Sunday, November 25, 2012

Pumpkin Patch

Well, I got a little behind with posting, between the (still ongoing) move, preparing for and hosting Thanksgiving at the new house, and temporarily misplacing all means to pull pictures off my camera.  But we found one of the cables, so here are pictures from Josie's first visit to a pumpkin patch a few weeks ago.
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[Farmer Josie]


Josie almost didn't know what to do with herself when we first got there, since we had gone to an animal farm with a pumpkin patch.  She was super, super excited about the animals, and suddenly started pulling out all the animal sounds I didn't even know she knew how to make, since she hardly ever says them at home.  But apparently when confronted with chickens, cows, and dogs, she knows exactly how to speak their language ;)  The chickens seemed to be her favorite though, probably in no small part due to the fact that they were running around loose and were therefore much easier for her to chase around.
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Josie's little pointy fingers are quite cute when she's lecturing us at home, but were not too helpful on an animal farm.  I tried to explain to her that the animals were going to eat her little fingers, but that didn't deter her one bit.  And although I've had it drilled into my head never to stick out fingers to animals, I apparently only absorbed that lesson relating to four-legged animals, so I wasn't quite as diligent about keeping her hands away from the two-legged variety... which is how Josie got bit by a peahen :(  She was ok though and her skin wasn't even broken, but I think both of us were freaked out to look down at a peahen attached to her finger.
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[Troublesome little pointy fingers]

Josie eventually got her routine down pat with the animals.  First, locate a likely target.  Second, yell at said target, even better if there is pointing involved.  Third, squat down to further express delight while yelling at the target.  Fourth, get distracted and find a new target to yell at. 
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The pumpkin patch was really geared towards slightly older kids, but I think Josie had a lot of fun anyway.  How could she not, with so many animals to yell at? ;)  So we didn't do some of the activities (bigger playground equipment, moonbounce, hay ride), but we did go down the giant slide several times, which she loved.  I do find it funny, though, that despite being fairly rough-and-tumble, she's remarkably finicky about stuff on her hands.  So we spent a fair amount of time trying to wipe her hands of whatever she got into before she started fussing and crying.
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[Ooh, dirt!]
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[Eww, dirt!]

We finished off our trip to the pumpkin patch by having some apple cider and finally picking up some pumpkins.  Josie loooved the apple cider - as expressed by her delighted squealing and foot stamping - and is probably still mad at me because I only let her have a few sips of my (tiny) cup.  Then we picked out our pie pumpkins (no need for a bigger one since this was already after Halloween), which Josie helpfully held onto for me while planning how best to eat it ;)
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Thursday, November 8, 2012

16 Months

Josie has been quite funny this month.... and sick and cranky and even just a little bit annoying too ;)
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[Yelling about... something]
When she's not expressing her displeasure about life in general, she has been doing lots of crinkly-faced smiles lately, and rather adorably put aside her discomfort to help me with the vacuuming last week.  She decided a few months back that she's scared of the vacuum, but this time bravely held onto the handle with me with one hand, although the index finger on her other hand never once left her mouth ;)

Josie newly rediscovered her sunglasses, which she initially would have nothing to do with but now likes to wear around the house.  We also got her a hat so she could be like Ryan, since she's always taking his hat off and putting it back on him (or her).  I also have had the bizarre experience several times now where I had to tell her to stop eating the rug.  I know kids put all sorts of things in their mouth, but for some reason, it just blows my mind that I have to thwart her attempts to eat our kitchen rug.
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[With her baby hat and spatula - she has the best toys ;)]

Josie had her 15-month well baby appointment a couple of weeks ago, and she's now 33 1/8" tall (longer than a skateboard now, as Ryan immediately noted), 26.6 lbs (which may not be too accurate since she wasn't standing very still on the scale), and her head circumference is 19 1/4".  Perhaps unsurprisingly, she's back to being off the charts for head and height, and is 95-98th percentile for weight.  She also got the DTaP, Hib, and flu vaccines, so she only has another set or two to go and then no vaccines (except for the annual flu shot) until she's four!  I'm not only excited about her getting a break from the shots and after-effects, but I was thinking that it would be good for her to learn that it's ok to go to the doctor and that bad, painful things don't always happen there.... and then I remembered: she doesn't care as it is.  She happily walked around yelling at everything, lectured the doctor on something (complete with finger-pointing), and generally was completely thrilled to be at the doctor's - at least until the shots started.

