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 :-)