Another Zoo Trip...

We went to another zoo today, the Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah. Kind of funny to have zoo in Issaquah and they have an odd assortment of animals: Cougars(!), Lemurs, Macaws, Reindeer, Alpacas, Emus, Deer, and other assorted birds.

You can definitely get a lot closer to the animals at this zoo. If you weren't the brightest crayon in the box, you could easily get yourself hurt. I'm not sure if the pictures will show it, but if you wanted to you could stick your hand in the cougar's cage! Yikes!

We had fun at the lemur exhibit. One of them started chattering and we thought oh how cute, and then all of a sudden the whole bunch of them just unleashed the most unholy racket I have heard in a long time! Made me jump! Fortunately, Josh and his friend Jaeden handled it well and didn't freak out. Josh just kept saying "noise" with his eyes real big :)

This website has the best sound bite for what it sounded like, just imagine 6+ lemurs making this sound and MUCH louder: Lemur Sounds h

Miscellaneous Josh Funnies...

I was watching Jaeden the other day for a bit. She hadn't been over in awhile, we were up playing in Josh's room when he suddenly left the room. He went into my room and got his little motorcycle, brought it to his room, hopped on it and scooted across the room right up to Jaeden and started making reving engine noises, vrrrommm, vrooommmm vroommmm. I just cracked up, such a male thing to do! He was all proud of himself sitting there on his motorcycle showing the girl his mighty machine! :)

He was sitting on the stairs yesterday, standing up a bit and then sitting back down and saying "hiccup" each time he did it. Just goofing around, well all of a sudden he let out this HUGE burp! Knocked it right out of his little body, his eyes about crossed and when he was all done he said "buuuuurp!" We laughed ourselves silly over that one. He definitely knows what a burp is now!

Busy Spring Days...

Lots of things to do, places to go, people to see! I need to get pictures up, but thought I would get the general info in here first.

Josh had a couple of firsts in the past week, he got to go to the U-pick strawberry farm and pick his very own strawberries! He loved it and couldn't believe he was actually allowed to pick them from the plants. We ended up a batch of rather unripe berries, he didn't quite seem to get the concept of just picking the red ones. He had a blast walking up and down the rows putting berries in his little basket. Hopefully I got some cute pictures, the batteries on the darn camera died on me after I took a few, so I'm not sure what I got.

He also took his first trip to the zoo! I can't believe that it his first visit, I think we had it planned to go a couple of times last year but the trip was canceled due to weather. Well that wasn't a problem this time, we had beautiful weather on Tuesday, a perfect day to visit the zoo.
http://www.zoo.org/

We had a motto that helped us decided which animals we would visit: If it is big and it is moving, we'll go see it! The kids (we went with Erika and her daughter Jaeden) couldn't get real excited about a sleeping lump of fur and us telling them look it is a tiger, see? see? see? So we stuck with our motto and were much more successful. So we got to see the following:

• Giraffes
• Hippopotamus
• Tigers
• Orangutan
• Gorillas
• Owl (up close and personal during a demonstration)
• Elephants
• Penguins
• Colobus Monkey

The Butterfly exhibit was open and worth the extra $1 to get in. http://www.zoo.org/bflies_blms/bb.html

Josh has always loved butterflies, it was one of his very first signs and he could pick them out in the funniest places. Whenever he started making his little butterfly sign I had to start looking to find it, because he was never wrong. He was so excited to seem the up close and watch them flying all around him. He could hardly contain his excitement. The butterflies along with all the different types of flowers just about sent him over the edge! I think we spent at least an hour in the butterfly exhibit and flower garden. Naptime finally drove us out of the park and on our way home otherwise I'm sure we would have stayed a couple more hours.

I am thinking about getting a zoo membership. You get so many benefits and it doesn't take too many visits for it to pay for itself. Josh has free admission until he is 2, but adults cost $10 and kids are $7. Fortunately, my friend Erika's husband works for Microsoft and one of their perks is discount admission to the zoo so it was only $3 for each of us. What a deal! Next time though, we'll remember to bring our own picnic, nothing is worse than getting below average food and having to pay ridiculous prices for it!

