Best buds??

We have been patiently waiting as Josh has been discovering Jeter. When he first noticed her, I think he was more curious and thought perhaps she was just another toy to put in his mouth. But he is now obsessed with getting to grab her fur and chase her around the room. When he sees her, he squeals with excitement and races over to her to grab her (not so gently...). If you watched the video of Josh climbing the steps, you can see his excitement and how motivated he is to catch her! It has been a bit of a problem though, because Jeter is determined to stand her ground as "most important family member", and refuses to move just because Josh is around. Even if we move to another room with him, she follows us, sits near him, and waves her tail around. She waits until she is being grabbed, yells for attention, and waits for us to intervene. She has not yet hurt Josh, although she has gotten close on some particularly bad grabbing episodes and we have needed to separate the two of them. We think that Jeter likes the attention, although I know from personal experience that having your hair pulled by Josh is not fun :-P  It can be pretty difficult to watch Josh when Jeter is around because he is very fast and you can't let go of him for a second or he has a fist full of her hair. Hopefully he will learn how to pat her gently, or at least lose interest in the hair pulling! They are pretty cute together though :)

After forced separation

must...get....Jeter...

Oooo cat!!!

See, I'm gentle!!

More baby proofing needed!

Over the summer while at the beach Josh figured out how to climb a few stairs.  The stairs were a bit smaller than normal size and since he has been home he has shown little interest in going up stairs.

On Sunday we were in the basement watching the Redskins game when Josh started playing with Jeter (or attacking Jeter).  Jeter wisely tried to escape up the stairs.  To our surprise, Josh went right after her.  Until this point Josh had never climbed more than 3 steps at a time but here he went all the way to the top.  We were very impressed by how smooth he did it.  Margaret took a video of it (shown below).  I guess I have some more baby proofing to do...

9 Month Checkup

Today was Josh's nine month checkup.  He now weighs 20 lbs, 6 oz which puts him in the 60th percentile for weight.  He is 29.25" long, which is the 80th percentile for height. Overall the appointment went great and Josh is doing very well :-)  He got a flu shot though, and has been a bit fussy this weekend. The hardest part of the appointment was having to schedule Josh's 1 year checkup...our baby is growing up!!!

Julian put together a 9 month video of Josh, so enjoy :-)

40 Weeks

Josh was born on his due date (what I thought his due date was, not the doctor :-) ), meaning he had 40 long weeks of growing inside of me before he was born. I made note of when he would be "40 weeks" old, and that was Oct. 15. In Josh's first 40 weeks he had to grow and develop from a ball of cells to a baby that can breathe and function (somewhat) on his own. In his second 40 weeks, he had to learn how to eat, sleep, move and comfort himself. I'm not sure which 40 weeks he developed more, but he certainly has learned and grown a lot in just a small amount of time!!

I'm also finding myself very impressed with my ability to grow a baby (from scratch!). My body went through a lot of changes to grow and support Josh for 40 weeks inside of me, and also went through a lot of changes to support him outside. It took about 7-8 months for me to lose the weight that I gained in pregnancy, and about that long for me to feel like myself again. My body is certainly not the same as it was before pregnancy, but I'm very proud of how well it was able to adapt to growing and sustaining life :-) Nature is a pretty cool thing!

Here are some pictures from our journey :-)

14 weeks!

39+ weeks!

Day 1 :-)

40 weeks on the outside

Love him <3

He has learned so much!!

First night away

This past weekend Margaret and I ran in the Baltimore relay.  To do this we knew we had to figure out some plan for watching Josh while we were running.  Since it is a relay we considered trying to make it so we would hand him off while each of us ran.  We quickly realized that would be too stressful and difficult so we decided to see if Josh could stay with my mom and Don.  They agreed and we were all set for Josh's first night away from us.

