Owie is THREE!

Wow. Our firstborn turned THREE! We are still a little shocked at how the years flew by! Owen is super excited to be a big boy now, (he says, “I’m a big boy, but Mama can still call me her baby boy.” Apparently I needed his permission!), and we treasure watching his personality bloom. He fared well at his annual check-up today, even impressing me by watching the nurse do a finger stick to collect blood without flinching/crying! We are so proud of him! Owen currently weighs 31 pounds and is 37 inches tall. Roby and I are so thankful he remains a healthy little boy-growing just fine in every way!

Owen’s interests still are: robots, dinosaurs, diggers, books, puzzles & drawing. He continues to amaze us with what he picks up. One day we were talking about a tall building that still needed some work near the top. After pondering a bit, Owen offered, “They are going to need an aerial truck to fix that, Mama!” Yeah, I had never heard of one either. He learns so much from his books! He also told us recently, “I want to be a builder when I grow up!” and thinks it would be pretty cool to become an architect or an archaeologist too. Owen can still put his 50-piece dinosaur floor puzzle together by himself in no time flat, basically remembering where each individual piece goes. His drawings have started getting more and more detailed, and I keep snapping pictures for his little kid portfolio. (When he’s older we think he will enjoy seeing what he drew as a toddler.) Oh! He has pretty good taste in music right now as well! He requests to listen to his favorite songs, over and over, especially in the car (which is cute, but can eventually drive you slowly mad :) His current faves are: Vampire Weekend: Blake’s Got a New Face, Jack Johnson: Upside Down, One Republic: It’s Too Late to Apologize and Jason Mraz: I’m Yours. You never know what song he will like obsessively next! He absolutely *loves* to dance, too. I’ll have to post some video of his moves!

I’m amazed at how Owen is developing his speech patterns. It’s such fun to watch as he learns to speak in long sentences and use little phrases he picks up from us along the way. He uses correct grammar the majority of the time, and doesn’t mind if we correct him…even enjoying using it correctly and pointing out that he did so. He still can’t pronounce hard Cs, Ss and other random sounds. Some of the cute things he says these days: I’m farry (sorry), bemember? (remember), barry white (very right), atarium (aquarium), hanitizer (hand sanitizer), byack (black), byue (blue), & chicken donald’s (mcdonald's-an oldie but still a goodie. :) Also, anything that has transpired prior than the current day, in Owen's world happened "last night." Owen can also write his name, although he spells it OMEN- which is either endearing or a bit creepy!

Our little guy still likes to “snuddle” with us in the morning and before bed. Such an affectionate little guy. The funny thing is, even though he is just mispronouncing “snuggle,” the urban dictionary defines snuddle as a verb mixing the words snuggle and cuddle. So I guess he is our snuddle bug! And Owen makes it abundantly clear that Olive is his “cutie.” The boy is so protective of his little sis! I showed Owen pictures of Maggie on our friend Suzanne’s blog, explaining that we were going to meet up with them in Atlanta yesterday, and I casually asked, “Isn’t Maggie a cutie?” Owen said very seriously, “No! Olive is my cutie.” I replied, “She’s pretty though, right?” and he agreed. (After meeting her, he told me today that “Magdie” is a princess ;) Apparently he takes his big brother status with his cutie very seriously! Chuckle. When Olive cries, he rushes to her side repeating, “It’s ok, Olive, I’m here,” trying to comfort her. Every day he gets to hold her for a few minutes and brushes his cheeks against hers and says “Yes, you are” over and over. (We will say something to her, like “You are such a sweet baby. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. So now Owen just says “Yes you are” without anything preceding it. Cute!) He also asks (a million times a day it seems!), “I washed my hands, can I touch Olive’s hands now?” I don’t know what it is about her hands, but he always has to be touching and holding them! We love watching Owen transform into such a good big brother to Livy!

It's so hard to wrap up Owen's personality in a tiny blog entry, but I will continue to update the blog with his three-year-old antics!