Smile-At-Me-Honey

Has your honey ever smiled at you?  You know, that big, huge, the-eyes-are-smiling-too kind of smile?
My honey smiled at me today like that.  And you know what - I didn't do a thing to get the smile!  I just looked - and there it was, smiling up at me.
It was so cute I had to capture it with my camera!

 

So I made these 5-ingredient granola bars - and one of the ingredients is honey.  So of course I had to use my Pampered Chef measuring cup because it's the best for sticky stuff like honey.  You slide that white part down to the mark you need, fill it up, then pop the white thing up from the bottom and it pushes all the stuff out - leaving nothing on the sides!  It's pretty handy.  I then used a knife to scrape the top off before putting it in the sink with my other dirty dishes (waiting for the dish fairy to come and clean them, no doubt).  Anyway, after putting my little bear down for his nap, I came back downstairs, checked on these beauties cooling on the counter:

then put the rest of the dishes in the sink, and that (first picture) is what I saw!  I couldn't believe it.  How funny that the honey left me a smile, I swear I did nothing at all to the measuring cup except scrape it and set it in the sink, then leave it there (for the dish fairy, in case you missed that part earlier) while I tended to my little one.
Speaking of little - isn't it sweet how the little things can make you smile?  (Get it - sweet (like honey) and make you smile (like the honey).)  :)  hahaha Not a bad Friday afternoon!

Lions and Tigers Kitties & Bears, OH MY!

Lions
We got Bear a [generic] pillow pet that looks like a Lion a few weeks ago on clearance at Garden ridge.  When we walked past them he lit up and started giggling so hard we just couldn't resist.  And even though it's been several weeks, he still LOVEs it.  It's SO stinkin' adorable to watch him play with it!  If we say, "Where's lion?  Go get lion!!" He's crawl over to it as fast as his little hiney can scoot and tackle it and growl at it and this is usually what follows:

 

 

It's an all-out, no-holds-barred, free-for-all between him and lion! :)  He's such a boy, and I LOVE it!

Tigers Kitties
Owen just loves our kitties, he thinks they're just the cat's pajamas... hahaha, pun totally intended.  Anyway... one of our cats - Oliver - is also getting quite warmed up to Owen.  He (Oliver) loves to nuzzle and get his belly rubbed, and has been letting Owen get in on the action lately:

 

Owen thinks it's so cool when Oliver nuzzles him that he'll chase him around half the day with his head down ready to get a nuzzle.  He even nuzzles us sometimes to tell his he loves us :)  It's pretty adorable.

Bears

Our little bear is growing up so fast!!

With a mouth full of quinoa!

 

I Like to Eat, Eat, Eat, Apples & Bananas Corn on the Cob

Look at him GO!  He's growing up way to dern fast.  Yes, I said dern.  I live in the south, that makes it okay. :)

  

It's Worth the Full Price

So several weeks (maybe months?) ago at a friends house I plopped O on this bike-type thing that has a ball under the seat and wheels.  He started bouncing immediately as if he'd been born on one of the things!  The smile on his face was priceless - and when he started actually scooting it? He was thrilled!!  Granted, he could only move backwards, but he was stoked - heck, he couldn't even crawl yet!
So I began the hunt at consignment sales, on craigslist, etc, to find one of these toys that brought so much joy to my little bear. 
But alas, I could not find it. 
So finally, about two weeks ago, I broke down and paid full price for it.  Which I have never done, for anything he owns (i heart consigning!).  Well, aside from his 'coming home from the hospital' outfit that hubby and I splurged a whopping $10 when we found out he was a boy.
Anyway.
He and Papa worked hard to get it put together!

     

And the joy he gets when he rides it....

   

   

and the expressions on his face....

   

   

   

make it worth every {full price} penny we paid for it. :)

Towers and Tongues

As I wrote the title I realized that it could easily be construed that this was a post about the Tower of Babel and people speaking in tongues.  Don't worry.  It's not.  :)
This is merely about Owen's latest infatuations: towers, and tongues.
Or rather, knocking towers down.
Owen can be anywhere in the room, and if he sees you building a tower or a tower that has been built he will crawl as fast as his little rear end can crawl giggling and often growling the whole way just to knock it over.

 

And once he's knocked it down he'll sit there waiting for you to build a new one.

 How could you resist that face?  So I try to build a new one.  But he gets so excited that as soon as I set one block up he knocks it over.  Sometimes I get two up.  Most of the time I have to distract him with something to build a real tower for him to knock over.

"C'mon momma, can you build it just one more time?"  :)

And now about the tongues.  The other day I was sitting on the floor playing with him and he was making motorboat sounds, so I started making the tongue-clicking sound and he got all interested.  So I showed him my tongue and you would have thought it was the coolest thing in the world.  He stopped what he was doing, sat really really still right in front of me and slowly (as if he were about to touch a vicious animal) reached out to touch it.  So I thought, "why not? he needs to explore new things."  So I let him touch my tongue, and he thought it was the coolest, funniest weirdest thing.  So now if you stick your tongue out he'll try and touch it.  But he goes at it like one would go at... say a manta ray - you want to touch it because you know it's a cool experience and it feels neat, but you don't wanna touch it because you're a little afraid something might happen, but you wanna touch it because I mean, - it's a ray, but what if it does something... you know?  That's how he goes about touching tongues. :) I caught him on camera doing it with Bill the other day:

 

Whew, I think that makes me all caught up in the blogging of all the new things Owen's been doing lately. I'm sure there'll be more soon - the boy just keeps growing and learning new things every minute!  I'm so thankful I get to stay home and see it all happen!

Another First

The 'firsts' seem to be abounding these days and happening every other millisecond - but here's another first for Owen - first time in a sand box!  We headed to the park on an unseasonably warm 80* day a couple weeks ago to play with some friends and I plopped Owen in the sandbox.  This was his reaction at first:

 Ummm.... what the heck is this stuff?

He kept picking up a little bit in his hands and letting it run through his fingers, and feeling it with his other hand.  It was so cute.
And then... he found a shovel.

 And started having a blast! He was banging it up and down, you can see the sand flying in the pic below!

 "I think I could get used to this stuff, mom!"  "Good sweetie, because one day we will move to Africa and there sure is a lot of sand there!" :)
And then he found a bucket...

He had so much fun playing in the sandbox!  This will definitely be a repeat adventure :)