Happy Hanaanaa

This year has been really fun to teach Josh about the holidays. He is learning and understanding so much, and he has been so happy and excited. On the first night of Hanukkah we has a little low key celebration with lighting the candles and some easy pre-made latkes. We taught Josh about the menorah, which he calls "Hanaanaa" and told him the candles were hot. He was a pro at opening gifts, he must have remembered some from last year :-)

Last night we had a few people over to celebrate Hanukkah and I cooked latkes, brisket and apple sauce. We have been getting a bag of apples each week in our CSA and I have found the only way to keep up is to make apple sauce in the crockpot. Josh really enjoyed his latkes and apple sauce :) He also kept pointing to the menorah and saying, "Hanaanaa, hot".

Hopefully by next year Josh will be ready for some dreidel playing!

Brisket ready to bake in my new brisket pot!

"Hanaanaa, hot!"

Playing with his new book

Elmo!

Baby brother

I think by now all of our readers know that Josh is going to be a big brother :-) Here are some cute pictures. 

Big news!

He wanted to see his brother

Giving his little brother a hug :-)

20 week bump picture, for those who have requested one

Lie down!

Julian and I have always been big lying on the floor people (particularly me!). So we often lay on the floor in Josh's room while he plays. Now whenever you lie down on the floor, he likes to come lie down with you. But then you also need a buddy (blanket), a pillow, and an animal or 2 or 3. A few weeks ago Josh came down from his nap to find Jeter sleeping in the sun (a common occurrence), he decided that she needed a buddy and a teddy bear to sleep with. Over the weekend I was napping while Josh napped.  When he woke up, Julian brought him downstairs while I was still on the couch with a blanket and pillow. He of course wanted to join me, and required that several animals also join us. I love snuggling with Josh, even if he is a demanding napper :-)

Bringing JeJe a bear

And then a Buddy

I don't think Jeter appreciated the gesture...

Snuggle buddy :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We were happy to get to spend Thanksgiving (and the weekend after) with all of our families. On Thursday we went up to Baltimore to spend the day cooking with the Ellie and Mark and then dinner with family.  Friday we had brunch with Julian's Mom and step-dad before they headed off on their trip and Saturday we had brunch with Julian's Dad, Nancy and his sister.  I got to do lots of cooking and shopping the whole weekend. This year was MUCH better than last year where I had to work on my thesis the whole weekend.

When we got to Ellie's, Josh was very happy to get to hold baby M for the first time! He LOVED holding her, and still asks to see the pictures of them :-)  We had big plans to watch our traditional Thanksgiving day West Wing (The Butterball hotline episode) while Josh napped. Josh decided that everyone was having too much fun and wanted to watch with us. I let him snuggle with me on the couch, until he was being too chatty and not resting. By then he was tired enough to sleep in the pack and play upstairs. We then had a great potluck style Thanksgiving (everyone helped out!) with a big group of our family (from all sides). Josh especially enjoyed his mashed potatoes and apple pie.

This was the first year in a long time we haven't been able to do two (or more!) Thanksgivings. We were certainly a little bummed about that, but very thankful that our families are understanding. We had a great time at brunch with Julian's family the next few days.

Helping Mommy cook!

Mmmm pie....2 out of 3 pictured here

Cousins!

No nap!

Drawing with Cousin Maeve

Gobble Gobble

Opinions

Along with his increased vocabulary, Josh now has some pretty strong opinions. We love seeing his personality come out, even if it turns out he is just like us :-)

Josh and I were at Target to buy an extra hat for him. First he told me he wanted the orange hat, then he saw a green one and wanted that one....so clearly I decided to just get both :-)  Sadly, now we get into fights when we leave the house because he always wants a different hat than he has. Hopefully this will be a valuable lesson in not getting everything you want. Or else it will be a valuable lesson to me not to buy 3 types of hats :-)

First hat :)

Angry orange hat!

"Geen hat!"

Cousins!

Josh was happy to welcome his very first first cousin to the world. I was a bit worried that Josh would be jealous when I was helping out with the baby, but so far he has been great. He LOVES his cousin. He gets upset whenever she leaves the room, and wants to follow her. Over the weekend she needed a diaper change and went upstairs with her Dad. Josh decided that he had to have a diaper change too, and had to go upstairs. Josh is going to be a very good big cousin, and we are looking forward to watching their relationship develop :-)

Meeting his cousin

Breakfast date!

Trouble...with a capitol T.