All in all, we had a great time at zoo. I'll get some pictures posted here and then load the rest into the online album.

Recent cute moment: Michael came in to see Josh just as I was getting him out of the bathtub, Josh would barely let me get his diaper on, he wanted to snuggle with Daddy. So as Michael was holding him, Josh snuggled into his shoulder and said "buddies, buddies". It was so sweet! Michael calls him "my buddies" (not sure why it is plural, it just is!) when he gives Josh hugs, so Josh was returning the favor.

Getting everything into place...

Okay, so I originally started Josh's journal on AOL, then when I found Blogger.com, I transferred over all the text from the original entries and figured I would do the pictures later. Well after having my AOL account for 8 years (!), I finally decided to cancel it because I just wasn't using it. I forgot about the whole picture thing. Then by chance yesterday, I happened across a link in my favorites to Josh's Journal on AOL and when I clicked on it on, lo and behold, the old journal was still there despite my account having been canceled. So I decided to get all the pictures transferred over to blogger so that the original journal entries would actually make sense.

Ugh, you have no idea what a painful process it has been!!! I just finished getting them all over and formatted, it took way too many hours (which meant I couldn't get new pictures up this weekend), but it is finally done! I'm glad I did it, because now Josh's journal is complete and looking through all of the pictures was funny, weird and a bit nostalgic. A year ago I had a crying fussy munchkin on my hands and today I have a crazy, active, talking dynamo. Amazing what a difference a year makes!

So now there are pictures to match the entries made from March 2004 to October 2004. Have a look see and a good laugh when you look at Josh "way back when".

NOW....I think I have time to start getting some new pics and stories online, let's just hope Josh cooperates with me this week!

Okay, okay, I'll stop with the words!

We've hit the 150+ mark (155 and counting), so unless they are really cute I'll spare everyone the list of new words! And if anyone thinks I am making this all up!!! I have the proof on video!

celery
cooking
sauce
carrots
van
truck
stirring
bathroom
beans
pillow
shopping
cucumber
work
bear
bath
letters
numbers
haircut
medicine
straw
signing times

Link to more pictures!

Here is a link to more pictures of Josh....you'll need a password to view them so email me for the password or leave a comment or note in the guestbook. I had better know you, otherwise don't count on getting in! :)

http://photobucket.com/albums/v285/Milyco/

I'll start putting the pictures in the sub-album: Josh Journal Pics so look there!

Also click on "VIEW ALL", makes it much easier to see all the pictures and not have to go through the pages, you'll see the option right above the first row on pictures, in the middle of the 3 option buttons.

Oh, one last thing, most of the pics right now are old ones that I transferred over to update the journal, but at the very end should be some newer ones that I put in to get things started. I'll start loading them in as fast as I can :)

More word stuff

Please don't mind all the word listings, I'm sure they don't matter to anyone but me and Michael, but it helps me keep track of the information I need for his scrapbook (when I get around to finally doing it!)

We had our first word combination on June 2nd :) :

ding ding all gone

(Daddy moved the windchime and he couldn't figure out where it went)

There may be some duplicates in this list, I'll edit later if I find them:

glasses
poop
camel
tigger (he knows all of his Winnie The Pooh characters)
pooh
rabbit
eyeore
piglet
jojo
wiggles
pinwheel (he loves pinwheels, I need to find some more that I can put outside so he can see them spinning)
grow (we talk a lot about the flowers growing, I have some I planted from seed so we check the progress every couple of days to see how much they've "grown")

this next batch of words worries me a bit, I need to back off on emphasizing them, but it is so hard when it happens all day long!

mess
dirty
spill

all gone
all done
help me
drop it
broke it
free ride (this is what I tell him when I offer to carry him down the stairs "want a free ride?")
other side (this has to do with switching sides while nursing, he usually initiates the change..."udder side" heehee)

Guestbook Added

Hey, I added a guestbook to make it easier for everyone to leave comments. You'll see it at the end of each entry, have fun :)

If you want to add a plain old comment to the individual posting, here is a link that can help you if you are having trouble: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1082&topic=23

Mini Updates

Okay, I realized that there were about 20 missing words after I posted last time, he woke up the next morning and started with all the ones I forgot. I'll get my notes soon and update the list, he is around the 130 mark now.

