Rockin' at Church

I (Karen) really enjoying singing. I do not claim to be a professional or anything close. I would say that I am a decent enough singer that you are not likely to cover your ears and run away if I am singing in your presence. If you were to come to Hackberry Creek Church at 9:00 on a Sunday morning, you would most likely find me singing (yes, into a microphone and everything) at the altCHURCH service. Last weekend there was a party to welcome the new 6th graders into the youth group and we performed a cheesy medley for the parents and teenagers. The medley included such classics as What I Like About You, Boom Boom Pow (haha), Wanted Dead or Alive and Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song.

This morning, just for fun, we decided to play the medley at the end of the church service. Owen was there and Myers had him on his shoulders in the back of the room. There is a part in the Immigrant Song that goes, "ahhhhhhh ahhh" (look it up on YouTube if you are not familiar). Anyway, there is a slight pause between "ahhs" in the song and during that instrumental part, Owen was singing along shouting out "ahhhh". Everyone turned around to look at him and it was pretty funny.

Up until this week, Owen was going down for a nap everyday right around 9:00 a.m. This was fine during the week but posed a problem on Sundays since that is the exact time that church begins. It is great that he is now awake longer and we can all go to church as a family which is so important to us. When all of those tired teenagers are staring blankly at me whilst I sing, it is nice to see a smiling baby face among the crowd. Plus, when the message is boring I can play with Owen instead of paying attention, just kidding.

And now some pictures....just because.



Just so you know, he is laughing in this one, not crying out in pain. He has ticklish shoulders apparently.

Elbow Rodeo

When Myers and I were just young pups, we used to play elbow rodeo. Not sure if this is a game that we invented or something that other people did as well. The way it works is one person would grab on to the elbow skin of the second person. Then, the second person flails their arm around while the first person tries to keep hold of the elbow skin. I know everyone is going to pause right now for a quick game of elbow rodeo with their friends and family. Not the most exciting game in the world but it was fun for two 13 year olds.

The reason I bring this up is because Owen has started to play the game of diaper rodeo. Once he started crawling, he decided that a great time to practice crawling was the exact moment that I was attempting to change his diaper. He flips himself over and tries to scoot away no matter if he is on the changing table or the floor. There were several occasions where he would be on the floor army crawling away with his butt cheeks hanging out of a partially attached diaper. This whole routine seemed to be very amusing for Owen but quite exasperating for me.

After several days of chasing him around the floor or repeatedly flipping him over on the changing table, I decided to try and distract him with something to see if that would make him forget to play diaper rodeo. The first thing I grabbed was a baby shoe and handed it to him before I started the diaper change. He loved it. Owen was inspecting (and biting) the shoe and was so engrossed that he completely forgot to flip over and try to crawl away. I couldn't believe how interested he was in a tiny shoe. Now, he gets to play with the shoe during his diaper changes but only at that time. This way he doesn't get bored with it and I genuinely think he looks forward to playing with the shoe as a treat.

It has been so amazing to see how quickly he picks up new skills. Within a couple of days he went from army crawling, to real crawling, to pulling himself up and now "cruising" on the furniture. We had to lower his mattress because after he pulled himself up he was trying to eat his way out of the crib!