Joshua's Growing Vocabulary

Hi!  We're still busy unpacking and organizing, so I'm going to skip the photos and just fill you in on Joshua's growing vocabulary.

Katie was much more of a talker; Joshua is much more mechanically-minded.  He is always trying to push any button he can find and figure out how things work.  He would be content to flip light switches all day. Once I needed to keep him occupied in a hotel hallway so I showed him how to use the ice maker.  He pushed it and pushed it and pushed it -- I could have been Pavlov since he just couldn't get enough of the reward of watching the ice fall.

So needless to say, he hasn't been all that interested in talking until recently.  He enjoys making noise, mostly by screaming, but also "singing" along to "Jesus Loves Me", "Elmo's World", the ABCs, and the "Muppet Babies" theme song.  Singing here refers to making random noises including grunting and raspberrying, but I can tell he's trying to do it along with the song.  Make ANY joyful noise, Joshua!

Last time I wrote, Joshua had three words: "Dada", "Mama", and "Caca" for cookie/cracker.  That night Joshua kept saying "Caca" as he pointed to his diaper, and I was wondering about that since "caca" is Spanish for "poop" (but I was pretty sure he wasn't bilingual).  It turns out that he was pointing out that Cookie Monster (aka "Caca" for "Cookie") was on his diaper.  I was so excited to see him break through and express a new thought with his words!

In fact, Joshua's vocab mostly consists right now of Sesame Street characters: "Caca", "Melmo" for Elmo, "Buhbuh" for Big Bird, "Bird" for Bert, "Gaga" for Grover, and my favorite of all -- "Tsss" -- his word for Ernie because that's how Ernie laughs.  I love it.

I should mention Joshua's fourth word though: "Muppet Babies."  Yes, he said dada, then mama, then caca, and then "MuppaBaby".  REALLY?  But I promise you that's true.  He first said it as John came to  pick him up from his crib after naptime.   And now he uses it to ask to watch TV -- and of course, his favorite show, Muppet Babies.

Other words/ understandable sounds:
"Ligh!" (light)
"a i a i"  (trying to sing the ABCs, as in "H I H I")
"hi"
"goodni"
"ooh ooh" to bark at Bella and other dogs
sheep and horse noises (sounds more like a laugh)
"geh down"
"baby" (mostly used to ask in shorthand for Muppet Babies)
"Daniel" (taught to him by his Uncle Daniel but said repetitively as he chases Katie's best friend Daniel around the yard)
"Papa" (Grandpa)
"No" (used for both yes and no)
"Peasss" (please)
"ball"

I'm sure I'll think of more and then I'll add them to this list.  Thanks for reading!

2009 in Review: September and October

Two days into 2010, I'm still trying to catch up on my 2009 blogging. Sorry! Here are some of my favorite previously-unposted photos from September and October of 2009.


I call this one "For every good photo I take, I have six more of these."


Cute ones of Katie and Joshua:


On September 6, we celebrated the birthday of John's brother Jamie at a nearby club to which we belong.

On September 2, my dear friend Meredith (one of my bridesmaids and a missionary in Mexico) came to visit. It was her first opportunity to meet Joshua and she and the kids enjoyed a round of giggling, tickling, and posing for the camera.


Joshua's soon-to-be-close-friend Adah (daughter of our close friends Mike and Cindy) was baptized a few weeks before Joshua. Here's a photo of Katie dressing up to "match" Adah's winter apparel, and a photo of Cindy and Adah before Adah's baptism.

September 14: Katie's first poo-poo in the potty.
And yes, I took a photo to note the occasion. But I will spare you. :-)

Joshua's Baptism

On September 27, Joshua was baptized. I've already blogged about it here, including a video of the sacrament, but here are some other photos from that day that I love.

After the baptism, I took Joshua to the church nursery so I wouldn't need to keep him quiet for the rest of the service. He promptly fell asleep after I dropped him off -- here are photos of him when I arrived, and just after he woke up and saw his mommy.


We had our family and a few friends over afterwards for lunch.


I know what you're wondering: What is that last photo? That's a photo of the giant branch that fell during the baptism lunch, spearing our front yard just as some of our friends were walking up to our door. We put Uncle Jamie in the photo so you could see the scale of the branch. We were so thankful that no one was hurt, especially later that week when I heard someone in our town had been killed that afternoon by a falling tree.

Here is the rose that was displayed on our church organ during Joshua's baptism -- our church's way of announcing his birth.

September 27: Joshua and Katie moved to their big beds
Already blogged about it here.

October 3: We visited John's parents. Katie marvelled at JPa's expanded model train set-up, while Joshua tried a playground swing for the first time at the local elementary school.

October 8-12: We went to the beach for Columbus Day weekend. Six weeks earlier, we had left to beach after my family vacation, and I had said goodbye to warm beach weather and bathing suits. However, we were delighted in October to still have weather warm enough to play in the water! Other highlights of this weekend were teaching Katie how to play mini golf and skeeball, and seeing Katie put a not-so-appropriate funnel (read the words on it) on her head as a hat in a souvenir shop.