He has been a funny busy guy lately so I thought I would jot a few things down so I won't forget them.

We have a ton of yardwork to catch up on so we have been outside quite a bit (except for today, it is mid-90's, way to hot for my fair skinned munchkin). Josh tends to just wander, picking up sticks and such while I do yardwork. I am sure the neighbors are tired of hearing me say "JOSH, come here so I can see you!" "JOSH, drop that right now!" and the various other "hey, stop that!" things I find myself saying. He loves his sticks, he has discovered the joys of the hose with the sprayer attached, he "helps" me water plants, he loves being right on top of whatever I am doing so I have to scoot him out of the way most of the time. The other day when he was at his wettest and muddiest he decided he needed "hugs" on a frequent basis. Oh what the heck, I was grimey too so we indulged in lots of hugs :)

A couple of days ago, I was trying to liberate my poor raspberry vines, I hear behind me "EYES, EYES, EYES!" I turn around to see Josh with clenched eyes and mud covering his entire face and hands :) I am not sure what he did, if he rubbed his eyes with muddy hands or had a backsplash from the watering, but it was pretty darn funny. I managed to get his face wiped off with my shirt, mostly his eyes, and figured the rest of the mud would fall off as it dries.

He is big into hiding these days, something I don't want to encourage too much because he doesn't respond when I call him, but one of his favorite spots is sitting on the plastic bin in his closet behind the hanging clothes. At least the hanging feet give me a clue as to where he is :)

*sigh* Some days! 3.4.05 

But Mommy, I LOVE strawberries! Don't be mad at me :) 

More new words!

He is over 110 words now! He has entered a new phase where he repeats very familiar words over and over and over, not sure why, especially since they are words he knows well. Oh and he also has moved into the grunting/pointing/whining phase, guess he figured he had skipped that and went right to talking so he decided to go back and torment mommy with it!


bubbles
grapes
hanger
table
rocks
sit
rug
sticker
drums
camera
circle
oval
triangle
square
rectangle
stuck
open
meat
slippers
cd
beans
ice
ladder
sandbox
grass
stick
bucket
van
qtip
strawberries
coffee
green beans
lettuce
cupboard
shower
laundry
sunshine
thunder
giraffe
monkey

He lives just across the water from Seattle, OF COURSE he drinks coffee! :) 

15 month Checkup

We finally made it in for Josh's 15 month check up this past Monday, a few weeks late so it is more like his 15 3/4 month checkup! He was all fine while in the waiting room, checking out the fish and other kids. Then when I took him back to the exam room, I think he recognized the nurse and wasn't too happy! I know he thought he was going to get shots, :( poor guy. I had actually decided not give him any vaccinations because he had been sick for 4 days (probably the rotovirus) and I knew he would not handle the shots well. Of course, I couldn't explain that to him so getting him undressed and on the scale to be weighed was quite an adventure! He had a hold of the sides of the scale, screaming his lungs out and trying to launch himself off the scale every chance he had! It took us several minutes to get him weighed with all the fussing going on. When the doctor came in later she was laughing because Josh had about brought the place down with his yelling!

So for stats, he is 31+inches (70th percentile), 23 lbs (30th percentile). I figured he would be a pound or two light because he barely ate anything the previous 4 days, plus he doesn't sit still for much, he likes to go..go..go..go...until Mommy is exhausted!

The doctor really didn't believe me when I told her that Josh had a 70 word vocabulary. She said she is happy with 1 - 5 words at this age. I told her that when he wakes up in the morning, he starts naming things he can see in his room: bed, cycle, diaper, books. He picks up new words very quickly. Thank heavens he walked over to the cabinet and pulled on the handle and said "drawer"! He didn't talk much, but hopefully that one word convinced her that I wasn't one of those crazy moms who thinks their kid can do anything. Trust me, I know that he can't, I just know that he likes to talk! :)

Oh, here are a few new words:

stairs
bed
cycle
remote
glove
table
leg
elbow
ear
eye
elephant
diapers
drawer

The doctor suggested I get him talking on videotape (I just know she doesn't believe me!) so we'll do that soon along with taping his very cute version of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

I just loaded a TON of pictures onto the computer, so be prepared, new pics coming soon!

