Friday, September 02, 2005

I'll let you create your own story!


So what could have necessitated me having to wash and rinse each of these little Matchbox cars individually? Give me your best guess!

Monday, August 29, 2005

Pictures!

Okay, here are 2 quick pictures, I have to go to bed soon!

This one was on 7.20.05, Josh was playing in Jaeden's pool, it was nice and warm because Erika filled up the pool by hooking the hose into the laundry tub faucet, Josh was in shock when he came home and tried to hop in his little pool....WHOOWEE was it cold! Look at how big my little guy is!



Here is another set of pre and post haircut pictures...from 7.22.05. Sorry, I only took pictures of the post haircut when he was eating, because he wouldn't sit still. He loves tomatoes, so I bribed him!

Friday, August 26, 2005

Why doesn't mommy post more often???

I think I have the answer! I always think I need to include pictures (because there are so MANY of them) but that is always a big process. But I realized that if I just skipped that part and journaled more often, maybe it would satisfy the masses and you would forgive me for not adding pictures every single time!

We are just hanging out today, waiting for it to cool off a bit before going outside. 20 or 30 minutes out in the sun and Josh starts getting red cheeks and slathering him up with sunscreen is never fun so we wait until part of the yard gets shady and venture out.

Besides, he had outdoor time this morning at his internet playgroup. No, we don't force all the kiddies to sit at the computer and type to each other :). It's a group of local moms that met on a message board and we've managed to all stay in touch with each other and try to meet every so often so all the munchkins can get together to play. One of the moms got us started on a weekly playgroup and so far Josh and I have made it to 3 of them and had a great time. I call it his girl playgroup because the other mom's with boys are currently working, although we have all had a chance to get together at some point.

Today was great, we went to Rebecca's house over in Kirkland and played in the backyard. Josh was very daring and hit the slide all by himself. When Sam (Sammie, Samantha) turn around and went feet first on her tummy, Josh was right behind her giving the same move a try and was so pleased with himself when he pulled it off. They also had a fun tent/fort/tunnel set that Josh loved crawling through. Rebecca's mom (Margaret) has great luck at Costco finding fun kid things. I am completely envious of an art easel that she picked up from there last year. I have made it my mission to get to Costco every week or so just to see if they decided to bring it back again this year for the holiday season. I WANT THAT EASEL!!! :)

The other great thing was that Margaret had planted a bunch of fruit trees/bushes/plants in her backyard. They have a cute compact backyard, but it offers so much. Big difference from my huge brown wasteland! LOL! They have a dwarf apple tree (Honey Crisp variety), with apples ready to eat, so we all enjoyed a lovely apple. Oh my, I haven't tasted an apple so good and fresh in a very long time. From there the kids ventured on to the blueberry bush and attacked it with quite an appetite! I couldn't keep Josh away from the blueberries, he kept sneaking over to grab a few more when I was distracted talking. He also snagged 2 more apples from the tree that he wasn't supposed too! Finally, Margaret had some grape vines growing up through a pergola(right term I think) over their back deck, well who knew that there were actually GRAPES growing on the grape vines LOL, so we all shared a bunch of sweet little grapes. Josh was in fruit heaven! They also had pear and cherry trees and a bunch of strawberry plants. Oh I am having dreams about my own yard next year! I have so many new ideas, I need to start planning now. Whoops, that's stuff for my own journal, not Josh's :)

So I have a few more notes on "stuff I need to put in Josh's journal" but I think this is a good start for now. When I add that in, I'll backdate it so it appears before this entry. Happy reading!

Friday, August 05, 2005

Oh Goody, package from Auntie Mick!

Something for me!
Get me some scissors and open this thing!

A box of GREEN stuff! (Boots, Animal Plates, Soap)
Inspecting the goods.
Calling Auntie Mick to say Thank You!
Giving the boots a test ride with Daddy's help.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

stuff i need to post about

Okay, here is the miscellaneous stuff I have been meaning to post :)

These were the 3 notes I had pending as a draft post: daycare, changing laugh, tool box. Guess I had better expand on them :)

I noticed one day that Josh's laugh was changing, he is getting that big boy laugh as I call it. He laughs a lot harder these days and is working on doing funny things to prompt a laugh from other people, so that in turn he will laugh.

He loves his little wooden toolbox, he knows the names of everything inside. Give him a hammer and he'll pound those little pegs for an hour. We had to work for a couple of weeks reminding him that not everything could be hammered. His favorite targets were the windows and the coffee table. He loves having tools like Daddy.

Well, we tried a bit of daycare for him. Just an hour so I could go workout with a friend, she dropped her little girl off too. Neither one of them did well. The first 3 times we went, they came to get one of us half way through class because one of them was crying (usually both :( ), so whichever of us went in, we were able to take care of both of them. Then we tried having one of us stay the entire hour with them while the other went to the class. Still no such luck. I know, some people would say, they'll get used to it, it's only an hour. Unfortunately, it really affected Josh, he became super clingy at home and his nighttime sleeping went from great to absolutely horrible. He was afraid to be by himself in his bed (very unlike him) and he went from sleeping through the night to waking up several times, once staying up for hours. Ugh, I decided it wasn't worth the nighttime battles to keep putting him in the 1 hour daycare. So my friend and I decided (her girl wasn't doing well either) to each go twice a week, drop the kid off at the other's house to watch for 2 hours and the go together on Saturday. Yay, all is well in kidland again. Josh is back to sleeping solidly through the night, still wakes up before dawn though, ugh, and he isn't freaking out when I go into another room (at home!) afraid that I am going to leave him.

