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.