My favorite!

Owen loves his cars. That's his toy cars from the movie Cars. He currently has 2 Lightening McQueens, Mater, Sally, the Sheriff, Sarge, Fillmore, Ramone, Flo, Red, Tex, Chick Hicks, The King, and Mack Truck (and 20 more that he doesn't have yet from a bulk Ebay purchase). Keith loves how Owen says "Dustin Mellows" (a delivery truck from Radiator Spring's hey-day; a very small character, who appears in the movie for a total of two seconds), so he started calling that his favorite. It got to the point that Keith only had to ask, "Owen, can you do daddy a favor?" and Owen replies "Dustin Mellows!" (it really is incredibly cute!). (My second favorite is Alarm Clock for much the same reason) Now everyone has a favorite - Owen's is Sally; mine is Flo. I have no idea how Flo (the only car with an ultimate reference of course) became my favorite. That's just what Owen decided. (If anything, Mater is probably my actual favorite; but that's taken - it's Toolman's favorite.) Nana's favorite is Tex, which I rationalized as her dad (my grandfather) worked for Texaco, not that Owen would know that. Grandma's is Ramone and Grandpa's is Doc Hudson. So now every day I come home from the hospital, Owen comes running to say hi, then immediately runs and gets Flo and hands her to me. My response, of course, is "Flo!! My favorite!!".

And much like how everyone has a favorite car, everyone has an animal associated with them. Owen is, of course, a lion--king of our "jungle". I am a horse that he can ride. Joanne is a camel (she used to have a hump). The teacher at school is a sting ray (the teacher in Finding Nemo). Grandpa is a shark. Grandma is an elephant. Nana is unfortunately a piggy, but that's pretty good word association as her name is Peggy. But the most appropriate is for Tooman--dinosaur!

I'm not sure what Owen's favorite vegetable is (if only avocado was a vegetable... I would guess maybe corn, but he doesn't get that too often. I'll say edamame or sweet potato), but he's been pretty good at eating his lately. Keith found a trick to get him to eat his dinner when he was getting too distracted. Owen was naming the cars he had on the table, when Keith said, "Is that a green bean in your mouth?". This made Owen giggle and immediately stuff some green beans into his mouth. "Is that a carrot in your mouth?" In goes a carrot! Not sure how long this will work, but so far it's lasted two nights.

Yesterday we heard one of my favorite words these days: normal. As in Sophie's head MRI. Alleluia!!! That is such a big relief. Lord knows what myriad of things they could have found. Sophie is also starting to nipple better, so things are looking up. She still gets pretty upset with her gas, but hopefully the Mylocon they started her on yesterday will help. I'm considering giving up milk again (I used soy milk and soy yogurt when Owen was younger), but that still means a large supply of lactose-fortified breast milk that's in the freezer.

She is feisty (and LOUD) when she is upset. She tends to get the most upset after her 5pm feeding. The other day I had to change her diaper three times for poops within a few minutes of each other. And yesterday she got so upset that she spit up part of her feed so we had to change her outfit (it's hard to tell if she spit up because she was upset, or upset because she needed to spit up). I used to think it was her vitamins that upset her so much, but last night she hadn't even had her vitamins yet. My theory is that she knows that's the time I want to leave, so she does anything she can to get me to stay (and it works!). :-) My favorite day will be when I leave and she gets to go with me.