Owen is twenty-two months old!

Eating:

• Owen eats three meals a day and an afternoon snack normally. But lately he has been super hungry and wants to snack pretty much nonstop. Growth spurt, maybe?
• He still eats basically whatever we eat for meals. 
• Owen's favorite foods are yogurt, strawberries, grapes, soup, and peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
• Owen drinks whole milk with each main meal and water in between. He is obsessed with juice and asks for it often, but we try to stick with water most of the time. 
• He tasted chocolate this month and has become a big fan. He frequently asks for chocolate. 

Sleeping:

• Owen naps in the afternoon and generally goes down just after lunch around 1 p.m and sleeps for between an hour and a half to two hours.
• Owen goes to bed at night at 7:30 p.m.
• He wakes up at around 8 a.m., sometimes earlier, sometimes later.
• Owen's going to bed routine consists of a bath, pajamas, reading a few books, and then snuggling and rocking in the chair with either mommy or daddy for a few minutes before putting him in his crib. 
• We read Owen one Bible story a night out of his Jesus Storybook Bible and he loves to have us read his "Bible stories."
• Owen has become attached to a small tiger stuffed animal that we bought at the Cincinnati Zoo and sleeps with it every night. He calls it Kitty Kitty. 
• Owen loves his new Twilight Turtle nightlight and talks about going to "see the stars" all the time. He is also really proud that he can turn it on himself and wants to show it off to anyone he can. 
• Owen has started telling us when he is sleepy and when we put him to bed afterwards, he generally falls asleep pretty quickly with just a little bit of crying. 

Things He Knows:

• Owen has a super large vocabulary and it seems to grow by the day. People frequently comment on how impressed they are with his talking.
• Owen can count to 10. He has started being able to count into the teens. We are working on learning what numbers mean and teaching him how to count items instead of just rattling off the numbers he has memorized.
• Owen has learned some of the words to several songs. He already knew "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Jesus Loves Me,"  "Old MacDonald Had A Farm," "Row Row Row Your Boat," "Hush Little Baby," and "Baa Baa Black Sheep." He has several others songs that he sings now, including The Animal Boogie song, "The Farmer in the Dale," and a made-up lullaby that I sing to him at night that my mom used to sing to me. It's very repetitive, but basically the words are about everyone who loves Owen through the night and I just go through our whole family. It's so sweet to catch him singing, "Papa (or whoever) loves Owen, all through the night."
• He has many of his books memorized and will sit "reading" them to himself.
• Owen can still recite his ABCs if he doesn't get distracted partway through.
• He has learned to recognize several letters of the alphabet, in particular the letters of his name. He is constantly pointing out letters on shirts, food packaging, license plates, etc. 

Other Things I Want to Remember:

• Owen is wearing mainly size 18-24 months clothing. 
• Owen wears size 6 and 6.5 wide shoes, depending on the brand. His boots are size 7's and he can sometimes kick them off so he's not exactly into a 7 yet. 
• Owen is wears size four diapers.
• Owen has 16 teeth now. All he's missing is his two-year molars, but we're fine waiting a while for those to make their appearance. 

• Owen loves when we read to him and looking at books by himself. His favorite books are anything with trucks or animals. He loves "Elusive Moose," "Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site," and "Chugga Chugga Choo Choo."
• Owen loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Thomas and Friends. He gets to watch an episode a few times a week. 

• Owen loves bathtime. He enjoys playing with his squirty Thomas the Train toys, his foam puzzle pieces and his tug boat. He generally gets upset when we go to take him out of the tub. But a game of towel Peekaboo generally helps.
• Owen still enjoys playing outside and will cry pretty much every time we bring him back inside. It has been really cold lately so we haven't been outside as much as he would like. 
• Owen still displays a tiny bit of separation anxiety, but we can now report that he fusses more when we try to pick him up from church nursery than he does when we drop him off. 
• Owen loves cell phones and tablets and computers and if you have one out in his presence, he believes there is an unspoken invitation for him to come mess with it. He frequently walks around the house with my cell phone pretending to talk to people.