A Birthday Message From Owen

Auntie Gaye, I really wanted to send you a great birthday message today but unfortunately I partied a little too hard last night in honor of your birthday and I just couldn't get up this morning to get it all together. Next time I won't do all those shots of milk right before I go to bed and maybe I won't be so zonked the next day.

Oh well, the good news for me is that Mommy's birthday is coming up (I think it's her 25th) so I still have all week to party til dawn. Milk shots here I come!

I hope you have a wonderful birthday today and I love you and I'm thinking of you!!! I wish I could be there to celebrate with you!

*disclaimer: mommy would like to note that I am, indeed, asleep in this picture and this is really how I looked when she went into wake me up. I'm tellin' ya, it's those shots.

Friends, Family, and a Little Goose Poop

Since we hadn't been home to Bolingbrook since New Year's, we decided early last week that we would head there for the weekend. We had a wonderful time, although it was quite hectic trying to get all the visits in. We got there on Friday around 7pm and after a little time with Gramma, we put Owen to bed and headed over to Matt and Susie's house. Luckily, they welcome us at their home no matter what time of night it is! We visited with them for a couple of hours and lucky for us (not so lucky for Matt and Susie) their 4-year-old woke up at midnight so we got to visit with him, too!

Saturday found us heading to the Morton Aboretum with Gramma, Abbie, and Luca. The Aboretum is huge but we only covered a small portion since we were pressed for time and had a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old with us. We walked through the Children's Garden where they have tons of neat stuff for kids to play on and then we had some lunch in the restaurant. I think Owen went up to as many strangers in the garden as he could and said hello. There was one guy he even called Daddy and tried to take him somewhere with him! Just like his daddy and Grandma Debbie, he never meets a stranger! Here are some pictures:

You can sort of see Luca in there next to Owen. He would hardly let me take any pictures of him all day!!

I tried my damnedest to get a picture of Owen actually inside this tunnel but by the time I got him in one side and got around to the other side he was already out of it!

Here he is looking at some squirting frogs (not real ones, of course) in a fountain. He kept saying, "A frog! A frog!"

This was in the musical flowers section of the garden. He had so much fun running around to all the different big flowers and playing the instruments.

Here they are "making water, " which I think is how Luca described it.

After the Aboretum we headed over to Great-Gramma's house to visit with her for a bit. I didn't get any pictures there, I think because I was so exhausted! Owen had a great time visiting with her and playing with all the toys she had. After visiting with her for a couple of hours we headed to Grampa and Gramma's house. I don't know how many of you know, but Grampa Gary is an animal nut. We call him Dr. Dolittle. I swear it's like a scene out of "Ace Ventura" over there! The animal gene has carried over to Cody and now to Owen, who is absolutely wild about animals. He played with the cats for a while in the house and kept saying, "Here tee-tee! Here tee-tee!" Then he'd get down on the floor next to it and say, "Hello cat." It was so cute. Then we headed outside to see the geese and ducks that are always there. Grampa gave Owen some bread to feed them and he LOVED it! He chased them ALL over the yard and said, "Duck! Duck!!" He was in absolute heaven. He had goose poop on his sock and his shoes but he didn't care one bit! Grampa also got a rabbit to come over but Owen chased it away, and then Grampa went in the front yard, threw out some bread, made some woodchuck noises, and out pops a woodchuck from the ground! I couldn't stop laughing at the animal charmer.

He was determined to get that goose to eat his bread!!

I love this picture because they look like they are walking the exact same way. He looks like Cody's Mini-Me!

3 generations of Muhs men

After a very long day we headed home for a wonderful meal cooked by Gramma and a much-needed bath for Owen. Sunday we went to visit Gramma and Grampa O'Brien and then went to the park with Gramma Lynn. Cody was supposed to have taken a picture of Owen with her but it wasn't on my camera so I don't know what happened!!! She'll be here in two weeks so I'm sure we'll get lots then.

We came home Sunday afternoon but not before Cody got his mandatory Chicago style hot dogs at Portillo's. It was a great weekend, but not long enough. So, we've decided that we're going to take our week-long vacation this summer in Chicago. It'll be cheap 'cause we'll get to bunk at Gramma's and we'll be able to take Owen to all the places we never get to see in a quick weekend. Cody is, of course, most excited about taking him to the Brookfield Zoo. I am most excited about actually getting to sleep while I'm there since we won't be running around everywhere at all hours of the night!!

Play-Dough Fun!

Grandma Lynn got Owen some play-dough for Easter and he just loved it! So I decided to buy him some more the other day and we had an afternoon of fun! I got out a rolling pin and my alphabet cookie cutters and he thought that was the coolest thing.





He loved when I spelled out his name. He said, "O, dubbie, e, n, Owen!" He says it really fast and it is just the cutest thing.

