Aira-pa

I know the title of this post makes no sense to any of you, but it makes perfect sense to Joseph. Aira-pa is how he says "airplane". Sort of a random word to be in his repertoire of 12 or so words, but he's been slightly obsessed with aira-pas lately. Ever since our trip to NY when we spent some quality time in an airport, watching planes take off and land, he's been pretty into them. If we are playing outside and he hears an airplane, he points up and exclaims "aira-pa" enthusiastically.



This enthusiasm over all things aerospace led us to take him to the overlook park at the airport. As we approached the airport, Joseph went crazy in the back seat. He was just pointing out the window saying "Aira-pa, aira-pa" over and over again. Who knew before I became a mother how happy watching an excited little boy through the rear view mirror could make you. He enjoyed the overlook park, although not as much as the car ride. He enjoyed waving hello and goodbye to the planes as they landed.



A video of him watching a plane take off. I will admit at the beginning his love of airplanes is slightly overtaken by his interest in his snacks in his diaper bag. Eventually he regained interest in the plane and watched quietly as it took off.




The other day I also happened upon this little airplane toy at the toy store.



(Porter making a rare appearance on the blog).


Joseph was pretty excited when he saw it so I sprung for the $20 price tag. Once at home, I realized what a difficult challenge it was to get the little passengers inside the plane unlatched from the plane itself. The instructions were of little help.

The bottom part reads "Remark: Retainer not toy then after take out figure. Please give away from child". The toy was made in Thailand - enough said.



Lucky for Joseph we have a lot of travel to and from airports coming up in the next few days. Uncle Jeffrey arrives today from California, Aunt Renee on Friday from California and Grandma and Grandpa on Friday night. Everybody is coming in because we are headed for the beach this weekend! YAY!!!

Byb Bye Ippy

My sister, Kipling, has lived with us for the past three months and this week she leaves to return to New York City where she is a senior at Columbia University. Our time with her has gone by too fast and we will all be saddened to see her go.

For me, it was a pleasure just to spend time with my sister. When i left for college, she was only 8yrs old and I only knew her as my little sister. After 3-months, she is now more friend than sibling. Who knew that we had the same taste in "great music", loved trashy history channel specials about aliens and ancient Egyptians and shared a passion for mocking people?

For Crystal, Kipling was always there in whatever way was most needed. From providing a break from Joseph's no-so-controlled chaos to simply being a friendly face on a rainy day, she always seemed to know just where to help.

As for Joseph, Kipling is his "Ippy"...the person that takes him on walks every night, the person that allows him to jump on her bed even at the most ungodly of hours, the person that gives him snacks (i.e. - teddy grahams) for breakfast and the person who introduced him to milk shakes. In other words - the coolest, most awesome person in the world. While we will all miss Kipling, I have no doubt Joseph will miss his special friend the most.

Kipling, you have become a part of our family in every sense of the world. Our home is now your home. You will always have a warm bed, big smiles and one crazy little guy waiting for you. We hope you return very soon.

Middle of Nowhere

Ok, Ok....I should have posted this a looooooong time ago. We have been home from our trip to the Great North for like 3 weeks now, but we are busy people!!! We have facebooking and reality TV show watching to do at night (I mean Project Runway, Top Chef and the Rachel Zoe Project have all started in the last week - WE ARE BUSY!!!).

So yes, three weeks ago we were in the middle of nowhere at my parents' mountain house. And by middle of nowhere, I really mean middle of nowhere. My cell phone didn't work for a week and there is no high speed internet service providers available. It was pretty much like living in the middle ages (or 1995).

Despite the state of Vermont's inability to welcome in the new millennium, we still had a pretty good time. We had a big family picnic over the weekend. Joseph got to spend lots of time with family he rarely sees. The best part was playing with his second cousin (my cousin's little girl), Renee, who is just a few weeks younger than him.

They had a particularly fun time putting random stuff down the hole for the corn-hole game and trying to pull them out.

They also both got to meet Great Aunt Janice for the first time. She came all the way from Arizona to meet them!

And my cousin Carrie and her husband Justin drove from Connecticut to visit. They look ready for babies of their own, don't you think????

Joseph tried out everyone's cell phone at the party (of course, none of them worked in the middle of nowhere). Great Grandma Conrad's was a particular favorite.

