Eastover

I heard someone call the combination holiday of Easter and Passover, Eastover and I like it. Certainly very fitting for us this year. We decided to host a little egg hunt and passover Seder this year with some friends and family to make sure that Josh got to celebrate both. Josh learned at daycare that you "hide the eggs and then find them!" and that the eggs have candy in them. So easter was not a hard sell :-P Fortunately he is a big fan of Matzah and gefilta fish, so he enjoyed both parts of the holiday. This year I also took over the tradition of hiding Easter baskets in diabolical locations for my cousin, sister and our spouses to find. 3/4 were very hard to find. Fortunately I have a whole year to come up with a good location for Julian's next year ::muh ha haaaa::

I hid some eggs in the yard for Josh and our next door neighbor to find, and they had a great time. We then had a passover style meal with very abbreviated Seder (4 questions and explanation of the seder plate). I made Matzah ball soup for the first time, brisket, and flour-less chocolate cake. Which all came out very well. I also tried to make nut free charoset, but really should have added more wine :-)  The gefilta fish was really not popular among our guests, so their loss.

I would say the biggest holiday fail was a book I bought for Josh on Big Bird and Grover's search for the Matzah. If you are looking for a book about passover for a child, I would certainly skip that one! The book doesn't even tell of the story or discuss any passover traditions.

Easter reminds me of both of my Grandmothers who I miss dearly. It was fun this year that Josh was really learning about both holidays and getting to experience them. It was nice to get to start passing on some of the traditions I grew up with.

Eating his findings

Soup success!

Mmmm Brisket

Basket hunt :-)

Mark didn't think I was spry enough to hide a basket in the ceiling :-) 

Finding his basket :-)

I told Josh he couldn't have his chocolate bunny until after breakfast and put it on the counter. He promptly got his stool and got it anyway. I awarded his cleverness with chocolate bunny.

Change is Difficult

Our family is going to change dramatically in the next few weeks and to get ready for that we have been making lots of changes at home.  Transitioning Josh downstairs and into his new room has been a big change but we expected it to be hard on Josh.  It turns out it has been harder for us.  Josh has been sleeping in his new room since Saturday and overall it has gone very well.  The first night he slept through the night without any trouble.  Last night was a bit rougher, he woke up several times but he just needed to be shown where his pillow was. Overall he loves his new room, and when we ask if he wants to sleep there he always says "Yes!"

Margaret and I on the other hand find it very strange for him to be downstairs from us.  I keep seeing his old room without him in it and it feels very strange.  I have to remind myself he is downstairs and everything is fine.

We are almost done getting his room ready. We have moved most of his things downstairs. We just have a few more things to put on the wall, and Margaret has a never ending hunt for the perfect hamper for his room. In a week or two we'll start shifting his old room to be ready for the new baby, we'll see how he handles that.  I'm not sure it really will make sense to him until he see's his little brother in his old room.

A friend gave us some very good advice to get him excited about picking out things for his new room, and to let him help with it to get more excited. This has really helped! We have shown him each new item in his room as we buy or make it, and he gets very excited. He watched Daddy and cousin James put in his ceiling fan and loves to talk about it.

We also changed the child proofing downstairs so that he will always have access to his room. He loves being able to run to the living room and then back to his room. We put a gate in front of our basement steps, and locks on our office and hall closet to keep him safe.

Once the art is on the walls in his room we will take some pictures to share here :-)  But for now some cute ones of Josh enjoying his new room.

Happy in his new chair

Sleeping soundly - yes we are stalkers...

"I'm a goof and a cutie pie"

I called Josh a cutie pie once, and he really latched onto the term. Clearly I think he is a cutie pie, so I love that he repeats that :-)  When he is being silly Julian or I will call him a goof. At first he would say, "No, I cutie pie" but now he says, "I'm a goof and a cutie pie". If you call him silly he will say, "I'm a silly goose". I know he doesn't really know what these mean, but it is so cute to see him learning phrases like this and using them appropriately :-)  Anyway, Josh has been in full blown toddler mode lately and liked to do things HIS way. This makes for some fun pictures which we will share with you.

This is how Josh rolls when we shop these days...

He also likes sunglasses while he eats

Testing out the washers at Home Depot

Nap time, big boy style

The rug arrived for Josh's room on Friday and I made a big trip to ikea to get a few more things for his room. There is still some work to do in his room, but we decided to let him nap in there this weekend.

The nap went about as we expected. Josh has been a little difficult at nap and bedtime lately, demanding extra songs and pats on the back. Getting to sleep in his new bed was very exciting for him, but he requested a bunch of animals and toys in the bed. We made the mistake of giving him his talking Elmo doll, which he proceeded to play with. He got out of his bed and tried to get out of the room once, but we were able to get him back in bed. By that point he was a bit overtired and cranky, but once he calmed down he went right to sleep. 

It look about an hour to get him to sleep, but then he napped for 2 hours...so we decided that it was a win! He did not fall out of his big boy bed, so double win :-)

We still have a bit of work to do in his room, so this week he will be sleeping in his crib at night. Hopefully by next weekend we will at least do naps in his new room, and maybe try for an overnight! Our goal was to have him in the new room by April, so we are right on track. So far he has been excited about his new room and new bed, but we think once he realizes he doesn't get to have 2 rooms he might be upset. 

Getting comfortable :-)

hummm....

Not looking promising...

That is not sleeping.

Victory!

New bed!

