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.