Head Stands

Joseph has a new trick...standing on his head. Well, not so much standing on his head, but leaning over and putting his head on the ground. He does it all day long, anytime, anywhere. We have no idea why he does it. A couple pics of his new trick:

Yeah, our kid is weird.

Misc. Mischief

Lately we have been referring to Joseph as "Mischief Maker" or "Captain Crazy". Here are a few reasons why:

After Mommy gets a birthday package ready to send to his buddy (who is also named Joseph) in California, he decided to use the package as a stool to climb onto the chair. Once he pushed it around to get in the right position, he then stood on the chair and attempted to get on the table (unfortunately, no picture of this as I dropped the camera in an attempt to save us from an ER visit).

He attacks ducks. This picture looks tame...it looks like he is just standing there pointing at the ducks. Nope, Joseph was chasing the ducks and attempting to grab their feathers. However, he learned that ducks fight back and wasn't too thrilled with one particularly aggressive duck who liked to hiss at us.

Not only does he like to climb on tables, he likes to hang out underneath them. Lately, he's been obsessed with getting under the table. He likes to crawl under there and then push all the chairs out from underneath. He is not quite short enough to completely stand straight without hitting his head. This does not seem to be a problem as he apparently wants to give himself a concussion - he loves to just stand there and bang the top of his head on the table top. We are completely perplexed as to why he does this.

As mentioned in a previous post, he loves pulling tissues out of the box. A recent episode of this fun game:

And his favorite item to create mischief with....toilet paper!!! Joseph loves toilet paper. Joseph is also into "sharing" lately. He likes to pick up a toy, some half eaten food, his pacifier and give it to you. On this particular occasion, he decided I needed toilet paper. He kept pulling off little pieces and bringing to me in the kitchen, where I was making his lunch. He then decided I needed the WHOLE roll and proudly came walking into the kitchen dragging a huge train of toilet paper.

We have a quite a little monkey on our hands. We love him, but man, does he exhaust us.

First Haircut

Saturday was a big day - Joseph's first haircut. Honestly, I was nervous. I told Rich this on our drive to the kid's salon and he looked at me like I had just told him that I made reservations to go camping (if you know me, you know there is no way in hell I am ever going camping). I am not sure why I was nervous - we expected he might cry, but I knew we could survive that. I was a little worried he might look ridiculous afterwards, but its hair, it will grow back. I guess I was just anticipating a sorta big milestone.


His haircut milestone went surprisingly well. We took him to a kid's salon where the chairs are little airplanes, trains or cars that the kids can sit in. There are toys and balls and various things to keep them entertained. Joseph fussed a little bit when he got in his plane but quickly got over it once we have him a ball and a paci. He fussed a few times while she was cutting his hair, but he pretty much just hung out for the 10 minutes it took to prune him.


Some pictures from throughout his styling:


Quick explanation of the sign - if you have ever seen Good Morning America on Saturday mornings, they do a segment called "Your week in 3 words". People take videos doing various things with signs describing their week's events. We are submitting a short video of his haircut with the "My First Haircut" sign. Hopefully, you'll be seeing us on national TV this weekend!






And when it was all over, he looked like this:


I was happy because he was cleaned up, but not too short. We were also sad about the fact that his haircut most likely was going to mean that we would lose his curls that had been forming in the back. However, it turns out the cut made them even tighter. The hairstylist seemed to think in time we could be dealing with a curly haired child. If we are, that is all from Daddy's side of the family. There isn't a curl to be found in any member of my family.

After his big haircut, we took Joseph next store to a great toy store. It's huge and they have tons of toys around for the kids to actually play with. It was a great way to spend 45 minutes on a 98 degree day.

Joseph had fun trying out this viking hat:


Attempting to get a picture with Mommy - we snapped this one in the 1.5 seconds he was willing to sit in my lap for. As you can see, he was wriggling around the whole time:


And lastly, going shopping:



FYI- I wanted to be creative with the naming of this post and the title "Freshly Shorn" popped into my head. For some reason I typed it into google and the first search results were the following:

1) Freshly shorn scrotums (???? - I have no idea!!!)
2) 30 freshly shorn sheep die in Pendleton after a late freeze
3) Alpacas look funny, especially when freshly shorn.

Therefore, I went with the mundane "First Haircut"]

Vintage Video

This morning I spent some time watching videos of Joseph from last summer. I really didn't intend to spend 30 minutes doing that this morning - it just sort of worked out that way. See, around 6:30 am, I started to hear Joseph's fussing in his crib. This usually means we have about 15-20 minutes before it's full on screaming to be let loose. Since Joseph also insists on taking his milk slightly warm, this also means we get up once the fussing begins to warm his bottle. Well, it is now 7:45 and monkey is still sleeping. Usually, I get back in bed because even an extra 10 minutes is important to me. Of course, the one morning I don't get back in bed he sleeps another hour!!! So I have checked facebook, read all your blog updates and was getting kinda bored with the interwebz...so I started looking at old pictures and videos and came up with the idea of posting a year-old video of Joseph each month.

There weren't too many from June 2008 to choose from, we were new to the video thing at that point (and many of the ones we did have were like 2 minutes - which would take like 6 years to upload). However, we did have this 45 second one of Joseph doing what he did at slightly shy of 2 months - just kinda hanging out during a visit from Grandma and practicing his smiling skillz:



It's sort of hard to believe that only a year later, that same baby is getting into trouble like this:


(A later post to come to fully explain this toilet paper situation).

