One year ago....

365 days ago, we welcomed this little guy into our lives:

It's hard to believe, he's grown into this happy little boy:

Joseph -

Mommy and Daddy love you so much. We can't imagine our lives without you. You have brought us so much happiness and love over the last year. Your ear to ear smile and infectious little laugh fill our home and hearts with so much joy. We can't really believe our tiny little baby is growing up so fast and already one year old. We love the little personality you are developing and can't wait to watch you continue to grow and become a little person. We love you more than you can ever imagine.

Love - Mommy & Daddy

Chaos

Joseph and I are in a few playgroups including a really large Monday playgroup that has about 13 kids between 10 and 16 months. Today, we hosted this playgroup at our house. We had 8 moms and 9 kids (there is a set of twins in the group) in my den. It was controlled chaos...strike that...it was just chaos. Here is a video:




This is a rather tame few minutes. By the end, the kids are over-stimulated, tired and hungry (we meet at 4 so by 5-5:15 its dinnertime for most of the kids). We had many bumps of heads, screaming when toys were stolen and spilling of wine (yup, we serve wine for us Mommies!) in a little over an hour. We attempt to have adult conversation between cleaning up spills, intervening in fights over toys, and pacifying meltdowns. It's fun and it makes the late afternoon (which any stay-at-home mom knows can be the most trying part of the day) go by quickly. At the end, Rich looked around our den and said "Wow, these babies left this place worse than a college party". We had goldfish crackers and toys all over.


Today one of the Mom's even announced she was pregnant again and due this fall! Rationally, I have known this was going to happen sometime soon. These kids will all be 2 next winter or spring and 2 years is a very normal time span between having children. Since I have already seen some announcements of pregnancies due in December, I knew it was only a matter of time before Joseph's "friends" were sporting the "big brother" and "big sister" shirts. But still....it doesn't seem possible that it's been that long since I had Joseph. It seems like he should still be a tiny baby and my friends are already expecting their next tiny baby. I am not ready for that.

Hope Floats

There is an amazing organization in Charlotte called KinderMourn which helps grieving parents deal with the loss of a child. In their own words, the purpose of the organization is "...to provide a safe haven for families whose lives have been shattered by the death of a child." They offer various services to these families, but most importantly free or low-cost grief counseling. In recent years they have expanded their services to provide counseling and support groups for couples dealing with miscarriages through their Empty Arms program. I first heard about this organization after my own miscarriage when my OB/Gyn gave me their information during my post-op appointment (clearly this was because he realized that I was on the edge of insanity). They also offer support groups for couples who are pregnant again subsequent a pregnancy loss. Anyone who has been through this experience knows that a subsequent pregnancy is a roller coaster of emotions and who often feel confused and anxious. While I never actually ended up using their services, for obvious reasons, this is an organization I care about.


This weekend is their annual duck race fundraiser. They put thousands of rubber duckies in the water at the National White Water Center here in Charlotte . We adopted 5 ducks to race in memory of the baby we lost. If one of our little duckies crosses the finish line first, we'll win this sweet little prize:



A Smart car! I have seen a few of these around town and really want one. I'll look so cute (and green!) doing my errands (sans Joseph - no car seat in that little thing) around town!


So go duckies!!!

Climbing

As most of you know, Joseph is active...not like in the "boys are always active" sense...I mean like insanely active, never sit still, always moving, hyper-active. He has no fear and wants to do things that are clearly not age appropriate (older little boys at the play ground drive him insane with their monkey bar swinging and rock wall climbing). The other day we had the attic stairs opened and Joseph decided he needed to go to the attic just like Daddy. He easily maneuvered the first two steps and then continued his climb. Here is video of him tackling a few more stairs:

(Note that Richard in a previous video decided to do some "special effects" with the camera. These effects mostly involved shaking the camera side to side while he told Joseph "no", which I complained about. In this video he decided to add his "special effects" of scanning my entire body with the camera...and in the process misses some of Joseph's step taking....which explains my request in the video to knock off the "special effects". Do you see where Joseph gets the hyper-activity from?)

After the video, Joseph made it up about 2 more steps before we got nervous that if we went to the top with him, it would be really difficult to get a squirmy baby down the entire stairs with only one arm.

Story Time (or should I say Attempted Story Time)

The below video is pretty much a play-by-play of how story time goes around our house every night.

After Joseph's bath and bottle, we attempt to cuddle on the couch with him in order to read a few books. What ends up happening is that Joseph wiggles off our lap and we read to ourselves while he crawls around the entire den doing as he pleases.

We have tried story time at various times of the day...when he wakes up, before naps, after naps...all with the same result. Joseph really has no interest in books (other than to eat them). He gets this from his Dad who prides himself on graduating college (with a decent GPA) and never having actually read a book. Oh well, we will continue to have story time each night in the hope that at some point, he'll actually enjoy it.

Note: I know after seeing the video, you are probably thinking, "Wow, I wouldn't want to have story time either if Rich was going to read the book that un-enthusiastically." I promise that normally we are very enthusiastic in our reading, but this was like our 4th attempt at story time that night and we were really just doing it one last time to get in on video. We knew there was no way he was staying in our lap.

No, No, No!!!

Sometime in the last week Joseph has come to believe that when we say "no", the appropriate response is to shake his head no. Now, he doesn't know that the actual appropriate response would be to stop misbehaving. In fact, he just continues with the behavior while shaking his head no. We caught his head shaking on video. He wasn't actually doing anything we wanted him to stop doing on the video...this was completely staged for our reader's entertainment. He's doing a lot of shaking at the beginning but loses interest when he spots a cell phone nearby.

Our big problem now is that we think his head shaking is so cute, that we can't help ourselves from saying "no, no" just to watch him do this. I fear this is going to confuse him immensely and keep him from actually learning no means to stop doing what he is doing. He does seem to slowly be getting the concept though, because in addition to shaking his head when we say "no", in the last day or so, he has also started shaking his head when he wants US to stop doing something. This mostly involves us shoveling food like green beans in his mouth and putting him in the car seat. He violently shakes his head no while pushing us away. So clearly, he's getting the idea that no means no (or it means Mommy and Daddy laugh at me and then give me lots of kisses because my head shaking is so cute).

Vacation!

Richard and I managed a little 4-day vacation last week. We went to Palm Beach and stayed at a resort called The Breakers. We had been there together the first summer we were dating when I joined his family in Miami/Palm Beach for their family vacation. There are 4 pools, a beach, 5 restaurants and lots of rest and relaxation. We did our typical vacation activities of sleeping in late, lounging by the pool with fruity drinks and naps in the afternoon, all capped off with a nice dinner and wine. Some pictures of the resort (we realized when we got home that we failed to get a single picture of us together):

The view from the entrance

The lobby - the most gorgeous lobby of any hotel I have stayed at

The relaxation (i.e. adults only) pool

View of the pools and ocean

Joseph got to spend the 4 days with my parents. They had a great time going to the park and the toy store (Joseph has several new toys -including a broom (?)- that Grandma purchased for him) and just hanging out. Some pictures of the fun:

Snuggling with Grandma

Snuggling with Grandpa (notice how he sort of looks like he is sleeping, but instead has quite the mischievous grin on his face).

Richard and I had a marvelous time. We missed Joseph and were very excited to get home, but I had absolutely no guilt about taking a few days for ourselves. We did bring Joseph home an awesome gift. We bought him this little set of sand toys, which included a big boat to play with in the pool or ocean. We tried it out in the tub and Joseph was a big fan!