Thank Goodness for Bath Nights!!

Yesterday, while Owen was eating his lunch I was walking around the house doing a few things. He is at that age now where he can feed himself fairly well and I don't worry if I'm not sitting there right next to him the entire time he's eating. Apparently, I need to rethink that, as this is what I found when I came back into the room:

He is pretty good at feeding himself prunes but when he gets down to the bottom and can't get it out with the spoon he just takes it upon himself to get it out with his hands. He looked up at me with his messy face and said, "More?"
I'm really not even sure why he still bothered with the spoon!

I thought I was going to need an entire roll of paper towels just to clean him off!!! Needless to say, a bath was in high demand last night!

The Glamorous Life of a Mom

Today found Owen bringing me his shoes and saying, "Outside! Outside!" So since it's a beautiful day I decided to oblige him and take him out. I figured I might as well get a little work done while I was out there so I decided to scoop some poop. Ah, yes, it just doesn't get much better than that. So here I am outside trying to figure out how in the hell to attach the plastic bag to the poop scooper (never did figure that one out), all the while Owen is whining for me to let him get on the riding lawn mower. I knew that if I could not figure out how to attach a bag to a poop scooper there was really no way I was going to get a riding lawn mower up and running. So, I diverted his attention to his bubble mower which kept him happy for a bit. Until the bubble mower quit blowing bubbles. Not only am I not good with real mowers, bubble mowers really aren't my forte either. I never could get any bubbles to come out of the blasted thing. So I decided maybe we'd try the swing. Owen got in the swing and said, "One, two, free, go!" And I pushed him high in the air. He had a big smile on his face and said, "Yeah, baby!" (I'm still not sure where he learned that phrase--I'll have to ask Cody tonight.) My point to this story, you ask? It just got me thinking that although my life is filled with poop scooping, poopy diapers, broken bubble mowers, and a sometimes whiney kid, seeing that smile and hearing that, "yeah, baby!" really does make it all worth it. There's just nothing better to me than being a Mom.

And because posts are always better with a picture, I can't think of a better one to accompany this post. Hope you are all taking a little time out today to enjoy the little perks of life amidst all the poop.

Bob the Builder Frenzy

Easter Eggstravaganza!

Well, this is going to be a long one since I haven't posted in a few days. We had a great Easter weekend visiting with PawPaw and Bona (we're not sure why Owen calls her that, but he does). We played poker (I won!), Mom and I got to go shopping all day Friday, we went out to eat Saturday night, watched a movie, went to church, had a great Easter dinner--it was just a nice relaxing family weekend! Here are some pictures we took over the weekend.

I dyed eggs on Saturday afternoon while Owen was napping and then he decorated them with stickers that night. He had a lot of fun with them. I got a Sesame Street kit so he was pretty excited about that.

He loved playing with all the character eggs. He liked to line them up on the table.

Here's the Muhses before church on Sunday morning. A picture with Owen looking at the camera, sitting still, and smiling is very rare these days so this is the best we could get.

Here he is with Bona and PawPaw.

Here's what the Easter Bunny left him while we were at church.

Checking out his loot.

He enjoyed hunting the eggs. We practiced with him on Saturday and he caught on to it pretty quickly. He didn't want to carry his basket though, so I had to follow behind him with it.

Of course, he had to open each egg that he found that was filled with candy as soon as he picked it up. He ate some of it and then dropped it into a bowl that I carried around as well.

Here he is sampling the candy--notice Murphy is trying to get a little taste too.

After a day of hunting and eating candy, a guy's just gotta relax a little.

Hope everyone else had a blessed Easter! Now if we could just get that Spring weather back everything would be much better!

Count Owen

I know he's looking at me like I'm a crazy woman when I tell him to do what "The Count" from "Sesame Street" says but I swear he does it EVERY OTHER TIME! Oh well, you'll all just have to settle for me doing it instead!

Pucker Up

So here is what I looked like pretty much all day yesterday:

No, Cody is not beating me. For some reason, my lips and/or face keep swelling off and on. This has been going on for about 3 years now but I don't remember it happening since I've had Owen. It happened a lot before I had him but then it just sort of quit. Then this weekend it started happening again. Friday night it was very slight, then the same on Saturday, and then Sunday I looked like I'd been on the losing end of boxing match. This wasn't even the biggest they got! Cody kept calling me Angelina or Goldie. I had to take 3 doses of benadryl before they would go down--in the past I've only needed one. Cody researched it online for me and didn't really find much except that there is something in toothpaste that I could be allergic to. But I think that it would happen every time I brushed my teeth, and it happened yeseterday when I woke up before even brushing my teeth. I've tried to think of different things I've eaten or put on my face and I'm just not coming up with anything. From Cody's research, he found that a lot of other people have the same thing and they don't know what it is. Anyone got any words of wisdom on this topic?