We have a plan though! We are going to get the two of them used to the daycare by volunteering 1 day a week to assist with the daycare (yay, it means all my exercise classes are FREE!). I'll be able to bring Josh on the days I assist, watch his little friend too and keep her happy while mommy exercises, and then assist with the rest of the kids. I'm hoping that Josh gets used to it after the first month, that means I can take more classes!

Anything and everything can become a microphone! Once in awhile, Michael hooks up the microphone in the garage and let's Josh go at it. Michael has a very large amp, so I can hear Josh "singing" all the way in the house. Since having a taste of that, anything slightly resembling a microphone is instantly turned into one and Josh lalalalala's his way into a song :)

Well, he said his first 4 word sentence! He was standing at the top of the stairs getting ready to huck something down them LOL, and I said "hey, don't do that" and he looked at me, nodding his head in the affirmative and said "throw it down stairs". I had to laugh a bit because he was so clear about what he was planning on doing and the words came out crystal clear. I managed to talk him out of his plan though. Since then he is stringing together 3 words consistently and 4 words, once in awhile.

Knife, Knife, Knife, Knife!!!!
Oh my, he LOVES to cut stuff. He is always yelling for a knife! Anytime he wanted something opened (boxes, bags, etc.) he'd yell for a knife or scissors. Cracked me up every time, he knew he needed something to get into the box/bag. I have some plastic knives for him now and no meal is safe from his ravaging. I usually try convince him he doesn't need a knife to eat EVERY meal. The problem is, he spends more time cutting things up than eating them. He destroyed his green beans the other day, they never had a chance! I have turned his attention to the joys of cutting up Play Doh. We do that almost every day now. I have to hide the Play Doh cans otherwise a glimpse of them will start of a Play Doh chant that can last oh so long! You ought to have seen his eyes when he had a chance to see knives and swords and the Medevial Faire we went too. (more about that in a later posting!). He was just itching to get his hands on them, they were so shiny.

Okay, can't think of much more tonight, oh besides that fact that I have YET to get a red tomato because Josh keeps picking my tomatoes when they are green. He managed to show his stubborn streak by refusing to say sorry to me for picking the last batch (we have been through this multiple times!), I won't even tell you how long I worked with him trying to coax that sorry out of him. Apparently he really wasn't so he wasn't going to say it! LOL!

Friday, July 15, 2005

Ho hum....

Nothing much to report! I added a few new pics in the 6/17 posting of the trip to the zoo. The posting wasn't cooperating so I wasted way too much time on it, the rest will have to wait until later.

Josh and I have been home the last 4 days because he wasn't feeling well. He woke up blazing hot on Tuesday and continued to have a fever through Wednesday. Super cranky and clingy, oh joy! No fever yesterday but he came up with a lovely rash today that covers his torso front and back and bits of his neck and face. What is it? I have no clue! Don't think the doctor would be to worried about it and now that his fever is gone, I'm just going to let it run its course.

If he looks a little better in the morning we'll make our weekly trip to the Farmer's Market and wander around for a bit. Then we need to go to Lowe's to buy a cover for our *NEW* barbecue! Yay! I told Michael we didn't need to worry about anniversary presents (Happy Anniversary to us on July 4th, 6 years WOOHOO!), I just wanted a barbecue :)

We christened the barbecue by having Nanna Jackie and Poppa Nolan over for dinner of yummy steaks. I'm sure Josh will learn to appreciate the barbecue in the future, for now it's just a "HOT, DON'T TOUCH, STAND BACK" item!

It has been a quiet month so far. I joked with Dad today that I may start journaling Josh's daily injuries. My word, that kid gets hurt every day despite my best efforts. Yesterday he was jumping around on the futon despite me stopping him multiple times and managed to smash his check into the wood armest leaving a lovely bruise. Before that I went to pick him up and he zigged when I zagged and I poked him in the eye. I didn't notice anything until later when I saw a huge red spot on the white part of his eye :( We still can't take down the gates on the stairs because he just doesn't pay attention and after falling down them twice in one weekend I put them back up and won't take them down for quite awhile.

Speaking of my little guy, I should go check on him and make sure he is snoozing away in dreamland....will post again soon.

Friday, July 01, 2005

18 Month Checkup...

Yep, he is healthy and happy! Weighs 24 pounds and is 33.5 inches tall. He has a good sized head too.... :) He is in the upper range on the height and head size percentile and in the bottom quarter of the weight range, but he is so active that he burns off so many calories.

The doctor had no problem with his weight, said he looked incredibly healthy and not to worry about it that it would catch up when it needed too.

The "report card" they give you has certain milestones they should have reached, one of them being "has 3+ words", hahahahaha! He has that one beat. I don't think the doctor believed me although he said a few words while she was examining him. As she was getting ready to leave, with absolutely no prompting from me, he walked over to her at the door, looked up and said "doctor, doctor?" Like "hey, where are you going??" Heehee...that's my boy!

When the nurse came in to give him his shots, he was sitting on my lap looking at the tray of needles she brought in and he said "medicine?" and totally freaked the nurse out! Yep, baby that is medicine!

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!

Thursday, June 16, 2005

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.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

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!

Saturday, June 11, 2005

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

Friday, June 10, 2005

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 :)

Monday, June 06, 2005

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)

Friday, June 03, 2005

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

Friday, May 27, 2005

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 :)

Saturday, May 21, 2005

*sigh* Some days! 3.4.05 Posted by Hello
But Mommy, I LOVE strawberries! Don't be mad at me :) Posted by Hello

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

Friday, April 08, 2005

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