Growing Up

My Cutie Pie

Josh's New Room

More new Room!

Well in the past couple of months a lot has happened. In Josh news he is talking a lot more. I probably say that in every post though. He knows his alphabet and his letters pretty well. Sometimes he amazes me and counts all the way to 20. He likes pointing at everyone license plates to tell me the letters and numbers. At Target or Walmart he will count out the numbers of the check outs or when leaving stops on the curb to say the letters printed there such as no parking or fire lane. Even though he is a slow talker the speech therapist said that it is advanced for him to know his letters already so I feel good about that. As far as words go right now my favorites are library and jazzercise. They just sound cute when he says them. The phrase "ride rides" is a bad word in our home. It something Josh does with GM at the mall and he asks for it at least once a day. It just gets annoying because the answer is always no unless GM is coming to take him there. At the end of September I finished painting his new bedroom...I did it all by myself I would like to add... and we got Josh his new toddler bed. The migration was pretty easy. The next day he even put himself down for his own nap. I was amazed. I am still yet amazed that he does not come out of his room until I come and get him or I yell where are you and then he comes out. I have the perfect child. In other family news, Jason is almost done with his thesis...professor says this will be his last semester. It will be nice to say we are finally out of college! and no longer have to pay tuition! As far as my life goes I jazzercise pretty regularly and work is going alright (not stressing about the end of the year yet). I finished my new room for Josh project, but now have to clean up the pile of junk that came from closets that I moved to the unused dining room. I am the queen of clutter and junk. It just seems to appear around me. Lately I have gotten into reading and/or listening to books. Finished Austenland (corny cute & predictable), Hunger Games (loved) , Catching Fire (loved), Twilight series (again-still loved), and 3 books in a series that Suzanne Collins wrote (its more of probably Junior high level book but I like her style of writing). Some of my other hobbies have suffered. I haven't done scrapbooking or cross stitching or played games on the computer (I play WorldOfWarcraft) in awhile.

The Nightly Check

I have started a check list for myself for each day of the week. It lists what room I will focus on cleaning that day and personal goals like going to Jazzercise or reading my scriptures. There is also a check box each day for the nightly check (the downstairs is free of clutter before bed). My goodness. It works. My house has been clean since Saturday. It is such a nice feeling to wake up to a clean house. Josh does try hard to make it dirty for me, but if you stay on top of things its not that hard. Today was the day for the kitchen. It was already pretty clean. I swept and wiped off counters so then I had time to tackle the refrigerator and the left over experiments that were growing in there from dinners past. I gave it a good wipe down and I feel very accomplished for the day. The rest of they day I watched Cars (Josh's new favorite movie), colored, read The Big Hungry Bear several times, bounced a bouncy ball around the house, and during nap time started working (payroll). It was hard to sit down and get to work, but if I want fun money then I guess I must.

Anyway new things in Josh's life: We leave our shoes by the door. He likes to try them on and walk around in them saying shoe. My favorite shoe he tries on are my sandal like high heals. My new favorite word of the day from Josh is cocoa. I started calling chocolate milk...cocoa milk. I thought it would be easier to say (he doesn't try saying chocolate). Well he says cocoa. It just comes out sounding very demonic because he can't quite get the "Co" sound..it gets caught in his throat. So if you want a laugh and he is around make sure you ask him to say cocoa milk.

NO!