She seemed to handle her vaccines well enough this time, although she was running a low-grade fever the couple days before her shots and a day or two afterwards, but that was probably from the mouthful of teeth that she has coming in.  Her first molar is still working its way out, and it looks like the other three shouldn't be that far behind, and then she has a couple teeth coming in the front too.  But then the day after the doctor's appointment, I noticed her wheezing a bit in the morning, and then by time Ryan picked her up early from daycare, Josie was coughing, wheezing, and seeming to have a bit of a problem breathing.  So off to Urgent Care they went, where she was diagnosed with... something.  A virus, likely, possibly croup.  She was put on prednisolone to help with the coughing, and after acting - and looking - frankly very worrying that night (barely consolable crying, eyes sunken in, throwing up her entire dinner), she luckily bounced back pretty quickly the next day.

Josie's appetite has been a little inconsistent lately, since while she seems to be eating more overall, she is also being a little more picky about her foods, and actually turned down grapes a few times now(!!).  However, a couple of fairly sure-fire ways to get her to eat is to 1) give her something off our plates, and/or 2) give her something whole.... which is how she came to eat her first drumstick all on her own :)
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Josie's sleep also continues to be all over the place - she is sleeping through the night at least a few times a week now, which is sort of great except for the fact that it also means she's usually awake for the day at 5:30am, which is an hour earlier than we'd normally get up.  For the other nights, she is sometimes waking up at 10 or 11pm but at least going back to sleep fairly quickly; however, there have also been a few times that she's woken up around 2am.... and then just won't go back to sleep for hours.  Like, it took over two hours a couple of nights in a row to get her back to sleep after one of her 2am wakeups, and the second time we ended up giving up and just letting her cry it out in the other room.  

She has only fallen asleep twice now after crying it out - and both times were after she had been awake for a while and was already worn down and tired - so this is still not really a good solution for her, and not one we're that comfortable with anyway.  But it does seem quite promising that she's starting to sleep through the night more on her own anyway, and I am doing more research to try to figure out a better way to handle the hours-long wakeups now.

We went to our development's Halloween get-together this year, and Josie actually got dressed up for Halloween, courtesy of Ryan's mom :) Josie's favorite part seemed to be holding court - the kid likes to make an entrance (complete with swinging her arms and yelling gibberish), and seemed quite delighted that so many people had gathered to listen to her orate. She also loved walking back and forth through the streamers hanging in the doorway, and had to be forcibly removed as the event was winding down :)
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I also took Josie to storytime at the library for the first time the other week.  She's at a funny in-between stage though, since she doesn't want to sit contentedly on my lap like the non-mobile babies, but doesn't understand enough to be participate in the activities.  She loved it regardless though, and will hopefully have even more fun with it once the house stuff settles down and we can go more, and once she can understand the routine a bit better.  At one point she did start walking up to the front of the room with the other kids, though, and looked back at me with a delighted expression on her face and arms out-stretched in glee, like, "Can you believe this?!  This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me EVER!"  Which was great and absolutely adorable :)

So although she didn't follow too much of the happenings at storytime, she definitely is starting to understand more words and other requests.  We've been trying to give her little tasks to do, so now she can turn on and off lights (obviously with a boost up to them), grab books if we say the title or key words from it, she'll go over to sit on the bottom stair when we tell her we need to put on/take off her shoes, she'll turn off the fan in our room when asked, she can snap together the chest clip on her car seat, and will sometimes put her clothes and washcloths in the hamper when asked (although she really prefers to transfer all of her dirty clothes to a box right by the hamper instead).  I'm currently trying to show her how to get her washcloth and bring it to Ryan for a shower, but she hasn't quite taken to collecting her washcloth and towel yet, preferring to leave that to me while she makes a beeline to the bathroom on her own :)

Josie also seems to have figured out who "daddy" and "mommy" are, as she had fun last weekend running back and forth between us as we kept telling her "go to daddy!" and "go to mommy!"  She has now correctly picked out a cow, cat, and baby from her puzzle pieces and books, and possibly woofed at a picture of a dog.  For a very brief while, she was pointing to - and saying! - "ear", "eye", and "nose" with me, but she has since gotten over that and won't play along any more.  However, she does like to say "hi dad/dada/dadat" to Ryan, and she will wave and say "bye-bye" to me, and she is able to hold a conversation (of sorts) with us now.


Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[Pick me up, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up!!]
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[Our little helper]
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[Mimicking Ryan in trying to fix the floor with the mallet]
      
[My two kids, running around at the new house]