October 18: Christy Rowe, the mother of my fantastic new sister-in-law Lindsey, paid us a visit from Seattle.

October 23: We left the kids with my parents and took John's parents to see Topol in his farewell tour of "Fiddler on the Roof". Topol is one of the most famous Tevyes ever (he played Tevye in the movie version, for instance), and the four of us were awed to see him in person. He exuded energy and charisma even at age 74.

Halloween. I blogged here about Katie winning our neighborhood costume contest, but here are some of my other favorite photos from the Halloween season.

Before the costume contest, Katie poses with the pumpkin and gourd that she and I decorated, using VeggieTales characters as a model. She called our creations "Jimmy and Jerry".

After the contest, Katie (who won 1st prize in the 2-and-under category) poses with "Cheetah", who won 1st prize in the 3-and-up category. She also tried hula hooping for the first time.


Since Joshua's pumpkin costume didn't win any contests, we tried a few costumes my friend Marce handed down to us. Joshua wasn't a fan of the monkey outfit because he couldn't use his hands.

In the meantime, John and I attended a Halloween-themed birthday party. John and his friend Wayne teamed up for a unique take on the Blues Brothers, while I dressed up as a baby (hey, I already had all the gear around my house!).

The next night was Halloween, and Joshua's third costume try was a charm. He was a Dalmatian, and I painted his nose black to add to the effect. That afternoon, John's parents had babysat while John and I took my parents to see "Jersey Boys", with the added bonus that both sets of grandparents were around when we started our trick-or-treating.

Videos: Here are our favorite October videos.

Katie swings at a pinata for the first time at the neighborhood block party:

At the beginning of most of our Sesame Street DVDs, there is a promotional intro that can't be skipped over. Thus, Katie knows it by heart and even enjoys it. Her favorite part of the segment is a muppet named Khokha from the Egyptian version of Sesame Street, "Alam Simsim". From the time she started watching TV, she has always cracked up after Khokha exclaims something that makes no sense in the English language. In fact, she just walked up behind me as I was blogging and said "Coco-kabaya!" which is our best translation. Here is her laughing as she watches the segment.



Katie runs in circles in the arcade where her daddy is playing skeeball. Katie runs in circles a lot ever since we taught her to run around the coffee table while singing "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain".


Katie tries her hand at mini golf (I had to post two videos because they both crack me up).

Why We Annoyed an Entire Restaurant

We were at the Silver Diner a few weeks ago, trying to keep our kids happy as long as possible so we could spend a few more precious minutes with our dear friends (and mentor couple) Dave and Gloria, who were moving to Dallas.

As you know, the Silver Diner has a jukebox at every table, and song selections are played throughout the restaurant. We realized that the Sesame Street theme song was one of the jukebox options, and yes, we were the annoying people who played the song THREE TIMES IN A ROW because Katie was so funny everytime it played. Below is the third time it played, and you can hear another restaurant patron trying not to complain in the background. :-)

As Katie says at the end of the song, "Again?"

Could You, Would You, on a Train?

Being the mother of two under two for a few more days, I hereby give myself permission to post events terribly out of order. Otherwise I'll never catch up. So you'll have to wait longer to hear about our trip to Seattle, my brother's wedding, our trip to the beach, etc. Tonight I want to tell you about our trip to the National Aquarium on Tuesday.

My friend Betsy organized a trip to the National Aquarium in D.C., and the "easiest" way to get there was by Metro. I doubted that sincerely, but decided we'd give it a go. Neither of my kids had ever been on the Metro before, so I recruited the best mothers helper ever, 11-year-old Anna, and the four of us went on an adventure.

Here are photos of my kids on their first train ride:

The aquarium was pretty fun, and an added bonus is that the place was completely dark except for the exhibits, so Katie actually paid attention to some of the fish and animals. Then she completely melted down (did I mention she gets jealous sometimes when I'm holding Joshua?). Still, we were there a solid hour before we had to leave.

This was my favorite fish because it reminded me of an American flag:

Located between the Metro and the Aquarium is the National Museum of American History, which our architect friend Mike recently helped to redesign, so we made a brief stop there on our way home. From what I could see, the redesign is modern and gorgeous, and Katie was especially excited at the one exhibit we visited: Oscar the Grouch (aka "Ah-juice") and Kermit the Frog (aka "Frog")!

By the time we got back to the car, we had been on FIFTEEN elevator rides (it would have been 16 except I got impatient one time and just took Katie's stroller on the escalator instead) and all of us were totally wiped out. I lined up my exhausted kids in the back of the SUV for a joint diaper change:

and we headed home. That afternoon Katie slept for more than 3 1/2 hours, and even then I had to wake her up for dinner. That's double her normal nap. :-)