Joshua's 2nd Birthday Party - Part 1

Sunday night we had my family over to celebrate Joshua's birthday. Joshua showed off his new climber and had some fun on his swing while waiting for the burgers to grill. After having dinner we surprised Joshua with his cake. As you can see in the photo below it was a bus cake! (If you weren't aware Joshua has an obsession with buses, especially school buses.) I had a friend of mine make this awesome cake! So, once Joshua saw his cake his eyes lit up and he just kept saying bus, bus, bus! It was a priceless few minutes as he took it all in! Joshua also got lots of great new clothes, shoes and toys from his Papa, Uncle Phil and Ciejae and Great Grandpa and Great Grandma. It was a fun-filled evening of making memories! Below is a video of the birthday bash (it's quite long and that's after a ton of editing).

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An Early Birthday Present!

I have been searching for a climber for Joshua for a while now. We wanted something in our backyard that would be fun for him to play on and would entertain him. I had posted a wanted ad on Craigslist and actually had someone offer us a year old Step 2 Playhouse Climber & Swing Extension, but a deal they were working on fell through which meant they couldn't sell their play set to us. Big bummer because it was a great set at a great price. Oh well. So, on the search continued. We found a few more sets on EBay, but none of them were in Grand Rapids, so it wasn't very convenient. The Toys'R'Us ad came in last Sunday's paper and they had the Endless Adventure Adjustable Mountain Climber on sale for a great price! After contemplating it for a few days we finally decided this is the one we were going to get Joshua for his birthday. Cory picked it up Wednesday night and we put it together this morning. Joshua is starting to figure out just how to use his new climber and he loves the slide!

Just like daddy!

Joshua is fascinated by lawn mowers. He enjoys watching Cory mow the lawn. Today however, he wanted to be a part of the action. So, we pulled his toy lawn mower and he mowed right along side Cory. Cory really hopes Joshua's excitement for mowing the lawn continues through his teen years when he can actually take over the job.

Playing Together

Often I get asked how Joshua and Owen get along. For the most part they enjoy playing together, or more accurately I should say they enjoy playing side by side in parrallel play. They love to entertain each other and chase one another around. Today Joshua pulled out the Jiggle Jelly. We usually pull this kind of activity out when Owen is taking a nap, but today Owen was up and very interested in what Joshua had gotten out. So, Owen got to explore and play with the Jiggle Jelly with Joshua. They both had a ball playing with the wiggly stuff for about 20 minutes!

Usually when Joshua gets up he asks for three people - daddy, papa and Owie. He loves his Owie! However, they also like to fight over toys. For months now Joshua has been verbalizing "No Owie" whenever Owen tries to grab things Joshua is playing with. Of course Joshua sees nothing wrong with grabbing something out of Owen's hands regularly. Owen has been pretty laid back about it, even though I am constantly on Joshua to give back whatever he has taken. However, this week I haven't had to step in in Owen's defense because Owen has learned how to put up more of a fight when Joshua has attempted to grab something from him - and man the little guy has a tight grip!

Good Clean Fun!

Today while Owen took his afternoon nap I decided to get out a favorite activity of mine from preschool for Joshua to try. It's simple and messy, but a good kind of messy. All you need is a can of shaving cream and an area such as a table on which to squirt it. I didn't know how Joshua would react to such an activity because it does involve getting your hands messy, but hey it's worth a try. To my surprise he dove right into the shaving cream and had a blast! It only lasted for about 10 minutes and I had to keep reminding him that it was okay to have messy hands, but at least he tried it! That's a huge step for what seems like our sensory-challenged child! Below is a video along with some pictures I captured. I just love watching his face while he explores this new texture!

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Just for Cory

Cory has a collection of model convertible cars sitting all over the ledge in his office. I know it's a shock that he has decided to decorate his office with cars(not)! Any-who, these model cars were supposed to stay on the ledge to be looked at and pined after rather than played with as toys. However, as Joshua has grown older he has softened Cory up and gets to play with a couple of daddy's cars. The other night Cory was doing something in the office and had given Joshua the cars he normally gets to play with, so off into the other room Joshua goes to drive them on the coffee table. Instead of driving them on the table he just sets them down, bends down to look in the car and says "hi" over and over. Well, I thought it a bit strange to say hi to an empty car so I grabbed the old Fisher-Price people and Joshua filled the cars up with passengers. When Cory walked out of his office and saw his cars filled with Fisher-Price people I think he gasped in horror! He kept saying, "That's not what those were intended for!" Funny how making his son happy overrides just about everything else!

