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aMUM-019csearchm Once upon a time, what feels like forever ago these days, Owen started talking. Quickly his few little words (“Uh oh!”, “BUH bye!”, “Hi!”) turned into sentences and phrases. Now the kid can talk about just about anything. I feel like he knows almost every word that I say. He wakes up in the morning asking, “School today? Playground later? Read a book with me, Mommy?”. He puts himself to sleep telling his lovey about the fun things we did that day (“Walk doggie. Ate eggs! See choo choo.”). He tells on himself when he’s doing something he shouldn’t be (“Oh-WEN! No climbin’”) and parrots the rules back to me before I even have to say them (“Only Mommy holds knives. Knives SHARP. Dangerous.”) while nodding enthusiastically.
To say he is very verbal for his age is an understatement.
As his vocabulary doubled and tripled, there were a few words that he consistently said wrong. At first, like the Type A person that I am, I wondered, “Why does he say them that way? What can I do to help him say it correctly? Is something wrong? Why won’t he try to say them clearly when he says so many other words clearly?”. Many more experienced mothers assured me, “Don’t worry. They will correct themselves in time. And you may even miss those mispronunciations when they are gone.”.
You know what? They were right. Obviously.
One of Owen’s favorite mispronunciations was to call the playground deedah. I still have no idea where it came from, because none of the sounds are the same, but he insisted that’s how it was said. We would over-enunciate “Puh-LAY-ground” and he would grin devilishly and repeat, “DEEDAH!”.
And so it was. We went to the deedah.
But a few days ago, after I told him we were going to the playground, he waited for a moment, and then, very slowly, said, “Puh-lay-gound”. Missing the “r”, but pretty much perfect.
And that was it.
Deedah was dead.
And I miss it.
As of today, there really aren’t very many words that he still mispronounces. I’m hanging on to yappoo for vacuum, thank you very much. Won’t be correcting that one any time soon. And my new favorite, pro-BOB-a-lilly or probby for probably. They are just too darn cute. And my time to hear them is short.
Spring has sprung, my friends. Every window in our house has been open for the last two days and the temperature is holding steady at 70 degrees. It is perfection.
I’m taking a rare Friday off of work to cover “Daddy Day” since Daddy has had more work than he knows what to do with recently. Owen and Schnitzel and I spent the entire morning at the playground.
Guess who graduated to the “big boy” swing?
Owen made a new best friend (a 3 year old) and ran around the playground with him copying everything he did. Watching his little playground relationships just melts my heart. The kid hugs before he even says hello, and immediately starts doing exactly what the other kid is doing.
Hence the climbing wall incident. This time he did the climbing wall almost entirely by himself and got almost as high. He also monkeyed himself right up a ladder that is intended for much, much bigger kids. Muscle memory is a powerful thing — the boy has amazing coordination and picks up new motor skills like it’s no big thang.
Once we got home, I was pooped and ready for lunch. Someone was just getting started, so we changed into lighter clothes and went on a little bike-ride-slash-nature-walk where Owen pointed out every ant on the sidewalk and asked, “Mommy get it?”. We’re really working on the lesson that bugs are ok. Because to Owen, they are not ok.
All that sunshine meant a niiiiiice, looooooong nap, which means enough time for a good workout for me, a little blogging and some dinner prep (black bean and sweet potato burgers and asparagus on the grill!).
Spring is the best.
Do you remember the good ol’ days when we used to post beautiful photos on this blog? Yeah, me too. And it hasn’t happened for a long time.
Do you know why?
The iPhone.
The iPhone and the fact that a wildly mobile and active toddler almost always means blurry photos. But I still blame the iPhone.
When Owen was tiny and would stay where I put him, we did the “monthly photo” thang. You know, stick him in a chair in a cute outfit once a month and snap a million pictures in order to get one or two keepers that you can hang up at his first birthday party. Although it was a struggle to do it regularly, it was also an incredible opportunity to capture the huge changes of those first few months of life. I am SO glad we did it. But I was also SO glad that I let myself stop doing it when he hit 1 year old.
After he turned one, we had various photo opportunities where Benjamin would whip out “the good camera”. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. But the number of high-quality photos declined dramatically.
But other than that? To capture the everyday cuteness and silliness? We use our iPhones. While it’s great to be able to pull out my phone from my back pocket and take a picture or video at a moment’s notice, it has also almost entirely obliterated our “good camera” usage. And that makes me sad.
Benjamin is SO talented behind the lens. Someday, when I have the time, I will re-learn all of the things I learned in photography class in college. But for now I rely almost entirely on Benjamin’s mad skillz.
So for Mother’s Day, after dinner, Benjamin suggested we play in the backyard and have a little photo session. Happy Mother’s Day, indeed.
Come on. Admit it. You only read this blog to see the adorable pictures of Owen.
I don’t blame you one bit.
On Friday night, as Benjamin and I were having a quiet night watching tv together (which hasn’t happened in a LONG time, thanks to his crazy work/travel schedule and my work and random events like singing at the Red Sox game), he casually mentioned that he should probably make brunch reservations for Mother’s Day. On Sunday.
I just laughed. Of course he should have made reservations already. Every mother in the Boston area wants to go out to brunch.
I also kind of rolled my eyes. Since I am always the one making the reservations and the plans for our family, it was not a surprise that he hadn’t thought of it. Although a tiny part of me wished that he had planned ahead a little more, the rest of me realized that a weekend with him at home is far more important than any brunch reservations. As it turned out, he had a few little tricks up his sleeve and we had a lovely, special day.
He taught Owen to say “Happy Mother’s Day” to surprise me. (Or perhaps I should say, “Happy Mother’s Mommy”).
There were crayon drawings and flowers.
We took a leisurely walk as a family and got coffees in the morning. After a sweet morning, Benjamin gave me my REAL present, which was a few hours in the mall by myself to do some shopping. A few hours later we met one set of Benjamin’s parents for an early dinner at one of my favorite restaurants.
Brunch or not, the day reminded me just how thankful I am to have these two wonderful men in my life. And just how in love with them I am.
Last year I blogged about how becoming a mother changed me. It was one of my favorite posts I’ve ever written. Every word is still very much true today. This year, though, I felt the calm confidence of having been a mother for even longer. The “new me” that emerged after becoming a mother is not so new. It’s just… me, now.
My days are not filled with the strain of wishing for a baby or waiting for that positive pregnancy test. They are not filled with the drama of the newborn months, obsessing about nursing and reflux and how many minutes my baby has been asleep. They are spent exploring and imagining and chatting with my hilarious little boy. They have a rhythm, a routine, a predictable course. It’s in times like these that I’m able to look back on all of the frustrating, stressful, difficult times and actually feel happy that they happened exactly as they did. Because I’m here now, and it’s better than I imagined it would be.
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