Life with Owen

I love Owen. He's a cool kid. Tomorrow he'll be 12 weeks old and he's just started to do some really neat-o things. Life is still hectic; in fact, life is so hectic that I fell asleep in the dentist's chair today. How crazy is it that getting your teeth scraped is the most relaxing part of your day?!

Anyway, back to Owen. He's been sucking his thumb for a few weeks now, but just recently he's been able to do it with some degree of consistency. I can't tell you how frustrating it was for me to watch Owen bring his hands to his mouth over and over again, only to miss his thumb completely and start crying about the whole fiasco. The thumb really soothes him and I'm glad he's able to find it regularly.

Just recently he also started to grab toys and bring them to his mouth, too. Bryan or I have to hold the toy in front of him, but he knows how to use his opposable thumbs to grab on. And it must be instinct for a baby to put everything in his mouth, because the toys went straight in. FYI, it appears Owen is a lefty.

The coolest thing (next to sleeping through the night) is that Owen can now find mom's face in a crowd of people. We found this out the hard way (story below), but it's the most incredible feeling when your son finally recognizes YOU and wants to see your face above all others.

So Owen got his first cold at daycare. He had some congestion and sniffles for a few days, but we finally decided to take him to the dr. when it sounded like he had some chest congestion and he was running a fever. Bryan sent me in alone, thinking it would be a routine exam...how wrong we were. The first thing I hear is "pneumonia" and the second thing I hear is "blood draw". Eek. To put your minds at ease, it turned out to be just a cold, but that diagnosis only came after we did a flu test (giant cotton swab up Owen's nose), a blood draw (yes, a giant needle into my little son's arm) and a urine sample (a plastic bag taped - taped! - to my son's crotch - crotch!). Luckily, all those tests came back normal, so the dr. didn't require us to do the chest x-ray she originally scheduled. The only good thing out of this whole story is that during the blood draw, Owen was able to find my face amonst the other 3 people (nurses) in the room, and he looked to me for comfort and immediately calmed down when I picked him up. Cool.