Warm Weather Fun!

Praise God for the warmer temperatures we have been blessed with the last few days! I was about at my wits end with the blah winter weather! Friday we basically spent outdoors most of the day. The boys both enjoyed having the slider to the deck open and being able to go in and out as they pleased. We also took a walk and played with all of Joshua's toys in the driveway. Our friends who live one street over even stopped over and Joshua and Hannah got to play together for a bit. Joshua loves Hannah!

Saturday was another beautiful day! A great day for a wedding and reception, which is what Cory and I were doing a majority of the day. Joshua got to enjoy the day with Uncle Phil and Ciejae who graciously came over to watch him. They took him to the mall to play and did some playing both outside and in. Uncle Phil even bought Joshua a new mini basketball!

Sunday was yet another gorgeous day! Cory spent the day cleaning out the garage and shed. Joshua and I just spent time playing outside! It was so warm in the afternoon we got Joshua's little pool out, filled it up with warm water and he spent over an hour splashing around (he threw a fit when it was time to get out)! I still tend to think our child is part fish! Joshua must have thought the day was too nice to waste so he played around in his crib for an hour and a half instead of taking a nap. After a quick dinner we went out for our first bike ride of the season. Joshua loved it!

We even rode our bikes to the ice cream store that isn't far from our house to get our first ice cream cones of the season. Joshua loved the ice cream!

Joshua had the perfect shirt on for eating ice cream! It has the classic saying "You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream!" on it with a little boy holding a multi-scoop ice cream cone on it. Too cute for summer!

After ice cream we headed back home and upon putting our bikes away in the shed we found a toad in our backyard. Joshua loves frogs and toads - he calls them "hop". Joshua isn't afraid of these creatures either! He loves watching them and touching them!

All in all the perfect weekend!!! We are looking forward to more of these kind of weekends as the warmer weather may finally be here!

Language Update

Last week Joshua had another home visit with his Early On interventionist. She is very happy with his progress, as are we! He has gone from about 8 words in December to 60 now! He is also doing a lot more imitating and trying new words. I am still concerned about his lack of vocabulary (around 2 they should have a vocabulary of 200 words), lack of 2 word utterances, and lack of ability to transfer beginning consonant sounds from from words he knows to new words (for example, he knows mommy, moon, mail but says boo instead of moo). The interventionist is only really concerned with the lack of 2 word utterances at this point. She did however suggest that a speech pathologist from Early On come and see Joshua to give us another perspective. I was thrilled because my thoughts have always been, the more eyes/input on a child the better!

So the speech pathologist came this morning. She said Joshua may be slightly behind in language, but is not in need of any special services. She said that the range of words in a 2 year olds vocabulary is form 50 to 200 words, so Joshua is in that normal range - just at the low end. The other insightful thing she told me was that children usually begin to speak in 2 word utterances when they have a vocabulary of about 50 words. She said he should start using more 2 word utterances soon now that his vocabulary has expanded. At this point an the Early On interventionist will continue to come twice month. If no progress has been made by the end of the summer we will have the speech pathologist return to do an assessment. This fall Joshua will probably be joining a "Chatterbox" group run by Early On. So, for now we just keep working with Joshua as we have and hopefully he will continue to make progress!

Say Your Name

Each and every day we try to make Joshua say random words he has never said before. Last night while Cory was getting him ready for bed he told Joshua to say Hager (we have Joshua's initials hanging over the changing pad and he always points to them and we say the name that goes with the letter he points at). Joshua said "Hager" as clear as a could be! Cory and I were laughing because we couldn't believe he actually said it! Cory grabbed the camera and took a short video. In the video you will hear Joshua say Hager and then he goes on to play around with the "g" sound in Hager.

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A Variation

This is what I found one day when I went to get Joshua out of his crib after his nap! Obviously he is still lining everything up, but this was a variation on the obsession! If you notice he has them in order from biggest stuffed animal to smallest. Strange obsession, but quite the skill I guess. What a goofy kid!

