225 days. 7 months old tomorrow.

let me tell ya. We heard Owen screaming from his bedroom after a while of quiet mumbling and play. Upon entering his bedroom, this is what we found. I felt bad leaving him there for a second, but I had to grab the camera. Dude scooted backwards under the bed until he got his head stuck. Pretty good.

We moved! yep. Let's get this baby off to the right start by moving at six months. maybe we'll move again before he turns one, and so on and so forth. My little vagabond. But really, I hope not. I love our new place. It's beautiful. Dark wood floors, working fireplace, office, huge room for O, amazing lighting, perfect kitchen. It's all very comfortable and we look good here.

tomorrow Owen turns 7 months old. what the? really? it's been 7 months already? as of Sunday, maybe as a mother's day surprise, Owen officially started crawling. like a goddamn pampers commercial or something. he's been scooting around and thinking about the logistics of it for a while, but Sunday, he put one paw in front of the other, coordinated the knees and crawled his ass right over to me, then belly flopped and started clapping. I cried, obviously. Look what I taught that baby! holy cacaballs! how does this happen?

Since we've moved in, Filip's mother came to visit us for a week. It was real nice to have her here, despite our own weird situational stresses. Like, it was real nice. I'm so glad she finally got to meet Owen. Makes me feel pretty good, like I've been doing a good job. I also feel like things are getting back to normal. Well, not back to normal, not back to anything, but like, a new thing that is on it's way to a happy medium. I'm balancing Owen 24/7, work, babysitting and now baby trading, some flowers in the in-between and almost staying sane by starting to slowly carve out little bits of time for myself here and there, which includes successfully thrifting again, knitting lace and going to see Babies tonight, all i'm so excited about. I guess having a kid has finally granted me the patience to knit lace. ha.

Just after moving, Owen had another amazing photo shoot with Michelle which you can see some of the results here. Which reminds me that I absolutely have to call the baby modeling agencies this week. I would have never imagined that our baby would have so much fun and be so happy and mild-mannered to put up with photo shoots. He had so much fun, we all had so much fun and again, I'm so fucking thrilled and thankful that Dee introduced us and that Michelle has been so awesome and generous in capturing some amazing shots of Owen for us.

Owen is officially left handed. I suspected so for a while, but over the past few weeks it's certain. Even this morning, he grabbed his mini bagel with his left hand. Filip's dad was left-handed and it's said that certain traits and things skip a generation. Pretty weird and funny. I bet he's going to have terrible handwriting much like Filip's.

How is it that coincidentally a bunch of us all had babies around the same time and that we all ended up living within a few blocks of each other? And from that there has become this brilliant and beautiful understanding and community that is so important and priceless. Never before have I understood or appreciated fully what and how important community is. And further, the thought of living this life that i'm in now, let's say even 15 years ago where the internet never existed, seems totally impossible and is mind boggling. How did people do it? How did my mother do it? seriously, jeez.

Anyway, my first mother's day was, in one, was a total success and in another, a disaster. Owen and I had a great, great afternoon hanging with Kate and Parker at smallbar. Owen had a pickle, Parker held a baby for the very first time and, I think, altogether it was a lot of love. It was really, really sweet and awesome. It was Owen's first time on a bus, too. And with his whole hand jammed in his mouth the entire ride, he fit in great with all the other crazies on the Diversey bus. ha!





So, yeah. I got a really sweet mother's day card from my mom with a gift certificate and for once in such a long time, I actually didn't need to use it for baby food or diapers. I've got a shitload of books coming from amazon that I'm super excited about. Consuming Kids, which I've been really looking forward to and sort of terrified to read, which is also our book club selection. and The Assassination of Fred Hampton, a couple Dover books and The Odyssey.

Ah, well. I should begin wrapping this up. My lists of tasks is dwindling and that's exciting, but I want to get back to that before more work comes my way. I made curtains for the kitchen last night. So now almost all of the old lady lace curtains are gone and it doesn't look like a weird Polish lady lives here anymore. The remaining crates and boxes have been taken care of and the back porch has been cleaned and organized. Feels good. I'm going to clean and finish up my sheepskin to make a small rug for Owen's room, put leather on my Bertoias to save our beautiful dark wood floors, and maybe start on this super cute vintage oriental themed gravel wall art that Adam and Angie gave me awhile ago. I have the perfect spot for it in Owen's room, but I'm not sure i'm ready to bust out the hot glue gun yet. Remember tacky glue? In that terrible gold/copper looking bottle? Does that stuff still exist? That would be perfect for this. heh.

2 last things. first, Desmond Morris said that if mothers really show their love to their babies and love them particularly in the first two years of their life, those babies are going to be good at loving later on in life. I want Owen to be really good at loving when he grows up.

and lastly, from The Tonight Show:
Tony Randall asks Johnny Carson, "Can you use the word horticulture in a sentence?" and Johnny responds with, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't lead a horticulture."