Does anybody recognize this boy, it is my sweet baby boy Owie. As I'm typing this up and looking at this photo I am struck with a memory so clear it could have happened yesterday. Owen and I are at the Kroger grocery store in Plano Texas. We've just moved into an apartment and Chad is studying for the bar. We get out of the car and Owen and I walk up to the store hand in hand. He is one year old and just so proud of himself, there walking around like such a big boy, and he literally was! Where does the time go?
But onto the point of this post, I was tucking Owen in this evening when I jumped into bed with him and told him a couple of stories about him when he was little. They just love these stories about themselves when they were little. We laugh and remember silly things about them.
Tonight I told Owen about when he was just a teeny tiny baby first home from the hospital. Chad and I (mostly me) were so excited to have our son home with us that we (mostly me) thought it would be great to sleep next to him all night. I brought him into our room, got him all positioned in the middle of the bed and laid down next to this beautiful sleeping child.
Who, as it turns out is the worlds loudest sleeper. Thrashing about, farting, squeaking, grunting, you name it he did it. This went on for about an hour, him blissfully sound asleep and us laying there wide awake. Finally we couldn't take it anymore, we kissed him and tucked him safely back into his crib. And we never slept with him again.
Another story I told Owen about this evening was about when we moved from Michigan to Texas. If memory serves me correct it was a fifteen hour trip to Texas. Owen was one year old and we had two cars to get to our new home. Chad drove his old green car, that we later traded with a painter to remove wallpaper from our bathroom (best trade in the history of mankind, never and I mean never attempt to remove wallpaper in a bathroom that has been there fifty years. It does things to you.).
So there we are Chad in his car and Owen and I in our Honda Pilot. I had a basket of toys in the passenger seat next to me and I would toss them back at Owen for him to entertain himself with. As he grew tired of them he'd drop/throw them onto the floor and I'd hand him another new toy. After we'd gone through the whole basket I'd scoop them up and start the process all over again.
Tonight as I was telling Owen this story he was just dying of laughter as he pictured me tossing toys at his head when he was a baby.
If boys have the following items they will have hours of entertainment; a hose, buckets, and little brothers/slow runners for easy targets.
I guess it my upbringing in a large family but the more the merrier I say. Today we had seven extra kiddos running around (everywhere but inside!). And I just love it, they ran around like a bunch of crazed little people. Got the attention of the 'older boys' next door whom joined in on the fun by dumping and spraying water on them through the fence at first and then just an all out water fight in the end.
Nobody is immune to the power of fun a hose can provide on a Texas afternoon.
Once they tired of the hose they brought our street toys to go down the 'mountain' in our backyard.
It takes a couple of muscular men to get them up aforementioned mountain. Owen, Harrison, John Michael, brought up Jack and Bryce.
You can't tell in this photo but Owen and Harrison are convincing Jack and Bryce that it's safe and they should be the ones to test it out. No picture of what happened next but just use your imagination.
