Amy Scott's Thoughts

Here we are over half way through the month of August! I’m not sure how, but time keeps zipping past me. This last week was a full one for the Scott Family. On Monday, Jeremy took some of our graduating 5th graders to the Mariner’s game. I didn’t stay up to wait for his arrival home, but I did ask Siri on my iPhone who won the game before I turned out the lights. Siri informed me that Seattle crushed Toronto. I found it humorous that she used the word crushed, not something like the Mariner’s won or what not.

On Tuesday, Owen had his 9 month well-check appointment at 10 months old. Since this appointment had no shots, I’m guessing it didn’t matter that it was a little off schedule. I was grateful to not have to deal with a cranky baby who doesn’t like shots. They did have to do a finger prick, but Owen didn’t even cry. The nurse said that they don’t often cry at this age because they are so used to getting banged up through exploring the world. It’s true. Owen’s exploration and mobility have left him a bunch of bruises. I’m about to wrap him in bubble wrap! Of course, it’s always fun to see the stats. Owen is 19% in weight, 30% in height and 73% in head circumference. To my surprise, Owen weighed in at 19lbs. 6 oz. He has yet to break the 20lbs. mark! I’m okay with him being on the smaller side because he is healthy and happy. Our doctor was really encouraging and said Owen is doing great.

The latter part of my week was spent the good old Southwest Washington Fair. Our MOPS group has a booth at the fair and each of the leadership team members took two shifts.  The shifts were four hours each and they dragged on a bit because our booth wasn’t really hopping. We offered a diaper changing station and a private nursing room. I was a little disappointed more people didn’t take advantage of it. On Thursday, I was paired at the booth one of our mentor moms, Kate. It was fun to chat with her and get to know her story more. On Friday, Jeremy and Owen joined me. Once my shift was up, we met up with my sister and brother-in-law to have dinner and explore the fair. It had been years since I’d gone to the fair, so I was super excited for the fair food! I had my all-time elephant ear and I was a happy camper! Yum!

Fun @ the SWW Fair

After some busy days, we had a day around the house yesterday. When Owen napped, I laid in bed and read. True luxury! I’m currently rereading the Anne of Green Gables series. I’m very happy to loose myself in the world of Avonlea and Prince Edward Island. Jeremy picked some apples off our trees. We have a great crop of apples coming in this year! I spent part of my afternoon making a homemade apple pie with home grown apples. You can’t beat that!

Around the house on Saturday! Toby needed to make a blog appearance since it’s been awhile!

That’s what the Scotts have been up as of late! We have family coming into town this week and we are looking forward to being reunited with some of our South Dakota family members. This will be there first time to meet Owen and we can’t wait to make the introductions! I know that the month will be over in a blink and the new school year will be starting. I’m trying to enjoy these last few summer days before the fall schedule picks up again. I love the seasons and the cycle of time. It’s been a good summer and more fun is still to be had. However, there is lots to look forward to just around the bend! We are blessed!

Owen, Toby and I are keeping on eye on the homestead while Jeremy is away for 6 days at Kid’s Camp. Jeremy had an overnight commitment in April and I had my sister come spend the night with me. That makes last night my first official night alone with Owen. Obviously, we lived to tell about it the next day. Only 4 more nights to go! While I miss my hubby terribly, I have packed my week full of projects and outings to keep myself and Owen occupied. Yesterday, Jeremy took off after church so Owen and I had the afternoon/evening to fill. We went up my parent’s house to have dinner and play with their exciting toys. After dinner we came home to finish off the evening with DVR’d television, laundry folding and book reading. We’re an exciting bunch.

The mystery bags! I’m trying to patient and not open them all at once!

Jeremy left 5 bags of surprises for us while he is gone. Today Owen and I got to open up the first bag! Jeremy got cookies for me and a toy for Owen. At least, I assume that was the gift breakdown. He didn’t say. I do love little people so maybe the toy was for me. I’m not sure I would like to see Owen on an Oreo sugar high. I’ve already dug into the cookie stash today!