So Josh is progressing rather well. He babbles a lot now. He loves counting steps (sometimes he will wait and cry if necessary in order for me to hold his hand & count the stairs with him...two is usually the only one I can make out him saying) and picking out letters(sounds) in the alphabet. He is really good at trying to repeat words you say. My favorite phrases are "Where are you?" & "What's that?" My favorite words are (because he says them so cute) Jesus & Papa. The one word I am beginning to hate is the word No. He has mastered that one this week. It began as a cute game with matching shapes. He would try to match the star with the circle & then would say no because they didn't match. That progressed into telling mom what he won't do. Mama says Yes! The other night I was trying to get him to eat manicotti. He only had to take one bite to try it. I took a bite & said Mmmm Mommy likes manicotti. Dad took a bite and I said Mmmmm daddy likes manicotti. Does Joshua like manicotti...without taking a bite he firmly said No! I then proceeded to shove it down his throat. No just joking. I cracked up laughing and he didn't get a treat after dinner because he didn't eat any manicotti. Another common use of the word no. He will come up to me and say poopoo. I will ask did you poop? He promply says no and walks away. I thought communication was suppose to make things easier. One more cute thing about Josh. We are a family that likes to have some fun traditions just to make life a little more enjoyable. When we used to go to church in Ottawa, we had the tradition of every time we cross this one bike trail we would make the sound thud thud. (my dad did it when he was drawing us the map on how to get to the church). When we changed to the Paola building, we had to come up with a new tradition so we came up with saying weee as we go around the one roundabout on the way to church. Josh has caught on so every time we go in a roundabout (not just on the way to church) he goes weee. It's the little things in life which make you smile that makes all the hard things in life worth it.

Slowly But Surely

Well the room swap is well on its way. It got slowed down by family stuff, but it is now up a running again. All of the desks are now in one room. Jason just has to finish organizing the computers so I can have the shelf back for all the books that are on my desk. Josh gets a little confused with the swap. Jason will say do you want to play computer, he gets excited and runs to the old computer room, but its not there. He will then go into a lengthy explaination or speech about something...probably would translate into something like where did the computer go? Then we show him where it went. It's kind of fun. I hope to have everything organized in the computer room by the end of this week so maybe next week I can paint Josh's new room! I hope he will like his new room.

Geared Up To Rearrange

So I am done working for the month! I was getting geared up for cleaning the 2 offices so that Jason can start moving desks around so that I can reorganize my house I'm so excited. I'm even going to paint, but I have hit a snag today. I am just too tired. I think I may take a nap with Josh today. Oh well there is always tommorrow. I figured I needed to get on the computer while Jason was at work. He never lets me use the new MacBook Pro. He is always on it. Our laptop died so we bought another one, but he crossed over to the dark side and decided to get a Mac & not a PC. For all the "discussions" I have had to sit through Jason saying how PCs are so great, I thought it was funny that we have now bought a mac. I think Itunes & Iphone helped in his conversion. I do like the programs for pictures & video clips that come with it though. I'm still getting used to the setup. Anyway life is good & I'm looking forward to reorganizing my house.

Terrible Twoes

So Josh has hit the Terrible 2s now. His head banging has come back when he is mad. It is so agrivating. He has also mastered opening doors & can play with the bolt lock. On the upside he talks a lot more. Still a lot of giberish but they are sounds. He repeated his first prayer (dad says 2nd...he did it without me) and it was so precious. Josh also sat through his 2nd fireworks show for 4th of July. He was a bit cranky but I think he enjoyed it once it started. In house news, I'm all geared up about moving our rooms around. I want to combine my work room with our office room and then I can have fun making Josh a toddler room. I want to paint and have a lot of fun, the only problem is Jason says he doesn't have time to move computers & the desks right now. I guess that is fine as long as he is busy working on his thesis. I instead fill my time with Josh, work, Jazzercise & Harry Potter at the moment (I'm rereading the books). Funny story the other day...I was babysitting at Jazzercise and a 4 year old asked if I had a baby in my tummy. I died laughing on the inside. 1. I'm not pregnant. 2. No one would think I look pregnant. 3. I know his mom is not pregnant so it was just weird that it came up.

Photo Friday - a little early

Josh loves helping with the dishes. It gets kind a wet so that's why he does dishes in just a diaper.

He even helps mop up the extra water he pours on the floor.

Happy Birthday Josh. He wasn't real happy. He did enjoy stabbing his cake with a fork and biting it off. He did better on his real Bday when we were in Salina visiting David. He actually blew out a candle & his cousins helped him with the other.