It was a great picnic and we were lucky to not have snow over the weekend. There are like 2 weeks a year when it doesn't snow in Vermont and we just picked the right one (I am only slightly exaggerating).

We spent the rest of the week doing very outdoorsy, Vermonty things (ok when I say "we" I mean Joseph, Grandma & Grandpa did outdoorsy things. I took naps and watched TV). Joseph loved his morning hikes with Grandpa through the woods. They looked for wild animals and picked berries and flowers and did very "big boy" things together.

Grandpa always takes his hiking stick with him on their walks and Joseph wanted his very own. Grandpa found the perfect sized stick to make into a hiking stick for Joseph. He knew exactly how to use it.

We also had dinner at Grandma & Grandpa's neighbors house. He has a very energetic lab named Happy. Joseph was pretty fond of Happy, particularly when Happy was willing to eat the dinner Joseph didn't want to eat. It was a good night for Happy.

And it was a good trip for us as well. We relaxed and spent time with people we love. Joseph loved all the special attention he got from Grandma & Grandpa (and all of his other family). We were very happy to get home though too. After 2 weeks of being away from Daddy, Joseph wouldn't let Richard out of his sight the whole weekend. We would literally scream every time Rich was not visible. Next time Daddy will have to make the trip with us.

New York! New York!

We are back from our 2-week extravaganza up north. It was an action packed 2 weeks...ok not really...but we did get a lot of cute pictures of Joseph being his usual friendly, happy, hyperactive self as he explored new places and got to know a lot of people he doesn't get to see very often.

Given the enormous amount of pictures we (mostly my mom) took, I am going to separate this into two posts. Part I below detailing Joseph's exciting adventures in NY. Part II with lots of pictures from my parents' mountain house in Vermont to follow.

While in NY, Joseph got to visit Grandpa at his office. He enjoyed climbing on his chair.



And the inevitable climb from the chair to the desk:


Joseph unwillingly posed for a picture with Mommy and Daddy before heading to Mommy's 10 year high school reunion (Which was ultra-exciting - note sarcasm - and involved a drunk classmate jumping into the Hudson River and being taken away by the police.) Please ignore my triple chin - it's a rare opportunity to get a picture of our whole family so vanity is being put aside.


Joseph LOVED climbing the stairs at great Aunt Kathy and Uncle Larry's house. He did pause in his climb to make some faces at Uncle Larry.

More fun with great Aunt Kathy & Uncle Larry:

Joseph also got to meet a new friend! One my best friend's from high school, Kristyn, had a little boy just a week after Joseph was born. Who would have suspected as we ran crazy around Rome, Italy together in April 1999 on a school trip that 10 years later our little boys would be running crazy around a playground together (or that we would even be close to responsible enough to be Mommy's to these precious little guys!) Kristyn, didn't you get a tattoo on that trip???

Joseph loved playing at great Grandma & Grandpa Conrad's house. They have a big backyard with a creek in the back - perfect for little boys to get in lots of trouble and really, really muddy!

They also have birds...Joseph enjoyed chasing Dirty Face around the living room. Dirty Face didn't enjoy it so much.

Joseph also visited with Honorary Aunt Jo (honorary because she's not actually blood rated - just my mom's BFF for the last 30 years). Joseph is super excited for Aunt Jo to become a grandma in October when her daughter was a baby boy! Yay - another fun buddy for playing with with on future visits!

Perhaps, Joseph's two most favorite things in NY were some new toys he discovered.

First, the Little Tikes car. Apparently, my parent's neighbors didn't realize they could have gotten some decent money for this thing on Craigs List and instead left it abandoned when they moved out. Score for Joseph!!!! He had lots of fun climbing in and out, standing on the seat and driving with the steering wheel. Amazing, this thing kept him entertained for 15 minute stretches - a major length of time for Joseph to focus on just one thing.

