always have to suppress this desire to impress people with my cooking or mothering or craftiness or whatever but there will always be someone who is better at it than me and that's okay. As long as I'm loving my son, pointing him towards Jesus and doing the best that I can then that's enough.

Owen didn't get too into his cake. He's been really texture sensitive lately so he didn't really like having frosting stuck all over his hands and only a little cake made it into his mouth. I guess I'd rather have that than him screaming for more. Overall we had a great time just celebrating our little boy!

Touch your toes!

I forgot to mention in my last post that Owen figure out his toes. Unless he's really into something else he will grab his toes whenever I ask where they are. Love it!

He's started pulling up on more things, crawling on all fours and on a few separate occasions has stood on his own for a few seconds. His mobility has taken off scary fast in the last week. He also knows how to sign "more" but is very choosy on when he uses it.

Sleeping, standing, and discipline

I can't get over how much Owen has changed in the last couple of weeks. He's becoming more coordinated with walking and crawling. He pretty much only army crawls when he's not on carpet. After watching him I think it's because it's too slippery to stay on his knees so he just sticks to using his arms. He still doesn't really venture out of the living room which is good and bad. It'd be nice if he would just crawl into the kitchen if I'm in there instead of crying for me but at the same time it's nice to know where he is.

Now that he knows how to pull himself up in his crib he does it all of the time. Getting him down for a nap has become more of an ordeal because of this. He hasn't been sleeping as much lately and I'm thinking he maybe needs to go to one nap instead of two. I'm going to start that tomorrow and see what happens. I moved his bedtime from 7 to 7:30 last week for reasons I can't really remember. He's been napping for less time (today was 45 minutes each) so we'll try 1 nap and if that doesn't work we'll move his bedtime back to 7 and see what happens. I'm not thrilled about the prospect of only one nap but I remember saying that about going from 3 to 2 and it ended up being okay.

We've started to discipline Owen for a few things when he's doing something he knows he's not supposed to do. He falls apart when it comes from Pat but when it comes from me it's almost like he's thinking "is that all you got lady?!" He'll stick his bottom lip out when we say no and when the "no" comes from dad it is quickly followed by many tears. All I get is the lip and a straight face which can be hard to not laugh at at times. Pat has learned that he has to be extra loving after the "no" since it seems to affect Owen so deeply. We definitely have our work cut out for us with this guy!

I've become obsessed with watching Owen play lately. Now that he has some mobility he's exploring everything and it is fascinating to see him try and figure things out. Sheesh. I love that kid so much!

Check out my new skill!

He's a pasta with pesto over mac n cheese kind of kid. 

Sitting on his own

Owen learned how to get from lying down to sitting this week which is super exciting for me! So often he'll be on his back or stomach and just whine until I sit him up. I'm super excited about this one. He's also cruising along the couch a little bit more. I'll stand him up on one end and put something that he's interested in on the other side and he'll get to it eventually. He'll take a step then reach as far as he can and if he can't get it he'll take another step and reach again. A lot of the time he tries to reach too far and then falls over.

Today I found him standing in his crib. I had put him down for a nap and he didn't want to sleep so I let him cry for a while and when I went in there he was standing up hanging onto the rail.

I had gotten Owen some baby food that was apple/mango/kiwi and discovered that it's a big no-no. We had the same issue as we did with the pineapple. Fortunately I figured it out sooner so we got his diaper changed sooner which saved a lot of pain for Owen. I think Owen had that same combo of fruit when he had the pineapple so it's quite possible it was the mango or kiwi rather than the pineapple that caused all of the problem.

In other news we've been shopping for flooring this week. Our basement flooded on Sunday which is not fun. We're just thankful that the carpet was the only thing that was ruined. We're hoping that it will be fixed this week so we can get the house put back together before Owen's birthday party on Saturday.

Loves those pancakes!

I made great effort to push Owen's sleeves up while he was eating an avocado to keep his onesie clean but he managed to managed to get it underneath his bib.

Reading Go Dog Go while grocery shopping.