Monday’s surprise goodies!

Apart from keeping Toby and Owen alive, I am also responsible for watering Jeremy’s many plants while he is away. There are two planters in the front of the house, the flower beds, his garden and the green house. Lucky for me, Jeremy has most of these set up with sprinklers and drip hoses. All I have to do is remember to turn on the water… and off. I’m two days into my watering commitment and so far so good. If these plants die, it’s not for a lack of water.

Trying to keep the green things green

Today, Owen and I have worked on a couple of projects (I will blog about these next week – they are a surprise for Jeremy, who reads this blog). I ran some errands while my mom watched Owen and we have a meeting with a family at church. Tomorrow we have MOPS in the park in the morning and we’ll be stopping by sister’s house to check  it out. We haven’t been over since moving day, so I am excited to see how she’s settled in. I have packages to get into the mail, baby clothes to sort, my regular house chores to do, root beer floats for my Wednesday night class and a new book to finish. I even have a soda experiment to perform this week. Never a dull moment! I hope all this activity helps us to sleep hard at night and makes the days fly by so we can be reunited with Jeremy sooner! I sure miss that man!

Celebrating 8 years!

Today is a very special day. Two things coincide on this one day. Today is Jeremy and I’s wedding anniversary. We are celebrating 8 years of wedded bliss! I’m grateful for the 7 years that Jeremy and I had together before having Owen. Our marriage has been built on a strong foundation. It’s been an adventure figuring out our lives as parents. I’m so glad that I get to be on this adventure with Jeremy. He has the ability to make me laugh whatever mood I am in. He is giving and caring. He does little things often to show me he loves me. He is a wonderful provider for our family and I am blessed by his strong work ethic. It’s been fun to watch Jeremy with Owen. They are good buddies. Owen is lucky to have a father who is so invested in his life. The last 8 years have been filled with ups and downs. Jeremy has been by my side for all them. I’m so excited that this is still just the beginning of our love story!

9 months

The other fun element of the day is Owen is now 9 months old! Somehow our little boy has reached the 3/4 of a year mark! How? I do not know. Owen continues to grow in personality. He loves to laugh and talk. Our baby is not a quiet baby. I know I say this monthly, but I am amazed at how vocal he is. He now says Dada and Mama in a way that makes me think he understands what he is saying. Another big milestone is Owen got two teeth this month! With the addition of teeth, Owen has shown slightly more interest in finger foods. He is still cautious, but he seems more willing to lick things and try to put them in his mouth. If you hand Owen something, he will immediately hit it on something to see what sound it makes. He loves to make noise. Other random Owen news, he now likes to hang out on the wood floor. On the floor, he has the ability to scoot. Owen isn’t crawling, but he is moving. He knows how to get around in a very makeshift kind of way. He loves to hit the bins on our bookshelves and he enjoys laying under is jumperoo  (weird kid). He also loves to walk while holding our fingers. He can practically run! We did have our mishap where Owen let go of Jeremy’s fingers and biffed it. The couch leg caught his fall and cut his eyebrow. He handled it well, but there goes that modeling career! Overall, Owen is a happy 9 month old baby boy! It’s been so amazing to see the changes month to month and I am excited for the little boy he is becoming. He is a sweetheart who now gives hugs and kisses. I could keep sharing tidbits endlessly, but alas, all blogs must come to an end. I will leave you with some recent photos!

Hanging with Grandpa

The socks totally go with these jammies, right?

Pool time with Daddy!