Second, a riding horse! Great Grandma & Grandpa Conrad bought this sweet little pony for Joseph and he was pretty into it. On this particular ride, Joseph got pretty aggressive with his poor little pony's head:

Family Tradition

We arrived safely in NY last Thursday and Joseph has been having lots of fun getting spoiled by Grandma & Grandpa since the moment we arrived. He had all sorts of new toys waiting for him and someone constantly there to give him what he wants. In fact, he has already learned to run to Grandma every time Mommy tells him "no". Grandpa loves giving him big sugary popsicles right before dinner and Grandma always lets him run around naked for 30 minutes after his bath (apparently she is less concerned about urine stains on her carpets than Mommy is).

So far the best part of the trip has been the trip we took to Hoffman's Playland.

For anyone who grew up in the Albany, NY area, all you have to say is "Hoffman's" and a flood of childhood memories is sure to come to mind. The place has been there for over 50 years. It's filled with kiddie rides (carousel, mini-boats, mini-ferris wheel, a train, etc.) and was one of my favorite places as a little kid. I can still remember our parents asking us "Do you guys want to go to Hoffman's?" and nearly falling over ourselves to get into the car. This was especially true because a trip to Hoffman's usually involved dinner at Ponderosa (another Albany establishment) where my brother and I loved the buffet with fried chicken wings and macaroni and cheese.

So on Sunday with Joseph's visit to Hoffman's, it marked 3 generations of our family having fun at Hoffman's.

A picture of my mom on the boats - circa 1962:

And me on the carousel - circa 1983 (I am sporting the cute pink sweat suit and Reebok kixx.)

So when we arrived with Joseph, the place pretty much looked exactly the same as my last visit - which was probably circa 1991. I was hoping to take Joseph on the boat ride since I also had a picture of me on the boats and was looking forward to posting 3 generations of photos of our family enjoying the boat ride. Unfortunately, parents can't ride the boat ride....which basically limits Joseph from riding it until probably age 8. A hyper-active little boy and a ride that involves water are not a good mix. So instead Richard started him off on the balloon ride (which actually is new since I was a kid).

Mommy & Joseph tried out the Jolly Caterpillar (and if Jolly Caterpillar had lasted 30 seconds longer, Mommy might have lost her cookies).

Grandpa took Joseph on Mommy's favorite from when she was a kid, the Helicopters. Mommy was a little nervous to take Joseph on this one because it goes up and down and Joseph can be pretty wriggly sometimes....

After 3 whirly, twirly rides, we decided to slow things down with a ride on the train. The little train takes 2 trips around the park. Joseph had enough of the train after about 1 1/2 trips. It was a little slow for him and he had already seen it once before and we had all we could do to keep him from climbing out.

(That last picture is from the first trip around when Joseph was still curious as to what was going on. Have I ever mentioned my kid has zero attention span?)

The train let us off right near the Bumper Cars and the big kids in the group (i.e Richard and my Dad) decided to challenge each other - my Dad won. (Although, please note that Richard claims there was something wrong with his car).

To end our trip, we took Joseph on the Carousel. He was pretty amused by it when we first got on. However, he started to lose his patience while we waited for the ride to start (unfortunately for him some lady had to come around and make sure everyone was properly buckled on their horse - and Joseph just really didn't have time for that). Luckily, his mood perked up once the ride started.

In this last video, Rich was getting Joseph to ride "no hands" and he was loving it. You can hear his giggle on the video.

The Carousel wrapped up our visit to Hoffman's. Surprisingly, Joseph was not interested in partaking in the tradition of eating some cotton candy when we left (yes, we actually tried to give this hyperactive child pure sugar). I am sure this will be the first of many visits to Hoffman's for little Joseph!

A Traumatic Few Weeks

Sorry for the lack of a recent blog update. We have been busy mourning the death of Michael Jackson. Between the constant CNN watching of the latest drama and crying ourselves to sleep at night, there hasn't been time for blogging.

(Joseph reacts to the death of Michael Jackson as news breaks - he put his hand on the screen and just sobbed "No, Michael, don't leave me.")

We also had Joseph's first trip to the ER in recent days. After falling and smacking the front of his face on our brick step, his face swelled up and we rushed off to the ER. After only an hour's visit and a diagnosis of just a bad bump, we were sent home. Surprisingly, his face looked pretty good the next day and we never got the crazy bruising the doctor thought we would see.

A picture from the next day:

Please focus on the egg and bruise on his forehead and not the food hanging out of his mouth.