The past week or so Josh has had some major improvements in his manual dexterity. He can now open all of our doors, previously he could just open ones that were easy to grip. Today he figured out how to open our cabinet locks...video below. He has also been climbing on EVERYTHING and enjoys jumping...another video below. He can also open jars and containers of all sorts.

We are going to need to step up our toddler proofing game to stay one step ahead of him!

22 Months

We haven't done a general Josh update in a while and today he is 22 months old so it seems like a good time.  Over the last few months we've seen a dramatic increase in Josh's vocabulary.  He knows body parts, animals, and he knows the "Crayola 8" colors among many other words.  The big change in the last few weeks has been putting words together to make phrases:

"Mamma all done apple"
"All done mamma phone"
"Over there"
"Night night moon" (Goodnight moon)

He is doing a lot of repeating of what we say so we have to be better about watching what we say!

He can count to two although I'm not quite sure he knows he is counting.  He did pick up two of his stuffed monkeys and say "two monkeys".

In addition to the vocabulary has been the increase in opinions.  He knows what he wants to do and it isn't always what we want him to do.  When he doesn't get his way, he sometimes gets very upset.  We believe it's just the precursor to the terrible twos.  Hopefully he gets through it quickly.

He's walking very quickly now, not sure you would call it running (although he calls it running).  He can also climb shorter steps without going to us hand and knees.

He now sleeps with stuffed animals, a pillow and a blanket.

Our little guy is growing up and it's amazing to watch!

Helping with some yard work

Playing hide and seek

Pizza pizza!

Josh loves doing art projects and playing with play-doh at daycare, so I had the idea that we should make pizza together. I knew it had the potential to be really fun, or a huge mess (or both!). It ended up working out really well! Josh did a great job with minimal help on his pizza, and did not even need a new shirt! He had to taste all the ingredients as he went though :-)

Showing off his skills

Time for some sauce

Mmmmm cheese!

Testing out the toppings

Watching them cook :-)

To go or not to go

One of the hardest parenting decisions for Margaret and I has been to know when a problem is a big problem and when it is a small problem.  When Josh had his first fever I freaked out and called the pediatrician after hours.  Since then I've calmed down a little bit and don't always panic.  When Josh is sick we call the pediatrician during office hours and talk to a nurse and they tell us if we should be concerned or not.  We've had a few trips to the ER after Josh took particularly big falls, after the pediatrician suggested we should get him checked out.  In both cases he was fine but I know if we didn't go to the ER we would be worrying about it for a while.

A week ago Saturday night Josh got sick.  He woke up several times during the night (rare for him) and was very upset.  Recently if he wakes up at night he just wants his blanket (or "buddy") put back on him but that was not working Saturday night.  Each time he woke up he was very upset and would take a while to calm down.  He finally calmed down and slept a few hours.  Sunday night was even worse. He woke up almost every hour, and was clearly upset. Around 2am his breathing seemed difficult and he was very unhappy.  He finally slept a few hours until early morning but he woke up very dazed and confused.  He would not stop crying or sit still with us, so we decided then it was time to go to the hospital.  Since it was 5am, we did not want to bother the pediatrician since we knew they would just tell us to take him to the hospital. We also knew that there was a nasty virus going around that causes trouble breathing and we wanted to make sure Josh got the care he needed.

In this case going to the hospital was absolutely the right call.  It turns out Josh had RSV (not the enterovirus that is going around) and needed help breathing.  When we first arrived they checked his O2 levels and they were down around 90% (should be 99%). They gave him some oxygen and a drug to help open up his lungs and help him breathe. After a few hours he was feeling much better and running all around the pediatric area at the hospital.  We used a nebulizer at home and it really helped.  Josh has been sleeping normally and his fever went down after a few days.  The medicine he was on made him hyper so he has spent all of last week running around the house at full speed.

Knowing when to take health problems seriously can be difficult.  We don't want to overreact or over treat illnesses that are better left untreated. Sometimes a fever is just a fever, and just takes a few days to recover from....but sometimes it indicates something much more serious. Since we know Josh so well, we base our judgement on when he is acting really abnormal, so we know we should take it seriously.  Thankfully to this point anytime we have not panicked he has been alright and we're glad this time he has recovered so well.