On Friday night we brought everything Josh would need to their house and set it all up (enough for a small army).  We let him play at the house for a little bit and then Margaret fed him and put him to bed in his portable crib.  Then came the hard part - Margaret and I had to leave.  We were not concerned about Josh being in good hands.  Obviously my mom and Don have raised kids successfully and they both have taken care of Josh before.  We left notes about what to do if Josh is upset (he has been teething).  The bigger problem was how Margaret and I would deal with leaving Josh.  Margaret felt bad about doing something for her (the race) and leaving Josh.  I was concerned Josh would be difficult and make my mom and Don miserable.  We both gathered our strength and finally left.

For the first time in over nine months, we woke up Saturday morning without the possibility of hearing crying.  Unfortunately we couldn't sleep in because of the race but it was a bit strange to not have Josh around.  I was glad to have not gotten a 3 am phone call that Josh was hysterical and would not calm down.  We ran in the race and talked to my mom, she said everything was going fine.  After everyone on our team was done with the race we headed back to Virginia to pickup our boy.

When we got there Josh was smiling and happy.  My mom said he only cried for a minute the whole time and that was because he was approaching nap time.  Josh was very happy to see us and we were glad he did so well.  We greatly appreciated my mom and Don watching Josh for us and we're glad he was so well behaved.

Getting trained well at Grandma's

9 Months

We say this every month, but we cannot believe Josh is 9 months!! His checkup isn't until next week, so we won't have his stats until then. He won't sit still on our scale, so we don't even have a home estimate :)  Josh's biggest developments this month have certainly been in his eating! He is also starting to play with toys instead of just eating them, which has been very cute. He is a very speedy crawler, and is into everything. He will walk along furniture happily, but refuses to stand by himself or walk when you are holding his hands. We thought he might be an early walker when he was pulling to standing 2 months ago, but he does not seem interested--so who knows, he still might surprise us!

Sneaky little boy got my phone and was hiding behind the chair :-)

New favorite toy...the window unit AC...we tried to block it with the nightstand and chair, but Josh found a way to get to it...

FYI, this soda is not being drunk by our baby...yet :-P

Hydrating before a run...almost

I love standing on the changing table!

Sick Again

On Saturday Josh woke up with a runny nose but he was acting normal.  His nose kept running throughout the day despite out best efforts to clear it (snot sucker was not as effective as before).  By the evening he was more congested and it started to bother him.  We put him to bed as usual but he woke up after a few hours.  I calmed him down and got him back to sleep but he woke up two hours later (just as I was falling asleep) and wouldn't go back to sleep on his own.  Josh has been getting his upper teeth this week so we know that has been bothering him and at this point we were not sure if he was sick or just in pain.  We gave him advil and Margaret fed him and he went back to sleep.

Sunday morning he woke up early and we could tell he wasn't doing well.  We took his temperature and as we expected, he had a fever.  We spent most of the day comforting him and trying to make him feel better.  At times he will seem almost fine but then he will get very upset and holding him is the only thing that will calm him down.  Normally Josh likes to be held but he spends the entire time looking around and squirming to pickup anything around you.  When Josh is sick he will calmly stay in your arms and sit next to you on the couch.  It is nice to be able to sit and hold him but it is a bit odd and makes us wonder where our normally crazy boy has gone.  It also makes for an easy way to tell Josh is not himself.

We were pretty sure it was just a cold and nothing that could really be treated.  After his last encounter with antibiotics we are not as enthusiastic about trying them again unless necessary.  His temperature was going up and down (from 99.5 to 103.4) and his mood was going up and down as well.  We gave him several baths and advil did seem to help (we try to limit how much we give him).

We kept him home from daycare on Monday and I watched him.  He still had a fever but was acting a bit more normal.  Throughout the day he would be playing happily and then suddenly he would get very upset and holding him was the only thing that calmed him down.  We called the pediatrician to see if there was anything we should be doing and they said we were handling things well.  On Tuesday he was doing much better.  He no longer had a fever but we decided to keep him home from daycare just to be sure.  My mom came over and watched him while Margaret and I worked.  Today he was back to his old self and went back to daycare.  We're glad his immune system was able to take care of it on his own and his cold didn't last too long.

Here are some recent pictures of Josh