Owen - 3 Months Old

I can't believe it, but yesterday Owen turned 3 months old. To celebrate, we went to Sears to get his pictures taken. We got Gavin's pictures every 3 months and plan to continue this tradition for Owen. Here are some of the best!

Nap Time

Gavin has been resisting nap time lately. This used to be so easy. We had him on the same schedule as his school so he would go to his room pretty easily and not wake up for a good 2 hours. I know that he still needs his naps b/c he still sleeps for those 2 hours; but getting him to fall asleep can be tricky. Today was particularly tough b/c Gavin wanted to watch the Bears' game with Daddy, but we wanted to stick to his schedule so off he went. I had to lay with him for awhile to settle him down, but he was still not sleeping when I left. Apparently, the sun was bothering him and causing him to stay awake b/c when I went to wake him up, this is what I found:

He's smiling b/c I was laughing so hard and I was yelling for Greg to come see and get my camera so I woke him up. I never know what this kid will come up with next!!

Rolling Over!

On December 28, Owen finally accomplished rolling from his back to his belly. He has been working on this since Christmas day and now all the frustration has paid off. Of course this means that my baby is getting more mobile and I really have to watch him at all times - even closer than before. Notice he is naked! I took this trick from Kristen Beyer. When Owen gets fussy - off with the clothes!

He just needed to figure out what to do with his arm.

Got it! Now I just have to get comfortable.


PERFECT! I now will scare Mommy every waking second of the day rather than just every other second. Oh and now I will scare her during the night as well since I like to lay on my side rather than my back!

Christmas - Stepanchick Style

On December 26th, the entire Stepanchick family came to our house for our family get together. It is nice to not rush around on Christmas day and we get to spend the entire day together, which is a real treat. Many who know us say that our family could have fun in a dark alley and its the truth. We had karaoke, games, and of course lots of presents - mostly (once again) for my boys since they are the only little ones so far. I look forward to the day when there are more!

I am very glad that everyone came to our house b/c I wouldn't have wanted to lug everything home. I'm not sure that it would have even fit in the car. Although having this the day after Christmas meant that Greg and I were up to 1:30 am getting the house ready, putting away presents so everyone would fit, and cooking. Thank God Greg is such a big help!

Jenna and Owen with Aunt Nan in the background.

Owen's godmother, Hannah. That's Gavin's helmet. Not sure if Gavin's head is big or Hannah's is small????

Gavin opening his millions of presents. Toy Story is not his only love. Gavin also loves to pretend that he is a dinosaur. Now he has a hat and slippers to add!

Playing horsey with Uncle Jim.

Playing Toy Story memory with Daddy and Jenna.

This was also a very special day b/c the Stepanchick cousins got together on November 5 and secretly got family pictures taken to surprise all our parents! It was very difficult keeping the secret for so long, but it definitely brought all the cousins closer and we managed to pull off the surprise. My cousin, Jenna, and I put together pictures in a collage frame for each family and my cousin, Danny, put together a nice DVD presentation to show them before we handed out the presents. It was very rewarding seeing our parents welling up with tears watching the DVD and enjoying their surprise gifts!

Even though we lost our grandparents, we want to keep our family strong and though we are grown up and some are moving away, we will always be family and we want to make sure that our children know what it means to have a strong extended family as well!

Christmas - Grammy & Pap Pap's

My parents and brother are very wonderful people and love my children so much. Nothing makes me happier than to watch them interact with my kids. It is everything that I dreamed about growing up playing with my baby dolls (believe it or not, I wasn't always a tomboy). However, my children are also very spoiled. They got so many gifts that I don't know what we are going to do with everything.

Another very wanted present: the Toy Story landfill.

SURPRISE!! A Toy Story scooter from Uncle Aaron.

Owen was just as interested in presents as he was at our house earlier in the day. Instead he opted to assume his usual position on Pap Pap.

Greg posing with one of Owen's presents. I think that Daddy liked some of the presents more than the boys!

Family picture time!

We also visited my gram in the evening. Gavin loves to show off for Great Grammy and my Gram of course loves to see the boys as well. It was nice to share Owen's first attempts at rolling from back to belly though he didn't quite get there - it was entertainment for the night.

Pictures with Great Grammy. We are going to have to work on Owens's faces for the camera. Gavin is playing it cool for this pic. He is such a ham!

Owen was much more comfortable on the floor. This is the first time that he tried to roll onto his belly. He didn't quite get there today, but it's coming soon.

Christmas Morning

Well it is safe to say that Santa definitely made it to Lavelle this year for Gavin & Owen. It's so funny that Santa left all those presents since all Gavin really asked for was an Ironman mask and more importantly - Buzz Lightyear. Santa had strategically placed his presents so that those would be the last 2 presents opened since he wanted Gavin to open all his presents before wanting to play with everything, but that Gavin is too smart for Santa.

He skipped all small presents and pulled out all the big ones looking for Buzz. When the present wasn't Buzz, Gavin simply stated "That's not Buzz Lightyear" and moved to the next big present. He finally opened Buzz and for once I was grateful for the difficult packaging b/c while I struggled to get Buzz out of the box Gavin decided it would be ok to open the rest of his presents.

Gavin dreams of being a football player and loves to tackle. He also got a Penn State tackle dummy to go with his new Bears uniform, which included shoulder pads. Now he can stop using the Boppy as his shoulder pads.

Santa remembered his Ironman Mask!!

Could this finally be Buzz Lightyear??

Yep, Santa didn't forget!

We had a nice waffle breakfast and then Gavin dug into Owen's presents since Owen was not exactly excited by this Christmas. It is amazing how many presents a 2 month old gets! Overall, it was a beautiful Christmas and we are very blessed to everything. Hope you all had a great Christmas as well!

Owen had a better idea for Christmas morning. He slept through all of Gavin and his gifts.

Cookies for Santa

Greg and Gavin decided that Santa would like sugar cookies this year when he visited so on December 23rd they got to work. Gavin had a great time rolling the dough, pressing down the cookie cutters and creating a mountain of cookie dough from the scraps between each cookie cutout. The final cookie was one large snowman for Santa to eat with his chocolate milk. This cookie was a little too much for Santa to handle so he had some leftovers for Gavin to finish on Christmas morning.

2 Months Old

I can't believe that Owen is 2 months old already! Time sure flies. This picture is from his actual 2 month birthday, but his checkup was on December 29th. The happy baby in this picture was certainly not the baby that entered the doctor's office that day. He must have instinctively knew that it was not going to be a fun time. These were his first round of shots and they did not go well!! Poor baby screamed bloody murder and it broke my heart. I am not looking forward to the next checkup in February even though Owen will be old enough to start eating cereal then!

Official 2 month old stats: 13 lbs. 4.9 oz. (79th percentile) & 24 inches tall (80th percentile)

First Smile - Dec. 19

This is not Owen's first smile, but it is the first one I actually caught on camera.