The next day he was less swollen but more bruised:

He is actually still slightly bruised, but pretty much over his ordeal. Now the death of Michael Jackson - he is still working through the stages of grief. I think he's finally hit acceptance.

Bluegrass and Bourbon

We just returned from 4 days in the land of bourbon and bluegrass. It was a weekend filled with grilling out, fun with family and of course, bourbon (well, for Richard - not so much for me).

Joseph did surprisingly well on the flight up. It overlapped with his normal afternoon nap schedule and Joseph refuses to sleep anywhere but his crib. Also, when Joseph misses a nap, he's pretty nightmar-ish, so we were pretty much expecting to be THOSE people on the plane. As we bordered the plane in the pre-boarding group, I could feel everyone's eyes on us thinking "Oh please, don't let those people sit next to us." And at the beginning we were THOSE people, Joseph pretty much screamed the first 20 minutes on the plane. But somewhere around 2 minutes before takeoff, this was what my child who never sleeps anywhere but his crib looked like:

Asleep with his ever present Monkey Lovey. It lasted about 30 minutes, but he woke up drowsy enough to quietly watch his "Yo Gabba Gabba" DVD and drink a bottle until we landed. (And yes, we paid for that individual seat you see him in. He is un-restrainable without a car seat or stroller).

Once we got there Joseph was ready for grilling with his Grandma & Grandpa (Cilla & Ricky), Aunt Kipling, Aunt Devon, Uncle Jason & Kairi. He ran around Cilla and Ricky's front lawn with Kairi, ate a popsicle and just enjoyed being outside with his family who loves him:

Joseph has a little nervous around my in-laws dogs, though. Normally he loves dogs - but their dogs are sort of on the big side...like a Great Dane and a mutt who has some St. Bernard in him. The Great Dane is as big as I am (she actually outweighs me by at least 20 pounds).

On Friday, we hung out with Joseph's great grandparents, Grandmommy & Papa Joe. He liked exploring their house and yard and getting loved on by more family he doesn't get to see very often.

That evening Joseph particularly liked getting to know Great Uncle David & Aunt Robin's three dogs. He thought they were about the funniest things he had ever seen. He really loved to feed them his snacks and let them lick his hands and face. He squealed anytime they came near him.


Later that evening, Joseph came down with a mysterious fever of 103.7. After a mild freak out, a call to the pediatrician and a dose of Tylenol, he had a restless night of sleep but woke up with just a low grade fever and ready for action. By the evening there was no fever. We have no idea what got into him.

On 4th of July Joseph got to see even more family members when we drove out to Great Aunt Elaine and Uncle Rick's house. They have a great big house right on a lake. Joseph wasn't necessarily impressed by the great view - but he LOVED all the stairs they had. Stairs up to the 3rd story, stairs down to the basement, a HUGE set of stairs up the deck.....there were stairs everywhere and Joseph climbed all of them many times over. Joseph was also super excited when Great Aunt Marchell gave him a special box of animal crackers she had bought for him. He couldn't stuff his mouth fast enough. This picture was taken with about 6 animal crackers in his mouth:

With all the family around, Mommy & Daddy actually got to relax for a little bit here and there. Daddy got to play cornhole with his cousin Patrick, Aunt Marchell and Jason.

And finally, on our very last morning there, Joseph got a little snuggle time in with Great Uncle David (who needed some cuddling practice because he's got his first grandbaby coming in about 7 1/2 months) and got to try on a pair of old cowboy boots that both Daddy and cousin Patrick wore as little boys. A little bit too big....but maybe in a few years, he'll be ready for them.

On Sunday, we headed home. It almost looked like our departure was going to have to wait until Monday when we got on the highway to go to the airport and were in dead stopped traffic due to a 14 car accident that had the highway shut down. We were pretty sure we were missing our flight. However, Richard in an attempt to piss off the entire state of Kentucky, drove 2 miles on the shoulder. At one point someone moved over in front of us to keep us from going further and Rich got out, banged on their window and told them we had a sick baby (which wasn't a total lie - I mean, he had had a fever the day before). They bought it and we ended up sprinting through the airport and got to the gate a few minutes before it bordered.

It was a fun weekend, but we are glad to be home, back to our normal routine and doing our normal everyday things (although Joseph does miss those dogs!).