New favorite spot

This last weekend was an exciting one. Owen experienced many firsts – his first trip the ER on Friday and his first trip to the Oregon Zoo on Saturday. Friday was my grandma’s 81st first birthday.  My mom, Owen and I drove up to Puyallup to celebrate with the birthday girl. We got there and socialized with my grandma and great-aunt and great-uncle. My cousin, Charlotte, stopped by for a few minutes. Owen got to play with his 3rd cousins, Forrest and Lincoln. Forrest and Owen are 10 days apart so it was fun to see the two babies together. After all the socializing, we went out to a yummy lunch at Olive Garden. Owen had moments of fussiness at the restaurant, but he held it together pretty well for a baby who needed a nap. My mom offered to stop at Starbucks on our way out of town and this where the day went downhill. Since the drive thru was crazy busy my mom decided to go in and place our orders. I was sitting in the car with Owen who was sleeping and breathing a bit funny. All of the sudden the sound of a puking baby could be heard. I got out of the front seat and opened the car door in the back to see Owen covering himself in puke. It was bad. Very bad. Puddles… Anyway, I got Owen out of the car seat and started to clean things up as a best I could. Thank God for baby wipes. I had to clean the car seat and the area surrounding  it, I had to wipe down his toys and then proceed to clean Owen with my mom’s help. My mom’s vehicle has a nice spot in the back so we laid Owen down and gave him a baby wipe bath and a fresh diaper and outfit. Mom questioned putting him back into clothes, but I thought this was an isolated incident (rookie mistake). We reloaded and took off for home until… the sound of baby puke could be heard again. We pulled off in a local church parking lot and started the process of cleaning up Owen again.  And then Owen threw up twice more. This time it was all over my lap. Yep. Good times.  At this point, we decided to wait out the bug and return my grandma’s house since we were only a few minutes away. Once we got to Grandma’s, Owen was asleep so we decided to turn around and head back for home. However, Owen’s breathing got weird and his color was super pale. He threw up a couple more times and we finally made the decision to take him to the nearest ER. As you can tell, there was a lot of driving and stopping and puking. I made many phone calls with Jeremy and our doctor’s office before finally making the decision to go to the ER. The 15 minute drive to the ER was one of the scariest in my life. Owen was so pale and I was scared if he closed his eyes that he wouldn’t wake up, so I kept him awake (more for my sanity than anything else). We arrived at the ER and Owen perked up. It was crazy. I’m fairly certain it was an answer to the prayers our family had been praying for us. It was a tough call but we decided to stay and have Owen seen by the doctor just to be on the safe side. This led to us spending over two hours in the ER waiting… for no real reason. We were seen by the triage nurses and told Owen was fine but if we wanted we could go back to the waiting room and continue to wait for a room to open up and a doctor to see us. Jeremy arrived after this conversation with the nurses and we decided it was time to go home. Owen was doing much better and had stopped throwing up. He had no fever and seemed to be his normal self again. We took our chances and signed him out of the hospital. At this point it was now 5:30pm (we originally started to leave for home at 1:00pm) and I was exhausted from the day. It was so challenging to me to make these decisions regarding Owen’s health all on my own. I’m so grateful that my mom was alongside me for this adventure. She really helped me keep it together. We were both so grateful when Owen perked up. He was a totally different baby by the time we took off for home.

After all the drama of Friday, you would assume we had a quiet day to lay low and just recover? Nope, wrong. It was Family Zoo Day for our church. Jeremy felt awkward about going to the Zoo without his family and I totally understand. As the leader of this event, he really couldn’t stay home. So we all went to the zoo on Saturday. Owen had no fever and hadn’t thrown up since the whole ER ordeal. We decided we would greet the families at the zoo and then leave whenever depending on how Owen was feeling. The whole day had me a little nervous, but it turned into a really great family day. Jeremy and I enjoyed taking Owen around the zoo. Owen clued into the animals and loved to watch them. The weather was off and on rainy so the zoo was kind of quiet. After the drama of Friday, it was just nice to be together as a family. I was so glad that Owen was feeling better and that we could have that time together. I wasn’t sure how the day would go down, but it turned into an family memory that I will never forget. We had a really good time. The contrast of the day before only made it sweeter. I really appreciated it!

Cousin Time

Family Zoo Day

Flowers from my hubby after all the drama

Feeling better and ready for the week ahead!