Here is a video from Thursday (hyper Josh!):

Getting some air

Playing at the hospital

Playing Angry Birds at home

Slackers

Sorry for slacking on the blog lately, but I just started a new job Oct 1 (yay!), so we are adjusting to our new schedule which has less blogging time. I'm working 3 days a week, which means I still get to spend 2 days (+the weekend) with Josh :-)  But I'm working longer hours, and all in an office...so it is taking some adjustment. Julian and Josh have dinner together and then I get home just in time to put Josh to bed. It has been a lot of change for all of us, but Josh and Julian have been enjoying some father-son time :-)  Thankfully we have been getting some extra help from all our parents so that we don't fall too far behind.

Josh is learning more and more words every day, it really is amazing. He is starting to put words together into phrases, which is also fun. His coordination has also really improved and he is doing very well eating soups with a spoon, and has gotten very good with a fork. He loves drawing with markers, or crayons and is getting very savvy with an iPhone. Here are some pictures from the last few weeks.

Causing trouble

Working out

Night-night with Jeter

A pro already :-)

Look Who's Talking, More

Josh's communication skills have really increased in the last month or so. Every day Julian and I are just amazed by how much he can do, and what an awesome kid he is becoming. He knows enough words to tell us what he wants most of the time, and he can answer yes and no questions when asked.  His words are not perfect so sometimes it requires a bit of decoding. He can understand much more than he can say himself, but his vocabulary is expanding rapidly. We can't quite have "real" conversations, but I just love knowing what is going on inside his head :-)

We keep a few toys out of his reach, or in another room...just to keep the toy explosion to a minimum. When Josh wants to play with any of those toys (his blocks and train for example), he sits down on the floor points to where they are kept and says "bock" or "tain".  He then happily helps to clean up and put away his toys when he is "all done" with them :)

Josh just moved up to the next class at daycare, where they will be encouraging him do to things more independently. So far, I'm taking the transition harder than he is...because I really liked his last classroom. He loves when we talk about the names of all his friends and family, and is starting to be able to name them. He also likes listening to kids songs in the car, and is excited when he hears words he knows. [Anyone with recommendations for good kids songs please pass them along!!!]  He has started sleeping with a pillow and blanket, and insists on having them before bed. We've also started walking around the block after dinner sometimes with no stroller and Josh has had no trouble with that distance. We've been meeting a lot of the neighbors on these walks, because I think a roaming toddler is more inviting for conversation than a stroller.

We had some tough days and nights sleep wise in the past few weeks...way more than usual. Josh was a bit sick, getting his canines and going through a lot developmentally. The last few nights have been better, so hopefully he has gotten past whatever was causing the sleep problems.

We've been having a lot of fun with our little guy lately, and I'm sure he will keep becoming more and more awesome :-) It is so amazing how much he has grown in such a short time.

Watching Elmo

Ready for the rain!

"Tain!"

Big boy!

Josh has outgrown many of the more "baby" styles of clothing, and has been wearing some toddler/grownup looking clothing. He looks like such a big boy these days!

So big!

Waiting patiently for the trash truck

Decorating a onesie :-)

Weaned

It has been about three months since Josh was fully weaned, and I thought it was time to blog about it. Josh nursed for close to 17 months before we had what I think was a very mutual decision to wean at the beginning of June.

I managed to keep my supply up long enough to make it to 1 year of breastfeeding without needing to supplement with formula. I was a bit nervous towards the end, because my supply dropped a lot with the stress from finishing my thesis and defending. After Josh turned one, we started giving him one bottle a day of whole milk because I could not pump enough. Josh seemed to notice a difference at first, but was just as happy to drink the whole milk. When we got the allergy results back for Josh saying that he was allergic to peanuts, we decided to wait to start the weaning process. There is lots of research suggesting that exposure to allergens in breast milk can help with allergies, so I wanted to make sure that Josh would get any possible benefit from breast feeding. We also talked to the allergist about me eating some of the foods we thought that Josh was not allergic to so that he would get exposure to peanut like foods. Ultimately I was too afraid to introduce peanuts back into my diet and expose Josh, but I did eat other nuts and legumes.

I never expected (or planned) to be someone who breast fed my child past one year, but I actually ended up really enjoying it. After learning of his allergies, I really wanted to keep my baby safe and I think breastfeeding gave me a sense of that. Also, as Josh got more and more mobile, he was much less snuggly so breastfeeding became one of the few ways that we could just hang out together.