Josh now eats oreo cookies by opening them up and eating the cream out & leaving the rest of the cookie. Grandma Draper always makes sure he has oreos (one time I had 3 oreo cookie packages in my cupboard...I did not buy any of them)
More Cheese Please...He is so cheesy. He just finished beating up a Royals balloon of a kid in a baseball uniform.

PS as I'm writing this I can here birds below me. We have birds living in every crany of our house. I want to kill birds. I hate them. I need to look into hiring someone to clean out all the nests and put up guards on all of our vents. Again I hate birds.

Catching up with Me

Wow it's been a whole month...Here is how everything is going:



Me: Work is settling in to routine twice a month. The middle of the year is always nice for payroll. I have a sudden urge to redecorate, reorganize & rearrange the house. I think it sprung up from garage saling. After looking at everyone elses junk, I want to go through mine. As far as craftiness goes. I'm refocusing on making a magnetic quiet book for Josh. I have 2 pages done. One with farm animals & one with shapes and it kept him happy & busy for most of sacrament meeting. It was so nice so I want to create some more pages. It's nothing spectacular, but Josh likes it. I'm also starting Jazzercise classes that some of the gals from church go to. My body is sore. I'm so out of shape.



Jason: Excited that seminary is almost over...one more day. He is waiting for his professor to review his thesis before he can do revisions & write a 10 page conclusion & then he will be done...fingers crossed, it will be soon.



Josh: Is now 2. He is getting so big. He loves going to the park. Swinging is still his most favorite thing to do, but I have been able to convince him that slides are fun too. Mrs. Nadine comes over once a week on Friday and we have speech/talking class. He has made baby steps since starting. He now sometimes moos at cows, a mouse goes EEE, he can sign more, open, please, & eat real well. On his own he picked up oval from baby einstein shows. I think his "sessions" have been more helpful to me than to him since he is still really shy when Nadine comes. It's so exciting when he picks up something new. You just want to pick him up and hug him and twirl him around. The other day we met a 2 year old at the park with her grandpa and she talked as much as Josh. I know you are not suppose to compare kids, but I felt really good that Josh isn't the only 2 year old that only has a 5 word vocabulary to say.

Conference Weekend

I love conference weekend. It always seems to be a nice relaxing weekend where you get to sit around in your PJs, listen to Conference, and enjoy your new birthday gifts. That is what we did Saturday morning. During the 2nd half we ran errands as a family that was fun. That usually doesn't happen. Both my boys needed new clothes. As far as my Bday went it was good despite the gloomy weather. My mom brought me lunch which was a nice treat...I had to work on my Bday & with the roofers parked in my driveway. I couldn't leave the house Wed-Fri last week. Jason's mom stopped by later to wish me a happy Bday and Jason brought home dinner so I didn't have to cook.

Sunday was much like Saturday besides the bird incident. A pretty big black bird decided to get stuck in our dryer vent. Jason turned on the dryer for a few seconds and hit the wall but that didn't scare him out so we had to take apart the washer/dryer hook ups to get him out. Still he wouldn't come so Jason got the vacuum and was able to suck him out momentarily. The bird was definitely scared now and he ended up scaring Jason so the laundry basket and blanket didn't work and the bird ended up flying into our house. He flew around tapping on the windows trying to get out. So we opened the front door and the back door. This provided a nice jet stream through our house. The bird caught wind of it and flew right out the front door. Until we get a cover for the dryer vent our laundry room will stay taken apart. It's pretty scary having a scared bird flap around your house. It's not like he is going to peck your eyes out but he just gets so frantic that its unsettling.

Oh and by the way, we are now a geeky WOW (World of Warcraft computer game) family. We have 2 accounts so we can play with each other online and then Josh likes to sit on Jason's lap and watch. Getting the 2nd account was my Bday gift. I really enjoy it. This weekend I wasted way too much time on that game, but it was fun.

