Look ma, new shoes!

Josh is moving up to the next classroom at daycare (more on that later), but he needed to have shoes for going outside to play with the big kids! I ordered him some Robeez on Amazon because I had read good things about them. They are just leather, so they are supposed to not impair a baby's foot development. Josh seems to have relatively big feet (his pajamas always are too small in the feet first...), so I ordered the 12-18 mo size...but they were HUGE!! He happily walked around in the shoes, but we decided we didn't want him to trip. Unfortunately, the Robeez were not available on Amazon prime, so we could not order another pair and get them fast enough. So Julian took Josh out to Stride Rite and got him some snazzy shoes! These were a little more sturdy than we had been planning, but it was all they had. He seems to like them, and LOVES eating them. He has been "high stepping" a bit with them, and they get in the way of his crawling sometimes. But overall we think he will get used to them, and they will serve the purpose of having shoes to wear outside at daycare well. He looks like such a big boy when he is wearing shoes!

Too big, but still fun to play in!

I'm a big kid now!

Ready to play!

Cookie Monster

We usually let Josh play in the kitchen as we are making dinner.  This evening he made it into the cabinet and was playing around.  Just when Margaret was commenting that there wasn't much he could get into that would be a problem Josh grabbed a box of cookies and spilled them on the floor.  He then started grabbing them and eating them.  We couldn't help but let him enjoy his first (and second, third and fourth) cookie (he mostly took a bit out of each and then went for a new one).  He was very happy with himself so of course instead of stopping him we just took pictures :-P

First bite of cookie

Sharing!

Double fisting

Yay cookie!!

Margaret's first cookie #tbt

See, I can share too :-) #tbt

A Round of Applause

For the past few months we have been trying to get Josh to clap his hands.  We would show him how to clap and hold his arms and clap but he wouldn't ever try it on his own.   We thought he could do it if he wanted since he has no trouble "clapping" two toys together to make noise. But he always refused to do it on his own, until this weekend.  Josh started clapping and now we are having lots of fun with it.  It is just a constant reminder of how enjoyable it is to watch him grow up and do new things.

Here is a video I recorded Sunday morning of Josh clapping (he just started doing it on his own)

Just Pictures

Margaret and I are both a bit busy this week so we don't have time for a full post.  Here are some pictures to tide you over

Not sure how he feels about being 10 months old

Not so bad I guess

Looking for a good book to read (or eat)

Here is a video from Halloween when Josh wanted a piece of candy

10 months!

Happy 10 months to our baby boy! There is no checkup until he is 1 year (ahhhh), so we won't have any stats for a while. He certainly is outgrowing his clothes, so we are confident he is still growing :) He has pretty much outgrown all his 9 month clothes and is in 12 month clothes, he can even wear some 18 month clothes, although they are a little big. The biggest developments this past month have been his eating and his playing with toys. He will now eat lots of different foods and different textures. If you are eating something and won't share, he gets very upset. We think we have narrowed down his allergies to soy and peas (both legumes), but haven't fully tested the other legumes yet (oddly enough, peanuts don't seem to cause a reaction). We have been afraid to give him dairy yet, but I think we will try some yogurt or cheese soon. In terms of playing, he is starting to play "games" with some of his toys. He has a set of blocks and he likes to put them up high and then grab them again, or put them into baskets and then look for them. It is very cute to watch his mind developing :-)  He also loves to play a game with a pair of sunglasses he has. Either Julian or I will put on the sunglasses, and he loves to take them off us and then give them back. It has been so fun to get to play with him now :-)

World Traveler!

Josh's passport arrived in the mail today! We will be traveling with my family between Christmas and New Years to Curacao and knew we needed to get Josh a passport for the trip. We decided to wait until he could sit up to get his pictures taken, but then were a little slow figuring out what we needed to do. When the government shutdown happened we (ehem, Julian) had a bit of a freakout over getting his passport in time, since we had been procrastinating on doing it. Julian made an appointment to get it all done at our local post office. Both parents need to appear in person to apply, and we were fortunate that the post office also takes pictures (since we did not have our act together to take one ourselves that meets the requirements). Unfortunately, the night before our appointment...Josh came down with a fever! He was not himself at all, so we were very worried that it would not go well to get his picture taken. Luckily, he rebounded quickly and everything went much smoother than we expected. At the post office, they had me hold Josh up in front of the background and were able to get a shot of him looking at the camera in only 2 tries! It only took about 2 weeks to get the passport back, even without doing a rush order. Seeing his picture on a official USA passport today really hit me, that our baby is ready to travel the world!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great first Halloween with Josh :-). I managed to get him a turtle costume online slightly last minute when our Halloween plans changes, and it worked out really well. The costume was a bit big, but very cute. We needed a costume that would look ok without the hat (because he takes all his hats off). His daycare had a little parade and halloween party, which we stopped by. It was really crowded so we ended up not staying very long. Then we brought Josh home to carve pumpkins and go out trick-or-treating! By far, Josh's favorite thing about Halloween was the candy. Even though he was not allowed to eat any (nor do I think he realized you could eat it), he really wanted to get his hands on the brightly colored plastic packages! Here are some cute pictures from Josh's first halloween :-)

Checking out the pumpkin

Oooo what is that??

CANDY!!

Mmmmm Candy!

Who takes candy from a baby anyway???

I see the candy up there!

Happy Halloween!