J's 18 month update

Happy 1/2 birthday Joshua!  You truly are a gift given to me by God!  You have taught me so much about love and laying down my life for another person.  You have also given me many opportunities to grow in patience. 

You make me laugh every single day with all your sill antics.  I love how affectionate you are.  You love to hug kids at the park, rough house with dad, and cuddle and read books with mom.  I love the sweet kisses you give me between the bars on the playground and the surprise hugs I get on the back of my legs while I am doing the dishes. 

You re a light in my life and I pray you will be the light in this dark world. 

All My Love,

Your Mama. 

Here are some fun things that Joshua is doing at 18 months old...

*Still loves his sleep.  He heads to stairs whenever I mention nap time. We are in the process of transitioning to one nap.  

*He is learning colors, although every color right now is blue (boo or booey).  We have a lot of conversations like this:

• Me: What color is this?
• J: Boo
• Me: No, it is red.  Can you you say red?
• J: Wed
• Me:  Yea good job! It is the color red.
• J:Wed
• Me: What color is it?  (same object)
• J: BOO!
  Ha-ha! 

*He also knows a few shapes (oval, heart, square, and diamond).

*His favorite thing to eat right now is peanut butter sandwich with either banana or apple sauce in place of jelly.  If I serve him something he doesn't want to eat for lunch he will ask over and over for peanut butter.  So he goes without lunch some days because he refuses to eat anything but a PB sandwich and I am not a top order chef .  :)

*He is really into lotion.  If you give him a bottle and tell him it's lotion he will act like you gave him a million bucks. 

*He loves to be chased.  Right before you "get him" he will sometimes stop running and just lay on the floor as a way of surrendering. 

*He does really well eating with a spoon.

*He will go and get something that he is not suppose to have, bring it to you, and say with a real serious face, "don't" or "noooo."  Then when we say, "yea, we don't play with that. Go put it away" he trots off to go put it back.  He also likes to bring us things he isn't suppose to have and say, "away, away, away" for us to tell him to go put it away. 

*He gives a cheesy smile when you tell him to smile. 

*When he prays he folds his hands and says real fast, "Amen!"  Shortest prayers ever but I know he is sincere in his little heart.

*He loves spinning around.  He gets so dizzy but it makes him laugh and laugh.  After spinning sometimes he tries to point to things and his sense of direction is so off.  He also likes to march, walk on his tippy toes, and walk backwards. 

*He is obsessed with football!  Whenever football is on he raises his arms up and yells, "GOOOO!"  He will bring me the remote and raises both hands and say in the most pitiful voice, "gooooo" as a way of asking me to put football on.  He even recognizes it on the radio.  Daddy is proud!

*He is my little reading buddy.  He loves sitting in my lap and reading book after book.  And he only really does this with me.  I love that we have "our" own thing.  It sure is hard to deny his cute little face when he walks up to me while I am doing something and he says, "book, book."

He loves playing with his sensory tub.

When I lay down the mat he runs over and sits on it and waits patiently for me to bring him his tub.

 

I have worked really hard at teaching him to keep the corn kernels in the tub.  When he sees some that spill out of the tub he immediately picks them up and puts them back.  The only thing he does that gets the tub taken away is putting the kernels in his mouth.  Sometimes he just can't seem to resist those tasty kernels.  

   I can't wait to put together a Christmas one for him.

Silly boy!

 

Loves taking walks. 

 

He loves holding my bags when we go shopping.  What a gentlemen. He thinks the reflection on the lights on the floor is so funny and tries to step on them.

 

Waiving to the manikin.

 

Helping me dust baby sisters crib.  He took the cleaner, put it up to the rag and made a "ch ch ch" sound. 

 

Helping Mom in the Garden...

We found a carrot.

 

Taste test!  He approved!

 

One of his favorite days is trash day!  He loves watching the trash truck.

What a good Bronco dog!

 

I was putting groceries away one day and I looked over and saw Joshua laying on the TP.  It must be really soft or he was really ready for nap. 

 

We got this doll to do some roll playing before the baby comes.  Right now we are focusing on comforting the baby, being gentle, talking about body parts, basic baby care and of course not poking the baby's eyes.  Once we get the nursery all set up we will put the baby down for naps.  He makes a crying sound for the baby and then puts it over his shoulder and "shhhh's" it. He likes to cover her up with a blanket and set diapers on her. One day there was a baby crying on the TV and Joshua immediately went to his toy box and got his baby. Such a sweet boy! 

Practicing being a big brother!   

 

Football face!



A Day of Celebration!

As a way of announcing the gender of our baby we decided to have a gender reveal party with our family.  It wasn't until late in my pregnancy with Joshua that I had heard about a gender reveal party and they sounded like such a fun way to share the news that I knew that is what I wanted to do with our second.  Keeping it a secret was the hardest.thing.ever!  But it was SO worth it.  We had everyone who thought it was a boy wear blue and everyone who thought it was a girl wear pink or purple (or orange since it was Broncos game day).  For the big announcement everyone picked the cupcake with their color icing on it and bite into it to find pink frosting.  Most of our family thought we were having a boy so seeing them bite into their cupcake was priceless!   