My supply continued to drop, so we basically replaced one bottle/feeding with a bottle of whole milk per month. By the end of March I stopped pumping during the day, and I just fed Josh in the morning when he woke up and at night before bed. This had been a big goal of mine, because honestly I had gotten very tired of pumping. This worked out well for a few weeks, but my supply continued to drop. I couldn't decide which feeding to drop next, the evening one or the morning one. So even though I sort of knew we were ready to drop another feeding, I wasn't sure what to do. This is where I think that KellyMom.com (a breastfeeding website), really drops the ball. If you go to their website to look for information about weaning, they are pretty negative about weaning before 2 years (!!!!). I certainly know that there is very little support for Mom's that choose to breastfeed past 1 year, and even some negativity--but I did not appreciate negativity towards gentle weaning at 16 months!

One night when feeding Josh before bed, he finished nursing and then signed "more" and "milk". It was very cute, and was a very clear sign that I did not have enough milk for him. I texted Julian and he brought up a bottle for Josh, and Josh happily finished the milk in the bottle and went to bed. This happened again the next few nights. I would always nurse first, and then give him a bottle if he still seemed hungry. However when Julian went away to Jordan, I had to get the bottle ready before nursing Josh and he would get so excited about a bottle that he would want it right away. The first few days he was happy to nurse when it was offered, but then he refused and only wanted the bottle. I decided this was a sign that developmentally he did not need the comfort associated with nursing before bed and let him take the lead. He happily nursed the next morning, but I decided that this was a good way to drop down to one feeding. Honestly, it was much easier to get him ready for bed with a bottle because he would sit still and drink while getting him dressed so I did not mind much that he was no longer nursing. This also gave me the freedom to have Julian put Josh to bed (once he got home), which was also really nice :-)

I continued with just the morning feeding for the rest of May, but at the end of May Josh caught his first bought of hand foot and mouth.  It was horrible, and Josh refused to nurse or eat/drink much of anything. He had been getting a bit frustrated by my lower supply anyway, so we had already been thinking that it was time to finish weaning. After skipping a day of nursing, Josh was feeling better and was willing to nurse the next morning. I was glad that I knew this would be our last time nursing, and was able to take the time to enjoy my time with him. After he finished I took sudafed to keep my body from producing milk. I ended up having no discomfort or anything from weaning, so I was pretty happy with how it went.

The next morning after Josh woke up, he went running into our room as usual and got into bed expecting to nurse. He started crying when I didn't get into bed with him, and instead took him downstairs to have a sippy cup of milk. This was definitely the hardest part of weaning, but at least I felt like Josh enjoyed nursing which made me feel special. He did this for the next few days, but then quickly adjusted to the new routine of going downstairs for milk. I made sure to sit with him on the couch so that he could still get some Mommy and Josh bonding time. Now we always read books when he has his milk in the morning, and it is very sweet.

After about 2 months of a really really difficult time getting breastfeeding to work out, I could not be happier with how the next 15 months went. Many people asked me how long I planned to breast feed, and I never really had an answer. I never really set a goal, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that my goal was to have the first two months of pain be worth the effort. I'm so glad I stuck it out, because it really was all worth it in the end :-)

Watching some Animal Planet

Family selfie :-)

Mon-ney!

Josh has been chatting up a storm lately! He has learned so many new words :-) Here is a cute video of some of his new skills.

Nose Goes

Last weekend we hit an extremely important milestone.  We had been waiting for it for several months but then suddenly Josh could do it - he can now blow his nose!

You don't realize how important blowing your nose is until your toddler has a nose that is constantly pouring out snot.  Well now we can just tell Josh to blow and he will blow his nose (holding a tissue in front of his nose helps).

We didn't do any videos or pictures of this so here are some other recent Josh pictures

Fun at grandma's pool

Having some milkshake

Wild and wonderful

We took a weekend trip with my family out to Berkley Springs, WV. We booked the trip when I was busy with other things, so I never really bothered to figure out if there were fun things for Josh to do there. Josh also enjoyed very different things 6 months ago, so I'm not sure I would even have been a good judge. Overall, I would say that Berkley Springs did not have many attractions for children (or adults), but we made the best of the location and had a nice weekend. There was a nice lake with a beach and playground which we did go to, and Josh had a great time. Since the lake had almost no waves, he could sit in an inch or two of water and play with the water and sand without getting splashed. Again, due to my lack of research....I didn't know there would be a beach and was ill prepared and did not bring any toys. Fortunately the snack bar gave us some cups and a spoon, which were sufficient :-)  The next day we took a nice walk along the C&O canal towpath, and then headed to the outlets for some shopping.  Overall it was nice to get away for the weekend!

Baby wearing on the C&O

Grandpa left me his shoes to wear!

Fortunately Uncle Mark could build faster than Josh could destroy

Fun and games

Josh kept Grandma on her toes!