We have been trying very hard to get our house ready for a family of four, which has been pretty difficult when some or all of us are always sick, or it is snowing. After several things were canceled because of the weather, we are finally feeling back on track. We managed to get new windows downstairs and in the basement, and just got new blinds to go with them--all the sales people came to us. We ordered a washer and dryer in an online chat window from Sears, because we could not manage to get to Sears. And my parents got Josh a new bed for his big boy room. We got a great deal on a new dresser from a floor model sale. We also finally managed to donate all of the extra furniture (bed, dresser, bookshelf, etc) so that we could start to set up Josh's room. Almost all of this was done in the last few weeks!

My sister and brother-in-law and some cousins came over this weekend to help us take care of some things that I can't really do right now. The guys were busy installing a bathroom cabinet, putting up a bunch of pictures, and getting some childproofing done.

We are still a long way away from having Josh's room set up, but I did make his bed. He LOVED playing in his new big boy bed. He also asked to go see his "Josh" sign which I made him :-)

Seeing his new bed nicely made for the first time :-)

Playing!

Happy Kiddo :-)

Talkative Little Guy

I'm sure it comes as a shock to everyone but Josh is pretty chatty.  We finally were able to capture a few of the cute things he says. If you ask him if it is bed time he always says, "No it's wake up time". If you ask him if he is a goof, he will say, "No I'm cutie pie". Now he will say that he is a "goof and a cutie pie" :-)

Since this video he can now properly count to 13

Trip to Atlanta

We were supposed to go to Atlanta for Presidents day weekend two weeks ago, but after checking into our light Josh came down with the stomach flu. We were happy to find out that Southwest lets you change your tickets up to 10 minutes before the flight departs, so we decided to move our trip back 2 weeks. Once Julian and I both got sick, we were very happy we did. When Josh came down with a fever two days before we were supposed to leave last week, we were very worried. Fortunately he recovered quickly and the fever was just a one day thing, so we were able to go on our trip.

We had been telling Josh we were going on an airplane to visit Aunt Jenna and Dustin, and that we would be going to the Aquarium to see fishies. He remembered the fish, and that there would be two cats where we were going. He also remembered that he was going to get to wear his backpack, like Daddy.

Josh did very well on the flight out, he started to get fussy at the end of the flight...but so did I, so I can't really blame him. By the time we landed it was his usual nap time, so he was a bit cranky and tired for the trek to get our rental car. He fell asleep pretty quickly once we finally got on the road.

Josh was very excited to see a cat in the window when we arrived at Jenna's. We decided to go for a walk to a nearby playground before dinner. Unfortunately, it was in the mid 30s, so the playground was closed for maintenance. I guess not a lot of people in Atlanta like to play when it is nice and warm like that :-)  Fortunately we snuck onto the playground to use the slide a few times, and then let Josh run around in the fields. We cooked dinner together and waited for "Duspin" to come home.

The next day we headed out bright and early for the Aquarium. It was awesome! I'm honestly not sure who was more excited, me or Josh. I don't think Josh appreciated how cool it is to see whale sharks or a swimming giant octopus in an aquarium! The Atlanta aquarium really puts the Baltimore aquarium to shame. The exhibits were all great and had excellent visibility for toddlers. They had a good mix of fish and marine animals including otters, penguins, beluga whales, dolphins and seals. We watched the Whale Shark feeding, which was pretty cool. The tank for the whale sharks was HUGE and also had manta rays, big ugly grey fish, and lots of other interesting sharks and fish. If we go back I wouldn't go to the dolphin show again, it was a bit more of a theatrical show than a nerdy marine biology learning experience like I would have preferred :-)

We had dinner on Saturday at a very nice restaurant near Jenna's house with Julian's aunt. It was a really nice time. Josh was mostly well behaved, besides eating butter out of the dish with a knife :-P  We were able to walk to dinner (about 10 minutes) which was nice, Josh was willing to be pushed in the stroller on the way there but insisted on walking home. He did a good job with an uphill walk home.

The next day we met up with a good friend of mine from grad school and her family for breakfast. They have a little boy about 8 months younger than Josh. I had met him when he was only a few weeks old, so it was fun to see how much he had grown!  And it was really nice catching up with my friend.

While we were at breakfast, we got a text message from Southwest that our flights were canceled due to weather. We knew it was supposed to snow in the DC area, but didn't realize just how bad it was. We were able to quickly rebook a flight for the next morning. Thankfully we already had a place to stay :-)  We ended up having a really nice extra day in Atlanta and got to go for a walk, and Jenna made us a delicious dinner.

The trip back was pretty smooth until the shuttle to our parked car (too far past nap time...). We gave Josh the window seat on the plane and that really helped distract him and give him something to do, particularly while the plane was taxiing. On the way home in the car Josh was very upset not to be going home to Aunt Jenna's.

We were so sick for all of Jan/early Feb we hadn't really taken any time to plan our trip to Atlanta. Having 2 extra weeks gave us time to get together with some extra friends and family, which was really nice. Traveling with a toddler is a lot of work, but I'm very glad that we were able to take one more trip as a family of 3.

Some pictures from our trip are below :-)

Playing with the window

Baby wearing at 32 weeks!

First time forward facing, too tired to enjoy it

"Fishies!!!!!"

Checking out the otters

"Pengies!"

Whale shark feeding! And snack time for Josh

Family photo, or ad for pop chips? You decide

What??

Matching cardigans from Aunt Jenna :-)

Family selfie

We think this will be the last time for Josh in this crib, he is getting big!

Hug goodbye

Family photo

Playing some tunes

Upgraded to the window seat!