Learning to use a spoon

Josh has always been very interested in utensils, but now he is really starting to learn how to use them. He has gotten pretty good at forking his food, although sometimes he has trouble getting it to stay on the fork. I recently have decided to let him try using a spoon. This is a very messy process, but it is cute to see him working hard and learning how to use it! Here are some cute photos from breakfast...mmm yogurt.

Shockingly, Julian declined a hug from this little guy :-) 

I was cleaning yogurt off his ears, hair and face all day...

Easter

We had a busy and fun filled Easter weekend. We hosted an easter egg hunt for a few other kids that are Josh's age and their families.  Josh was practicing all week in daycare looking for eggs (mostly playing with them I think), so he knew that they were fun and wanted to get his hands on them. He was excited to find that some of them even had food in them! We knew Josh should have excellent egg hunting skills based on genetics, and so far both nature and nurture seem to be honing his skills. He also really enjoyed playing in the dirt, so I guess we still have some work to do :-) The weather was perfect for an egg hunt, and it was really fun watching all the kids play and run around.

On Sunday I re-hid a few of the eggs with new treats in them for Josh to find. On his way downstairs he spotted one of the eggs from the steps and B-lined for it. He then managed to find all 6 of his eggs in like 2 minutes, with only 1-2 hints for the hardest ones from Julian and I. We were both quite impressed with his skills. In the afternoon we had a nice easter dinner with one of my cousins. Josh LOVED my cousin's dog, and particularly LOVED feeding it ham and bread...hopefully their dog is ok!

Two eggs!

Josh did not want to put down his eggs to find more

No trouble finding this tricky blue egg in his pirate ship cannon

Doggie!!

On Monday, Julian's Mom and I took Josh to the White House Egg Roll. Julian's Mom got tickets to the event for us from work, and I was very excited to go! This was actually both mine and Josh's first trip to the White House grounds :-)  Even though Josh was a little too young for the activities there, he really seemed to enjoy both the egg hunt and the egg roll. Josh was very good all afternoon, despite long lines and lots of people. We even took the metro downtown, and it went pretty smoothly.

All smiles!

Trying to roll his egg, aka playing with the spoon

Egg hunting

Easter has always been my favorite holiday to spend with my Grandma Nancy, so the weekend was a bit bittersweet. I missed her yearly egg and easter bag hunts, which are always very challenging, and would have liked for Josh to get a chance to look for his basket she would have hidden. I do think that Great-Grandma Nancy would have been very proud of Josh's egg hunting skills. I'm sure I will always miss my Grandmother the most at Easter, but I hope to keep some of her traditions alive.

<3 Easter 2013

Word explosion!

Josh has recently been saying many more words! He has lots of "b" words like ball, book, and bye-bye. He also can say duck, water, mama and more. Although with mama and more we aren't sure he really knows what they mean--he just says them for fun. He is also trying really hard to say giraffe :-). He can do signs for more and milk.  It is so cute to see him trying to learn more words!

Fun at Daycare

Josh's daycare has recently started sending some pictures of Josh playing at daycare. He certainly seems to be having a good time and it is cute to see him in action!

15 months!

Josh is now 15 months old! He had his checkup this week, he is 23lbs 14oz (67th percentile) and 31.75 inches tall (71st percentile). He is a growing boy! This past month Josh has really conquered his horizontal living space, and now has taken to trying to climb...or be picked up so that he can see what is outside of his normal view. He has also been picking up on lots of new communication. He now has a few signs that he will do, along with pointing at something he wants and yelling :-P  He has a sign that he uses for "more/I want" that is super cute, so it is very hard to say no to him if he does the sign. He has also increased his vocabulary to include "book", "ball" and a few other words. He also is understanding more and more of what we ask him to do.

For the last couple of weeks of March, Josh was being especially clingy and cranky. We think that he was going through a developmental milestone which was causing him some stress. He was also working on getting two molars. The molars are starting to poke through (thankfully!). His mood really improved about a week ago, and corresponded with his improvements in communication. We think that he was getting very frustrated that he couldn't communicate.

Josh loves to run around and is very active. We have been testing out a lot of the local parks to figure out which are the best. So far the parks with synthetic wood chips are winning...as Josh has decided wood chips are fun to throw and eat.

Playing at the park

Josh wanted to sit on the ottoman, and then requested all of his toys...

New favorite game, throw food at Jeter

Josh LOVES books now!

More fun at the park!

Pretend Play

I was reading about 15 month milestones, and one of them is something called "pretend play". I hadn't heard this term before, but it really explains some of Josh's new behaviors lately. Basically he is pretending to do things that we do, because he is learning what behaviors adults do. He is also learning that objects have purposes, and that they each have a job. Some of the examples were pretending to clean, sleep, or stir things in a bowl, all of which Josh does. The article I was reading also said that kids like to play with things that they perceive as more useful to adults, like boxes or other things that adults use daily--which absolutely describes Josh. It has been really awesome to watch him learning and developing!

Cleaning!

Sleeping :-)

Talking on the phone (Note the classic 90s phone)

Milk Donation

Since we struggled so much with breast feeding in the beginning, I had to do a lot of pumping. Over that time I accumulated an entire chest freezer filled with over 1000oz of pumped breast milk. Anyone who has done any pumping knows just how much time and effort went into that... I was really crushed when we realized around 7-8 months that Josh had allergies and I would likely not be able to use the milk I had been saving. I was very busy with school, and hoping in the back of my head that Josh didn't have allergies, so I didn't try to get rid of the milk right away. Once his birthday was approaching I realized that some of the milk was getting close to one year (the latest you are supposed to keep the milk) and I needed to figure out what to do with it.

I first tried to contact some of the "official" donation websites, but since I had been taking pre-natal vitamins I did not qualify to donate milk (seriously!?!). It turns out because the milk at milk banks goes to very very premature babies they can't have any additional vitamins in the milk. I turned to a breastfeeding Mom's group that I am in on Facebook and asked for suggestions. A friend sent my contact information to a woman looking for donor milk for her son. This woman's son was born at 27 weeks and she was trying to finish his first year still on breast milk (her son was born a few weeks later than Josh). She and her family relocated to DC temporarily after her husband was injured in Afghanistan so that he could be treated at Navy Med.

I ended up having pretty much exactly as much milk as they needed while they were in the DC area, and a cooler full to take home with them. I wish I had taken a picture of my freezer filled to the brim with milk, but I'm sure that a photo couldn't really capture how much effort went into it. It felt really good to be giving my milk to someone who really needed it, and helping out a family that has already given so much.

(Stolen from Hana)