Team Pink

 

Team Blue- Daniel and I wore what we initially
thought we were having. 

 

Digging in! 

 

Love the reaction from these two team blue members! 

 

Skyping with Uncle Shawn, Auntie Anna, and Cousin Noah to tell them the big news.  Shawn and Anna were team blue and Noah was team pink; see the pink bow on his head!  LOL!!!

 

Joshua was team pink and wore a red shirt but was napping during the reveal.  Here he is standing in front of Omah's Christmas tree decorated with pink and blue ribbon. 

Along with our Gender Reveal Party Omah planned a half b-day party celebration for Joshua.  Everyone gave a him some sort of half present, wrote down why they thought he was special and of course he got some cake.

Looking at Papa read his special card to Joshua
while he picks at eats his lunch.

 

Listening to Omah read her card. 

 

. 

 

YUMMMM! 

 

"Yummy, that was good.  Can I have some more please?!"

 

Joshua got these balloons as a half b-day present (1/2 dozen get it ;)) and hasn't let go of them all day. He was so cute walking around every where with a bouquet of balloons. He loves "noons." He reminds me of the movie up with these balloons.  I loved when he would take them outside and I would just see this bunch of balloons bouncing passed the window. 

 

 

  

It's a....

...GIRL!!!

We went in for our 20 week ultrasound appointment last Tuesday and found out that we are having a baby girl!  We were absolutely shocked!  S-H-O-C-K-E-D!!!  We were both certain that we were having another boy. We just knew it!  We were so sure that I had already started buying wall letters for our boy name.  We always joked, "what if we go in and say it is a girl."  Then we would laugh and say, "That is just not going to happen."   Oh.my.word!  The ultrasound tech said, "there are the two legs, and I don't see anything going on in between them."  We just looked at each other in disbelief and then I started laughing and I couldn't stop laughing.  I have laughed a lot since then.  It took a while to comprehend it.   I even had my doctor take a look at the picture to confirm and confirm she did!  We are having a girl! 

It is starting to sink in and the more I think about it the more excited I get.  We even have a name picked out (that will be another post though I do think Baby Girl is pretty cute).  I just want her here now to hold and love on!  I can't wait to teach Joshua how to protect his baby sister.  Which by the way, how he says sister is so cute! 

Baby girl was so cute and modest on the ultrasound.  It is so amazing to see everything working and growing and to know that is inside of me!  She kept her hands up by her face pretty much the entire time making it difficult to get a good 3D shot of her sweet little face.  She must be getting ready to play peak-a-boo with her big brother.  She waved to us and we got to see her trying to suck her thumb.  She kept her legs crossed for a good portion of the time making it hard for us to find out her gender.  I was beginning to think we weren't going to get to find out that day. 
 
This weekend I went out and bought her a few outfits and was giddy with excitement.  I never thought I would be all about the pink if I had a girl but from the looks of what I bought you would think I didn't know that there were other colors out there.  I even bought her curtains for her room!

We are very much looking forward to life with a boy and a girl.  It is already so different in that we say, "she and her" a lot. 
 
We are super excited to meet our sweet baby girl! 

Happy Halloween

Every year our church puts on a huge Family Fun Night for Halloween for the entire community.  They rent out the event center and have all kinds of food, games, bounce houses and candy.  The last time I was there I was pregnant with Joshua and volunteering at a booth.  I never imagined how much MORE fun it would be once I had a child of my own who was old enough to participate in all the fun. 

This year we took our little lion and let me just say that I am not sure who had more fun us or him.  It was such a blast watching him!

He got so many "AHHHs" and "how cutes."  One lady even asked to take his picture. 

When we first got there he was so overwhelmed.  Once we discovered the room that was for 5 and under he warmed right up and was running from station to station like he owned the place.

Getting ready for his big outing practicing his "ROOOOAAAARRRRR!"

When I first put the mane on he started shaking his head no with a big 'ol smirk on his face.

He ran over to the stove to check out his reflection. He was giggling the whole time!

Don't let this compliant face fool you...

....this is what he REALLY thought at first. 

"What am I wearing?"

"You mean I get to carry this bucket around with my costume?  Well I guess it isn't so bad after all."

 

Time for some games! 

 

He played games to earn candy for us. Yes we taxed him 100%. Just be glad neither one of us are running for president ;) 

 

He had to put the Frisbee in the slots.  Once he put two Frisbee through he got a piece of candy.  When he got his candy he immediately went over and put it through the slot.  HA-HA!

 

Bowling!  He walked up to the pins and threw/dropped the ball then he would either stand the pins back up or pick them up and hand them to the person running the booth.

He loved carrying around his bucket.

Break time for some peanut butter crackers.  Isn't that just the cutest lion you ever did see?

He is really into trains (choo-choos as he calls them) so I was really excited when I saw this little train ride. 

 

Last but not least...the bounce house.  His favorite!  

He would climb into the bounce house, go right to the slide and hold his arms out like this so the lady supervising would sit him up and help him down the slide and repeat 52 times. 

 

By the end of the night we were all pretty tired.  As we left I told him we were going to go home and go "night night."  On the way home he started saying, "Bible, Bible, Bible."  Guess he was ready to get started on his bedtime routine.  Sweet boy!