Joseph's Got Talent

Joseph likes to dance and he actually has decent rhythm! His favorite jam to rock out to right now is the song "Sexy Chick". Everytime it comes on the radio when we are in the car, his little head and feet are bopping to the beat. Last weekend in an attempt to keep Joseph entertained while Daddy slept in (we were near meltdown stage because he just wanted to scream "Dada!" and run into our bedroom at 6:45 am), I found the video on You Tube and got a good 10 minutes of entertainment value out of it. Joseph broke out some moves for us, although they were slightly subdued compared to his usual dancing. I can't blame him, my dance moves aren't exceptional before 7 am either.

At our music classes, his dancing is...hmm...slightly more energetic and usually involves running in circles (to the beat, of course) and smacking the crap out of drums with sticks (also to the beat, of course) while turning himself in circles over and over again. The other kids sit on their mom's lap with their instruments and give Joseph a major side eye....like "Whoa! Something is wrong with that kid!" And then the mom's see my ever growing belly, find out I am having another boy, and give me the classic southern "Bless your heart" comment (translation for non-Southerners: Bless your heart = Oh wow, you are batshitcrazy.)

Please also note that I am very aware that the You Tube version of this song is not edited, which if you listen closely, means the word "whore" is not bleeped out and instead of "sexy chick" like on the radio version, they are clearly singing "sexy b*tch". Luckily, Joseph has not been heard calling anyone a whore or b*tch since our dance party (Besides Tiger Woods and his mistresses, of course, but we feel this is a very appropriate use of the words and not terribly concerned. At least he understands the context with which to use such words).

Now back to the dancing....where does he get such talent from, you ask? Well, this is debatable. Rich, of course, thinks he has blessed Joseph with his dancing genes, but a quick trip back to this post (there are several videos and photos featuring Rich's dance style), will prove Richard had very little dancing talent to pass on. Of course, I have immense dancing talent, it's just never been caught on video. However, my dancing talent clearly came straight from my father...who just happened to be silly enough to e-mail the following picture of his sweet dance moves from the mid-90's to my brother and I just last week (never thinking it would end up on this blog, I am sure):

Clearly, this is where Joseph's talent comes from...clearly. Clearly, my father would also break his hip if he attempted this move 15 years later.

Say Cheese!!!

Joseph might have a tendency to be a ham. He might also have a tendency to be in love with the camera and think that the camera loves him in return. And yes, he has a tendency to enjoy looking at photos of himself. Hmmm...who does this sound like? Hmmm...maybe, his father?

Lately, he's been taken with having impromptu photo sessions. We get out the camera and say "Cheese!" and he just stands there smiling and making faces. Here are some of the pictures from recent photo sessions. Please note that he looks sort of strange in some of them. I think it's from the flash making him squint right as the picture is taken. It could be that I just have a strange looking kid too.

We've apparently been doing photo sessions and saying "cheese!" so often, that he now thinks the camera is called a cheese. I get out of the camera and he calls it "cheese", as seen in this video below (note that cheese sounds more like "cheeeeeeee"):

This video also shows how patient our cat Porter is with Joseph. At least daily Joseph attempts to either ride Porter like he's a horse or rip his tail off of his body. Porter just puts up with until he's reached his limit and then takes off for the top perch of his kitty condo, where Joseph can't possibly get him (at least until he figures out how to climb it). Any other cat would have scratched the hell out of Joseph by now. Of course, Porter is missing his front paws (Don't come after me PETA. This de-clawing was done purposely without my knowledge while I was back at school - we got Porter together the summer we lived together before my senior year of college. I think the resulting argument when I found out was probably one of our biggest).