Micah's Overalls

Here's a shot of Owen in overalls that once belonged to Uncle Micah. Owen likes to balance along any curb or beam he can find and is actually quite good at it. Whenever we head out, he has to go along the circle in the parking lot.

Mega Bed

Owen has co-slept from night one. For about two years, he was always right between us. Last spring, I added a pallet of blankets beside the big bed. Owen sometimes slept there, and sometimes it was extra space for me to move over a bit when Owen took up more than his fair share of the bed. With Owen requiring a LOT of space in the bed and a new addition headed our way in November, we decided it was really time to make a change.
Introducing the mega bed. . .

. . . 114 inches by 75+ inches of prime sleeping surface.
To our existing, queen-sized Japanese shiki futon, we added a new full-sized one from J-Life International (where we ordered the other one many moons ago).
I'd like to say we're all sleeping in spacious bliss, but it is taking a bit of an adjustment period. Owen goes to sleep on the new area, and since he kicks the covers off, he scoots closer and closer to me and Abram on the next bed throughout the night - usually making it to the warmest spot between us by early morning. The first night, he ended up between us much earlier and I couldn't go back to sleep in either bed so I ended up on the couch!

Owen My Nursing Three Year Old

So when are you going to wean him? How long do you plan to nurse him?

I started hearing questions like this when Owen was a tiny baby and far, far to young to wean. As Owen approached a year, the questions peaked because surely I would wean him soon (*they* supposed). He could walk and talk and was eating a variety of solid foods (though no grains yet), surely he would be done nursing soon.
I don't know if the people who asked those questions finally got the message that nursing was good for babies AND children and that I had no intention of weaning him because it provided excellent nutrition and antibodies as well as physical comfort and the World health organization recommended a MINIMUM weaning age of 2 years old. Or maybe they heard that the natural age for weaning human babies from the breast was between 2.5 and 7 years old. Or maybe they finally decided that I was just SO WEIRD that there wasn't any use in asking me once Owen passed the magic age after which he *should* have been weaned. Maybe we crossed into such uncharted territory, that they thought we would never return to any kind of normal existence - like going into outer space and coming back somehow *touched* by an alien encounter.
Whatever, the reason, I have only been asked a handful of times in the past two years when Owen will wean despite the fact that we continue to NIP (nurse in public) regularly.
I have been told that certain people are uncomfortable with me nursing Owen, but, you know what, there were people who were never comfortable with it, and there are people who are ignorant (and I mean that in the nicest possible way - simply that they don't know), and there are people who have hang-ups (see also people who were never comfortable). I can't control other people's issues, and I can't make health decisions for me and my child based on them either.
And so, we have nursed these three years and a day. Now Owen nurses much less frequently than at first, and he no longer nurses to sleep at night, but it is still an important part of my parenting him and good for both his health and mine.
Do I think I'll be writing a post a year from now about my tandem nursing 4 year old? Who knows? If I am nursing Owen at 4, you can bet big money that I will be shouting it from the roof tops because I think the fact that it is natural and healthy for children to nurse at that age needs to be normalized in our society. If he's done nursing by then, that's great too. Nursing can be both physically and emotionally exhausting, and when Owen weans, I know that he will be better prepared for life after full-term nursing.

Birthday, Take Two

Yesterday while Abram went to work, Owen and I took a trip to the Lancaster Science Factory. We had gone for the first time a while back, on Abram's birthday, in fact. While the weather was beautiful, the pollen seemed to be heavy in the air, so an indoor trip for my sneezing coughing boy was in order. He'd been asking to go back.

Owen had a blast building with Kinex, making a earthquake proof building (well, part of one at least - he had to turn the shaker on before the structure was complete!), playing with the minimal surface bubbles (you can't tell it here, but the bubble forms with planes that go in from each of the three lines of the three parallel lines in this one - very cool),


building with hex nuts between two really strong magnets,

filling the pendulum funnels with sand (and the sand table with more sand as the pendulum swung attempting to make a pattern which was obscured by the artistic efforts of Owen),

playing with the colored lights, rolling balls down slopes, and testing which things (wood, plastic, brass, and aluminum) conducted electricity and complete a circuit to make a light bulb glow. He actually didn't want to try to plastic or wood the second time he went to the table.

Since Owen as not in top shape but still wanted sushi for dinner, after we picked up Abram from work, we got take out and came home.
After dinner Owen enjoyed opening scrubs, overalls, and sticky notes from Anne and Granddaddy; a wooden pirate sword and hat from Grandma and Pa Billy; a pop-up Castles book from Daddy; and a jogging trampoline and small kitchen scale (which has weighed EVERYTHING in sight now) from me.

Here he is before bed time which we surprisingly well despite the excitement of the day.

Happy Birthday, Owen!

Three years ago tomorrow, Owen was born after, um, well quite a labor. This year we celebrated the anniversary with friends and an egg hunt.
Owen enjoyed helping with the preparations from making the invitations

to making

Orange Goo
1.5 cups water
1.5 T. borax
1.5 cups white glue
1.5 cups water
red and yellow food coloring
Mix 1.5 cups water and borax. Mix glue, remaining water, and dye. Combine borax and glue solutions and stir. Store in an airtight container (such as plastic easter eggs).





to dying lots of eggs,

making multi-colored crayons, and stuffing the goody bags for his friends (and him too) with the crafted loot.
While we were shopping, I told Owen we were looking for food dye for the eggs and goo. He very seriously asked me if it was food and could we eat it. That was complicated to explain that while it is meant for dying food, it is not food, and we don't really need to eat it.
I bought 5 dozen with the intention of saving part of them for craft projects during the party. Only after the fun of decorating them all did I realize I had to head back the store to get ones for the activities. Oops!
Here they are before they were hidden Saturday morning:

We did some regular dyed ones in primary and secondary colors, "tie dyed" ones (to the right), and a few cracked ones decorated with tissue paper to look like stained glass.

Owen and seven friends with accompanying parents and infant siblings hunted eggs in the back yard of our apartment building.

We also had crafts:
"stained glass" tissue paper eggs,

egg dying,

and egg head planters with marigold seeds (which sprouted in 3 days in our tester - that's 2 days faster than the package said!).

As Owen requested we had prosciutto and fruit. We also had veggies with soft goat cheese and hummus, deviled eggs, and goat cheeses in addition to the GF brownies (from a mix ;o)) with raspberry sauce.

Owen enjoyed opening the gifts his friends chose before they all headed home.

Not pictured are Owen's friends (in close-up), the crayons, or the dozen orange balloons.