Healthy again!

Can you tell by the look on his face in the mirror that Joshua is feeling better? That and Joshua loves his outfit that he got from Uncle Phil and Ciejae for Christmas and is finally growing into it! Joshua is now back to eating normal meals (although his appetite is not quite fully back) and playing! Hallelujah! Thanks to the sun shining outside and the nice temperatures today we were even able to spend some time outside today!! Spring may finally be here and maybe the nasty sick germs are on their way out!

The complete outfit, including new shoes
from Uncle Phil to match!

Maybe it wasn't so random...

Okay, perhaps Wednesday night the barf wasn't so random. Joshua began barfing again Friday night and continued Saturday night and all Sunday morning (not to mention he had it coming out the other end too- YUCK). He couldn't even keep liquids down! Poor sick boy! Due to his inability to do anything but be held or lay on the couch or our bed Joshua has turned into a TV junkie (so unlike the normal Joshua). He ate some toast and had some water late this afternoon that stayed in his tummy and he is now taking a nap. We are praying that we are seeing the end of this nasty virus, but it' too early to tell (as I have been fooled before).

R.A.O.B.

What in the world does R.A.O.B stand for? In the last few weeks Joshua has had random acts of barfing (R.A.O.B). It's odd. Two weeks ago, just two days after I told someone that Joshua and I had had a healthy winter, Joshua randomly barfed during breakfast. He had no fever, he was eating his breakfast, he was acting normally and out of no where he pukes! This happened to be a Monday morning when I had a MOPS meeting to lead. I had to church to at least start the meeting and do some announcements, so I packed Joshua in the car and went inside to get Owen. Moments later when I returned to the car to put Owen in his seat I found Joshua covered in barf again. YUCK!!! That is the worst place for a kid to vomit! Joshua was fine after this, played outside, ate his lunch, etc. Later at night he threw up again. The next day he was 100% back to his normal self. Fast forward to last night. He woke up from his nap and all he did was cry and want to be held or sit on some one's lap. We tried giving him a little soup, but five minutes after he had had a few bites it all came back out. Ahhh, more random acts of barfing! He spent the night on the couch cuddling with me, reading books and watching DVDs (it's rare for him to be able to sit for more than 5 minutes to watch anything). He finally ate a little bit of toast around 9pm, had a bath which perked him up. He woke up this morning and was back to his normal self. Weird!!! I am sick of these random acts of barfing!! I can deal with quite a bit, but barfing kids are not my thing!

Training him young. . .

Every week I clean the house. I grew up with my mom doing her weekly cleaning and have just gone on to do the same in my own home. Anyway, Joshua has already taken to vacuuming and loves to help his daddy; Cory can't wait until Joshua is able to push around the real vacuum on his own and take over the job! Joshua will often go around with a Swiffer duster and dust the doors and furniture as he sees me do. Yesterday he grabbed the spray bottle and began spraying everything (he thinks this is hilarious). I figured why not put his spraying to good use, so I had him spray the windows and then showed him how to wipe them down. He loved it and so did I (not to mention I now have lots of clean glass in my house)! Let's just hope his interest in cleaning continues as he has many years to come of helping out around this house.

Easter Blessings!

Hope everyone had a blessed Easter! We've had a busy day and aren't even done yet. We have gone to church and enjoyed a great Easter service, given Joshua his Easter basket, went to a delicious brunch with my dad and brother, ate bunny cake and Joshua got more Easter goodies from Papa! This evening we will be gathering with Cory's family to celebrate more. What a delightful day when we can rejoice in the risen Lord and thank him for all he has done for us!

Playing with Joshua's new Bubble Belly that he got for Easter.


A Mr. Potato Head from Papa.