Funny things Josh finds to do

He likes to chase his shadow when he is outside and wave at it :) In the family room we have the perfect set up with a light and wall so he can walk right up to his shadow. If he isn't waving at it he is kissing it :)

He took the empty diaper box and after crawling on it for a couple of days, one side caved in.
He then created his own slide, he would climb up on the tall side, then would "slide" down saying "weeeeeeee", it was so adorable. I felt bad that he was trying to create his own little playground, so I took him to the park and he was totally not interested in the slide! He likes his little homemade slide much better.

At yoga class tonight, I had the students go to wall, lie down and rest with their legs up the wall.
So Josh went over by 3 ladies, laid down next to them and lifted his legs up into the air doing the pose with them. As if they didn't already think he was cute enough, he has those women wrapped around his finger! One of the women, Joanne, started teaching him the "so big" game, you ask him, "How big is Joshua?" and he raises his arms above his head and says "sooooo big". After reading Pat the Bunny the other day, I think it comes from there. The funny part is that it took many weeks for Josh to raise his hands above his head, so what would happen is that one of women would ask the question and 6 grown women would simultaneously raise their hands above their heads and say "sooooo big!" and Josh would just look at them and laugh. :)

Hey, where did my hair go?? 

Finally an update!!

Sorry to everyone that has been checking in for updates. In January Josh and I went to visit Michele and Cameron in Indiana, the day after we got back Josh came down with a nasty virus that was going around. Of course, Michael and I both ended up with it too. February was the neverending cold with Josh and I. We have just started feeling better, but that little man keeps me on my toes and when I do get a chance to sit down at the computer, I tend to be in a daze and not quite capable of putting together coherent thoughts to enter into his journal!

Let's see, Josh is now 15 months old! Can you believe it? He has a pretty good size vocabulary and still uses some of his signs, we are teaching him some new ones when we remember to do it!

So here is the list of words he "knows", that means he uses the word independently and in correct context.

Starting from the earliest:

• Dadeeeee - He didn't go through the "da' phase, just straight into the plea for daddy phase!
• shoes - He's been obsessed with socks and shoes from the start
• socks
• quack quack - one of his very early words, he can identify a duck at a hundred yards :)
• hat
• ball
• cheese
• water - WA
• uh-oh!
• dog - along with the appropriate woof-woof sound, although he heard a dog yelping one day and has kind of started an arf-arf thing
• cat - meows too
• cracker
• wow!
• cool!
• juice
• byebye
• hey
• mama - this one took forever! These days it is said in a very loud voice and I'm not sure why!
• baby
• banana
• beep
• milk - he started signing for nursing months ago, he has pretty much dropped that and just asks for milk very clearly now!
• remote - yes, we are embarassed that he knows this one!
• flower
• down
• more
• car - he likes to say "car go"....Auntie Mick taught him that one.
• french fry - "fry"
• pizza
• Jaeden - his playdate buddy
• friend
• clothes
• shirt
• shoot - whoops, this is what mommy is always saying....shoot!
• spoon
• fork
• plate
• drink
• tree
• book
• read
• night night
• Maymay - for Auntie Mick
• slide
• swing
• toes
• feet
• knee
• belly
• peepee
• box .............................and I forgot:
• moon
• block
• coat
• phone - he does a good "halloooo" when he uses it
• outside
• up
• door
• bus
  

Here are the signs that he uses most often:

• milk
• all done
• hat
• bath
• more
• hot
• butterfly
• airplane
• mouse
• friend
• night night

Animal sounds:

• quack quack
• growl - we have been growling with him since he was about 9 months old. He is very good at it! We growl for lions, tigers, bears, and monsters in general. We have played the monster chasing game since he started crawling, he loves it but freaks other kids out when he does it to them!
• woof woof / arf-arf
• meow
• moo
• neigh
• doodle do
• baa
• hisssssssssss
• cawcaw - this is his bird sound due to the large number of crows we have around our area...he use to have a cute cheep cheep but once he heard the crows, that was it.