Spring Break

I guess I'm on spring break too! Even though I have to work tommorrow. Jason is at a convention in TX at the moment and I just don't go to bed when he is not around. I clean and mess around on the computer till midnight. There are no seminary kids to wake me in the morning or should I say wake Josh who wakes me up. I did do a little spring cleaning today and I must say my garage looks fabulous! I keep going out there to look at it because it is so nice and clean. It was difficult to do because of all the dead bugs/spiders, but I got rid of them. Josh enjoyed the day in the garage too. He was covered in dirt when we were done. In other Josh news, he qualifies for Johnson County's Toddler Program for speech since he is not catching on that words are cool. It was funny when they came to evaluate him, he didn't say anything at all. Not even babbling. He did laugh a little and flirt like he always does, but didn't really talk. I was like he does say stuff although the next couple of days I realized how quiet he is in the middle of the day. Mornings & evenings he does make noise I swear. Maybe he knows that we need help learning words so he was extra quiet to make sure we qualified. Anywho, Josh needs to learn to use his words. Daddy, Uh-oh, Again aren't going to cut it any longer...he should have 50 words by now and forming sentences. It will be nice to have someone come to the house and show me how to help encourage him to speak and help us set goals.

Ode to Our Builder, Martins Inc.

Here is my endorsement for Martins Inc. If you are going to build a house in Gardner, KS (or Olathe area), then you need to build with Martins, Inc. They stand by their work and they are quick to repair things that are covered on your year warranty. I have just been very impressed by them and it has made my new house buying experience very nice...so drum roll please.....We are getting a new roof !!! I'm not sure if they ever figured out why our roof keeps blowing off. Granted it is windy, but it is ridiculous how often we loose shingles. The manufacturer came out and took samples of the roof and the builder was talking with them and the roofing company and the builder called today to say that we will be getting a new roof. It is such a relief that we won't have to take any action to get the problem fixed. Exspecially now that we have lived in our house for a year and I think we have had our roof repaired about 6 times and we are currently missing shingles. Such a relief. Yea to a new roof & Ode to the Builder who takes care of us!

Ding Dong the Binki's Gone & TP Go Down the Hole

So last weekend we went to GM & GP Drapers house to get our taxes done. Josh ended up getting cranky and needing a nap. GM got all bent out of shape because he was unhappy at her house. Heaven forbid he is unhappy at GM house. We didn't bring a binki to comfort him and GM wouldn't have that so she went to the store & bought him a gerber nuk...she didn't realize that she bought him the rubber one that was brownish color rather than the silicon? one that is clear so he wouldn't take it. I about died laughing. Anyway after this incident, Jason & I decided that Josh is too old and shouldn't be relying on a binki so they have mysteriously disappeared. Josh every now and then points to the drawer where they used to stay during non-sleep times and we both look at the empty drawer. So sad. He is doing just fine without it.

So on to my next story. Last week Josh had his first toilet experience....this is how it was.

Just about 2 rolls of TP. He found an extra one under the cabinet. You can see it there on the floor.

Yesterday he had another experience which I didn't photograph. I was fuming mad. This time it was in the master bathroom & he flushed...probably several times. There was water all the way to the sinks. Tell me why again do they put carpet in bathrooms. I guess I should learn my lesson of double checking to make sure all bathroom doors are closed. Maybe he is just messing with my head and he can open doors. Just not when I'm around.

Picture Post

So I just downloaded our resent pictures to the computer & I thought I would share...

Mom should not where wool sweaters in the winter. It just does nothing good for the hair.

Here is Josh when he was sick & running a fever. We spent most of the day watching Baby Einstein & eating oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. He is such a cutie.

I forgot that I took pictures of this. This is the incident of me trying to get him ready for bed & he ran off to daddy & Josh tried taking off his own diaper...see here.

So I was trying to get a picture of me & Josh. Josh wasn't in the picture taking mood.