A special bunny cake!
(Reminiscent of the ones my mom used to get us as kids)

Playworld

I've heard of Playworld from my kids in my preschool days and then a co-worker of Cory's suggested I take Joshua there. So, today was the day I decided to try it (again, the week of spring break might not have been the best choice). Playworld is in the old Grandvillage Mall and is a place filled with tunnels and nets and slides all "caged" in so kids can crawl all around safely. They have an area for little kids filled with playhouses, cozy coupe cars, plastic climbers and a smaller version of the tunnel and slides to crawl through. Joshua enjoyed his first hour and twenty minutes there running around, bouncing, climbing up slides, through tunnels, playing with balls etc., but after that was a bit overstimulated and sick of all the chaos. He ended up throwing a little hissy fit because I told him he couldn't take a ball from the ball pit home so that was the end of our time at playworld. I quickly packed up Mr. Screamy and headed to the car. We headed over to the Red Geranium Cafe to have lunch with my grandparents. My grandma gave him a cute solid chocolate bunny that she got from the Dutch store. At first he didn't exactly know what to do with it, but in minutes it was missing it's ears and nose. I call that enough excitement for one day!

Big Machines!

Joshua is a typical boy who loves trucks, construction vehicles, tractors and most of all buses. Yesterday we went out to lunch with my dad and brother, they happen to work at a place that has lots of big machines. So, after we ate lunch we stopped back by the warehouse and my dad let Joshua sit in the cab of a flatbed truck (pictured at the left) and let him sit on a forklift. He even got to beep the horn on the forklift! Unfortunately there weren't many trucks at the warehouse so we plan on stopping by another day - perhaps in the summer when we don't have to wear winter coats and brave the snowflakes and wind (can you tell I don't appreciate the beautiful Michigan weather?).

A Trip to the Children's Museum

This morning Joshua and I went to the Grand Rapids Children's Museum. I have been there quite a few times with my preschool classes, but this was Joshua's first time there. I should have known it was going to be busy, busy, busy because of spring break! Even though it was packed with people and Joshua was a bit distracted by them all we had a lot of fun. Joshua found lots of things to do and loved running around trying everything out!

First Finger Painting Experience

While running a couple errands this morning I found some washable finger paints and thought it would be fun to try with Joshua today. (I must have had a momentary lapse of memory that my child is a neat freak.) Joshua was very excited to get his paints out after lunch and get everything set up. Keep in mind Joshua has painted several times, but always with a brush. Here is a photographic progression of our short painting session. . .

Joshua only dares to dip his fingers in the paint. . .


I help him along by putting his whole hand in the paint. Joshua then makes the mistake of looking at his hands and notices that they are dirty. . .


Oops, my mistake. Joshua is not a big fan of having his hands dirty. . .


He really isn't happy that his hands are dirty and is ticked that I am not cleaning his hands off immediately!!!


So, that was our short-lived finger painting experience, but at least he tried it. Guess we will just have to keep trying and hopefully Joshua will start to enjoy finger painting a little more. Hopefully he will figure out that it's okay to have dirty hands too!

Happy Birthday Owen!

The big party was actually this past Saturday, but Owen is officially one today! Can't believe he is a year already! Of course I can't believe Joshua is almost two! Owen had a great day Saturday filled with lots of family, lots of delicious food, lots of great gifts, but very little cake (at least for Owen)! It seems Owen doesn't like cake very much. As you can see from the photo he was a bit tentative about the cake. Only with a little help from his mom did he stick two fingers in his cake and after that he just broke into tears! As Joshua would say, "Happy Day Owie!" (Joshua can't get the birth part out of birthday.)

Opening gifts!


Joshua got to try out some of Owen's new trucks.

More Butterflies!

Since it is spring break and I only have Joshua I decided we were going to fill our week with some fun "Joshua and mom days". I decided to go to the Meijer Gardens to see the butterflies and play in the children's garden. I guess everyone else had the same idea we did because the place was packed with people! Joshua and I still had a great time watching the butterflies for over an hour among all the people. I packed us lunch so we could eat there and then go explore the children's garden. It was a bit chilly (not exactly the warm temps and sunshine the weather people called for today), Joshua loved running around and exploring everything. We ended up spending over 3 hours there! I have a feeling we willing be spending lots of time at the gardens this summer when the weather gets really nice! Below are a few pictures I captured of our day together.

Papa's Beard

A while back my dad grew a beard. Surprisingly Joshua really hasn't seemed to notice. Last night when we were out with my dad and Joshua was sitting on his lap I finally pointed out papa's beard to Joshua. He was fascinated! He just kept touching it and looking at it. It was just too cute so I quick grabbed my camera out of my purse (love that I have it with me at all times) and captured the moment!