Our little Owen boy is 11 months old! A lot of big changes have happened in the last month. Owen now has 2 bottom teeth, 1 top tooth and is working on another top tooth. He cruises around everywhere, he is a VERY busy boy. He has recently started shaking his head no and says mom about 17 million times a day but still won’t say dad. Just yesterday he stood by himself for a couple of seconds before he got too uncomfortable and sat down. He also took 2 steps by himself! We couldn’t be more proud of our little premie angel.

One of Owen’s favorite things is getting kisses from Lucy in the morning when he wakes up. As you all know we’ve been living in AZ since May (we go home this month!) and my parents have kept the dogs in Fargo. It has been amazing to know that our fur kiddos are being taken care of. Unfortunately, Lucy was really struggling being away from Austin. Needless to say we gave in and went to go pick her up two weeks ago. It was the fastest trip ever but it was great to see my parents and all of our fur kiddos who we miss greatly. Lucy is adjusting to hotel life and pterodactyl Owen who won’t leave her alone. He insists on spending so much time with Lucy that he has learned how to open her kennel by himself and we frequently finding ourselves pulling Owen out of Lucy’s kennel to give her some peace and quiet.

Owen is currently wearing 9-12 month clothes but not for long, our little boy is growing like a weed and I fear we will soon be transitioning over to 18 months clothes. He just went through a growth spurt and got tall, finally. Owen is a shorty like his mom right now, but hopefully that will continue to change! As Owen starts to become independent and a toddler, Austin and I have begun thinking about more concrete ways that we want to raise him to be a strong, hard-working and loyal man, which in today’s society is hard to do. Unfortunately, there are lots of things that can take him off that path but that doesn’t mean we give in. We’ve started doing some research into practices and coming to find the way we want to parent and want others to support our little boy. We recently started listening to the book called “Raising Our Sons: A New Path for Raising Healthy and Resilient Boys” by Michael Gurian. We are just a little bit into the book but so far it has been very good.

In 4 short weeks our baby boy will be one year old, don’t mind me as I bawl in the corner. In order to celebrate this last year and thank everyone who has helped us with him the past year we are having a birthday party! All are welcome to join us! The party will be on Sept. 21st at 4pm at our home, contact us for address.