I thought I would showcase my home at Christmas time.

FHE-Getting Organized

We had a traditional & short FHE this week. Usually our FHEs are not really planned out, we just sort of count what we do together as FHE, but not this week. We had an opening prayer and then we watched one clip of the childrens Book of Mormon stories DVD that we got from Christmas for the lesson. It was about a minute and half long. We learned Lehi was a prophet and that is about all Josh would sit through. For activity, we colored and practiced not eating the crayons. We also finished our FHE board (almost...it was sad because I thought I had the things to hang it up on the wall, but I guess we don't so it is not on the wall yet, but will be tommorrow. I think it looks fabulous if I do say so myself and yes we will be having 3 more children so that our FHE board will be complete. Our FHE ended with the song I love mommy, she loves me...I don't know what the title of it is, but Josh like to hum that one.

Procrastination & Family Update

So the boy is asleep and I have a lot of work that I have to get done before Tuesday & I am not motivated to do anything. I just want to curl up in my bed and watch a good chick flick. Instead I'm surfing the net and updating my blog. I'm jealous of everyone elses blogs & I want mine to look cute too. I guess by being on the computer, I'm close to my work. I will be so glad when Jan 31st hits. Q4 reports will be done & W2s will be out the door and I can almost return to work 30 hours a month (almost because I will still have annual reports due by end of Feb). Then I can relax and focus on my dirty house.

Other family news...FHE on Monday will consist of going to a townhall meeting and protesting a rezoning of the land 2 or 3 house plots of land away from us. Prieb who owns the land wants to rezone it from single family homes to apartments. We were leagally suppose to be notified, but we weren't. Our neighbor went door to door letting our neighborhood all know. She is one of the only ones that got contacted (it's right next door to her). So we have all banded together and since there is not very many of us we also are letting the near by neighborhoods know. I hope we win. Only time will tell. That is going to suck big time if it passes.

Jason also just got told that the big project he was working on at B&V is being shut down so he could loose his job or get relocated to another section in B&V (out of nuclear division to another division). Hopefully the later. They do see value in Jason (he has received a couple of raises that aren't the normal inflation one & in his last review he recieved the highest rating you can get & not very many people get that one) so I'm quite confident they will keep him.

New Year 2009

A review of 2008...I'm in the middle of posting pictures on facebook so if you are interested you can look at all the cute pictures of Josh from 08. Big things in our lives that happened in 08 Readers Digest version. PS no one is getting a Christmas Card update of our lives...just didn't happen this year.

• Moved into our first house - it's been fun...only complaint is the roof.
• Went on a Family vacation to SD...Jason biked, we enjoyed the scenery, went to bear country, watched movies, shopped, saw Mt Rushmore
• Josh got teeth, learned to crawl, learned to walk, learned some sign language, and says a few words, loves Elvis & Beethoven and likes to help mom with the laundry.
• Jason got an out of the blue raise at work so they must like him, he teaches seminary, he is still working on his thesis...He has the conclusion & the appendix left. He enjoys going to the gym and doing a spinning class with some of his friends at work.
• Jen quit her job at Neosystems, had the summer as a full time homemaker, accepted a job at EMR working from home. At church I am the primary secretary. I'm at the moment obsessed with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, solitare on my new IPod and I really like rubber stamps.

So after reviewing my goals form last year and seeing what I did and did not accomplish...here are my goals for 2009

• Personal: Read 6 books a year, scrapbook one page a month, read scriptures daily, try 1 new recipe a month, keep house clean, send out a Christmas Letter
• Family: Have FHE weekly, read scriptures as a family, make sure Jason & I have date night, Temple trip monthly, go on a family vacation even if it isn't far, throw a party for Jason once he finishes his thesis (he will finish it this year)
• Work: Try to get along with the whole accounting department, try not to be so stressed about work-get through Feb 29th (W2 will be done), try to keep house clean - maybe come up with a schedule.