Disaster Area

Every day Joseph more fully embraces his new toddler status. Lately, this has meant a fixation on tearing stuff out of their appropriate storage places. For instance, tissues don't belong in a box, they belong all over a bathroom floor. Diapers don't belong neatly piled in storage container in the closet, they belong strewn all across his nursery and hallway. Mommy may disagree, but the toddler set is in full agreement with Joseph on these issues.


Most days I feel like I just walk behind the tornado that is Joseph, cleaning up his path of destruction. Let me give you a little glimpse into about an hour of my morning today.


It starts with one of Joseph's favorite places to play, the pantry. He particularly likes the recycling bin items. After being awake about 30 min this morning, I cleaned up this mess:


Joseph particularly enjoyed the iced tea carton.

While I was putting the recyclables back into the bin, Joseph moved on to play in his nursery. I thought this was a good opportunity to get him dressed for the day. Unfortunately, opening his dresser drawer to select an outfit, enticed Joseph to take all of his neatly folded t-shirts out of the drawer and throw them on the floor.

Once he was dressed, he ventured into the kitchen and opened his favorite cupboard - the one where his bottles and sippy cups are stored. In about 30 seconds, my kitchen looked like this:



Joseph likes to carry his empty sippy cups around after he has taken them out and I often find sippy cups in random places like bath tubs and the cat food container.

No sooner did I get all the bottles, sippy cups and misc. parts organized back into the closet, when Joseph made a beeline for his toy cupboard in the den. He loves to just take every toy out of there and literally throw them on the floor as fast as he can. He has no interest in playing with the toys...just throwing them. This is a pretty standard scene around our house at least 3 times a day:

Joseph also decided today that he wanted to get in the cupboard.

So just a reminder....these pictures were all taken in about an hour - from 7 am to 8 am. We repeated this pattern (with small variations - the pots and pans drawer instead of the bottle cupboard, my underwear drawer instead of his t-shirt drawer, our toiletry cabinet in the master bath instead of the recycling in the pantry - basically any drawer/cupboard/closet that is not locked) after the morning nap, before his afternoon nap and after dinner (as we anxiously were watching the clock and driveway for Daddy's arrival home!).


FYI- for those of you who have commented on the length of his hair. I know - we are taking him this weekend to get it cut. Should be interesting. Stay tuned!

Catching Up

I have been slacking at the blogging lately, I know...and many of you have reminded me of this in the last few days. My deepest apologies to those of you waiting on the edge of your seat for a new post from this blog. However, we've been a tad hectic around here over the last 2 weeks. Here is a brief synopsis of early June 2009:

A few days after the last post, my sister-in-law Kipling arrived. She is staying with us for the summer before she returns for her senior year at Columbia University (yeah, she's sort of smart with her fancy Ivy League education). It's been great having her around. Joseph LOVES her...every morning when he wakes up around 6:30 am he goes running towards her room and bangs on the door like "Hey Aunt Kip, wanna play?" I try to keep him amused with other mischief until at least 8...I remember being 21 and 6:30 was like the middle of the night. She's been so helpful keeping him occupied so I can get some stuff done around the house and just being an extra set of hands (which with Joseph is still not enough!).

My mother-in-law brought Kipling down from Kentucky and also came with Richard's grandmother (Nana) and they stayed for a few days last week before returning home. We love Richard's grandmother, but suffice to say, she is rather unique. Just having her around and keeping up the conversation can exhaust someone....throw in a hyper-active 14 month old and you have your hands full. On the first day Nana arrived, she came in after a long drive and I asked her if she wanted something to drink. Her response was "Oh, I'll have some scotch". She wasn't kidding. I was like "Well, Richard has some nice scotch, I'll pour you some." Her response, "Oh don't do that, I have some stuff right here. I just need a glass" and proceeded to pull a bottle of scotch out of her purse. Enough said.

Joseph was also sick during this time frame. After vomiting twice in one morning, running a 103 degree temperature and spending an entire morning sitting in my lap with no interest in playing, I took Joseph to the pediatrician. We had a urine sample taken, blood drawn and more poking and prodding than Joseph cared for. All this testing revealed an elevated white blood cell count and a return trip to the pediatrician the next day for a re-check. The final diagnosis was Coxsackie virus (named after the town of Coxsackie, NY where the virus first showed up in the 1940's and coincidentally is the next town over from where I grew up) which is basically a virus that causes ulcers on the back of the throat and one hell of a sore throat. Poor little Joseph - it took a few days of sitting with me all day (which is great for cuddling, not so great for getting things done) but he was back to his wild little self within a few days.

Richard and I also celebrated our 6 year anniversary - I can hardly believe we've been married 6 years! It involved some sandwiches for dinner with a glass of champagne - I know, odd combination. Hopefully we'll have a date night soon...just hasn't happened yet.

This past weekend my parents came for a visit. It was a low key, relaxing weekend (well, as relaxing as any time can be with Joseph around) of going to the park, sitting outside watching Joseph splash around in his play pool, swimming at the neighbors, walks around the neighborhood - basically your standard weekend activities.

Well, now that you are caught up on what we have been up to for 2 weeks, here are some pictures of Joseph's recent activities:

Joseph's latest thing - patting his chest when he's proud of himself

Splashing in the fountains at the park with Grandma.

Trying to climb down the tunnel

Splashing in his water table

Swimming in Miss. Kay's pool