**Edited to add a bunch more! Once he woke up and started talking the next morning, I realized I had forgotten about 15 words!

What can I say, he is a bit of a ham these days! 

1 Year Check Up

Josh had his 1 year check up last week, here are the official results:

• Weighs 21 lbs and 13 oz (he is about mid-range on the percentile rankings, which is normal for a breastfed baby at this point)
• Height 30.5 inches
• Is doing quite well for his age/gender with his vocabulary
• Really hates getting shots in his arms instead of his legs (makes Mommy cry too)
• Has LOTS of teeth for his age and many more ready to come in
• His doctor loves him :)

I forgot to add a few words that he is using now:

• Book
• Graham Cracker - Yes I know it is a big word, but when you hear it you know exactly what he means!
• Quack Quack - His one and only animal sound at this time and he uses it whenever he sees a duck!

We went to Kindermusik on Friday after missing the past two weeks and were so disappointed. There was a substitue teacher and she was nowhere near as good as our regular teacher. She has been teaching for 6 years, which I find really surprising because the class was a real dud! After this session is over with we are not going to sign up again. I think between the great free library storytimes and some other play sessions at the rec center we should be covered for his social interaction requirements! I can't wait for better weather because he is going to have a blast at the park and beach next year.

I'm 1, I'm 1, I'm 1..!!!!

Well.....my little guy has turned a whole 1 year old. Unbelievable. Along with his birthday seemed to come a bit of an attitude! It's like he woke up on the wrong side of the crib. His schedule is all wonky, so we have stayed pretty close to home this past week. We even missed both of his storytimes :(.

But the good news is that along with the 'tude is lots of fun advancements. He has a small vocabulary that helps us figure a few things out:

• Dada, Dadeeee - This is his favorite and there is no doubt who he is talking about when he says it! He has a very funny way of saying it with conviction that he knows he will get Michael's attention. Like hey, pay attention, I'm talking to you!
• Momma - This is rare but he can say it, he just chooses to torment me by saying it only on the odd occasion.
• Sock - Loves socks, likes to chew on them. In fact give him a sock, he'll stick it in his mouth and crawl all over the house with it (his size sock of course!)
• Shoe - Although he doesn't like to wear shoes (shuz) he loves the word. The funniest thing happened the other day, he was nursing and I looked down at him and he had this huge grin on his face (while nursing!). I started laughing and said what are you grinning about, he raised his leg up until his foot was near my face, he let go for a sec and said "shu". I cracked up laughing, because he knew exactly what he was talking about and you could see his little brain clicking away and he was just so darn proud of himself!
• Cheese - More like sheez, one of his favorite foods.
• Milk (nursing) - actually we use a hand signal for this one, when he starts opening and closing both of his hands at the same time, it is a very clear sign as to what he wants.
• CookCook - Used for cracker/cookie type items. I had a box sitting on a shelf behind me and when he noticed them, he went crazy with saying cookcook. Now if I can just keep him thinking that graham crackers are the only cookies in the whole wide world, we'll be in good shape.
• Bye Bye - Of course, he has had this one down for awhile. Works for both his going somewhere and someone leaving.

He is walking really well now, he prefers it over crawling. He has been on the walking kick for almost two weeks now. I finally had to go buy him some soft leather shoes so he could get a grip on the wood floors and quit slipping and falling! Of course, that didn't stop him from taking a dive on the carpet at the library yesterday and coming up with a huge bloody lip :(. I felt bad, he has fallen so many times and we just pick him up and brush him off, well, it wasn't too easy to do it this time with blood smeared across his face! He still has a fat lip today so we stayed home (!), actually we didn't just because of that, but you should have seen some of the looks that I got at the grocery store last night. Geesh people, I didn't do it, he tripped!

Josh got some good daddy time today, I taught class this morning, came home for about an hour to give Michael a break and then left again for 4 whole hours (!). I went into my old place of work to help out with a short project. Josh and Michael, hung out, played, had lunch, took a little walk and when I got home Josh was crashed out on the couch in the family room. It was so cute, he would have never let me put him down there to sleep, but it was okay if daddy did it. :)