Owen at 2

JOY.

That's the best way to describe Owen and what he brings to our family.

He's hilarious, he giggles and shrieks with delight and even laughs at himself when he knows he's being funny.  He loves to sing and dance and do anything his sisters are doing.  He is usually very happy and obedient and easygoing, although he has been having an occasional two-year-old moment lately where he is very opinionated and stubborn!  He loves to play games and play trains and Legos and play basketball with Dad.  He loves to help with chores and he's the best person in our family at putting things away when he's done with them!  He may be kind of compulsive about it actually haha.  He loves to SING and can often be heard singing the BYU fight song or various other songs he knows- mostly church songs.

He has a pretty good life, I wanted to describe a typical day for him.

He wakes up, on average, at 8am, probably 1/3 of the time earlier and 1/4 of the time later, depending on how much of a nap he took the day before and when he went to bed. (This was on his birthday, he woke up with one arm out of his neck hole haha)

He spends his morning with mom and Whitney, eating breakfast and reading a scripture story, helping Whitney with music practice and homework and reading, maybe unloading the dishwasher, and occasionally going visiting teaching or to the store.  And playing.
This was an especially fun morning we had a few weeks ago when Uncle Donny, Aunt Christine, and Evelyn were here!

Whitney's kindergarten starts at 11:45, so we eat lunch and then drop her off and the next hour is Mom and Owen time!  Sometimes we go shopping at this point, but mostly it's just playing in the toy room with toys, games, and puzzles, until it's time for reading stories and singing songs and taking a NAP around 1-1:30 pm.  Then it's nap time for the next 1 1/2-3 hours, depending on if I have to wake him up to pick up the girls or go somewhere!  So here's a lovely picture of mom -me- at 22 weeks pregnant (last week).  I know I'm not huge, but I am huge for 22 weeks!!  We have a long way to go...

 Owen's favorite time of day is probably when he wakes up from his nap, because usually that means his KATELYN is home!!!  He ADORES her and is always begging to play with her, even though often she'd rather just read... she really does love to play with him too most of the time though.  Here they are at the pool in Provo the Saturday before Owen's birthday.  We love swimming!

 So the rest of the afternoon is filled with Owen playing with his sisters, refereed by mom.  This is Owen and Whitney on his birthday when he got a mini primary songbook to match Whitney's and they spent a half-hour sitting here singing together- Whitney picking a song and Owen trying to follow along. :)

 5:30 can usually find Owen standing on a chair by the counter "helping mom make dinner"- aka playing with all the neat gadgets in the silverware drawer.  And then Dad comes home!  and we eat dinner! (represented by this picture of our girl party, when we found out our new baby is a girl!) Owen is not a big eater, but he does enjoy sitting at the table with us and he ALWAYS wants to say the dinner prayer!  He says adorable prayers though, coming up with really cute stuff.

 In the evenings Owen gets to play with everyone, including DAD, who loves to wrestle and play basketball and catch and watch sports on TV. (This is at the BYU basketball game.)

Then at about 8 we get ready for bed and read scriptures and read stories and sing more songs and go to bed, sometimes not until 9!  Often Owen can be heard singing to himself in his bed, so cute.

Owen blesses our family by making us laugh and smile and showing us how to delight in simple pleasures.  We are so grateful for him and so excited for him to be TWO and have an exciting year.