I came home from work to a fire upstairs, and while I was able to put it out with a fire extinguisher, it still spread a layer of ash and soot throughout the upstairs and main level, and obviously damaged the wall and carpet where the fire started. Naturally, this happened in the sitting room, which I had finally finished painting two days before it caught on fire. We've done some repairs already, but finishing up the painting, getting the wiring fixed (so we can hook up the HVAC again upstairs), and replacing the carpet is on hold for an indefinite amount of time until insurance can finish the investigation. So in the meantime, we decided we might as well finish the basement too, so we've been quite busy with keeping two-thirds of our house in upheaval ;)
Now onto Josie-related news.... she had quite the busy month as well. We went up to Pennsylvania for a weekend to visit friends, and Josie had the best time with their 3- and 5-year-old boys. They played so well together most of the day, and it was so cute to see Josie sitting off on her own at the kids' table with them. We're definitely hoping to go visit them again once it gets warmer, but the biggest downside of the trip was that poor Josie seems to have inherited my motion sickness :( We were in stop and go traffic for the first hour on our way there, so she threw up once then, and then a second time once we hit the mountains in Pennsylvania. She has gotten sick in the car a few other times, but this time was especially distressing since there was no change I could make in my driving to help avoid making her sick... it wasn't that I was doing sudden starts or stops, or making too sharp of turns - it was just the mountains, and there was no way around the fact that we had to go back down a mountain to get home. She was looking a bit green when we first started back, but we stopped for gas and that seemed to help, and she did fine for the rest of the trip back at least.
Just before Easter, Josie had another big milestone: her first haircut. It took several months of warming up to the idea before I finally decided it was time to take care of the fluffy mess on her head (Ryan still contends that a hair cut was absolutely not necessary, despite clear evidence that she no longer looks like she stuck her finger in an electrical socket). Josie did very well with it. She was a little uncertain at times (especially when she was getting her hair dried), but I set her up with an app on my phone for when she started getting too fidgety and then she did just fine. We ended up going with bangs to try to keep her hair out of her face, since she won't accept barrettes in her hair (she always immediately pulls them out and hands them to me, like, "oops, you accidentally left this in my hair"), and it definitely seems to be an improvement so far.
We also hosted Easter at our house this year, and this was Josie's first time partaking in an egg hunt. She seemed to love it, and that was before she even knew there was anything in the eggs - she just knew that we all got really excited each time she found an egg and put it in her basket, so she was thrilled to just be able to do that much :) Although then she realized there was food in the eggs, and loved that so much that for the next several days after she wanted her dinner to come inside eggs too.
Josie has been more challenging and more fun this past month. She seems to have a bit more of a hair trigger with the stuff that sets her off, and we've had to take her outside a couple of times to calm down when we've eaten out the last few weeks, which we hadn't had to do since she was a little baby. She's also really starting to talk more, and is initiating thoughts more and more rather than just repeating what we say or identifying animals or body parts. So now she can say "outside" and "no more", and for a brief but hilarious phase, she got in touch with her Italian side and ended everything with "-ini" (e.g., "book-ini"). She loves to talk about her boo-boos, and will point to each bruise or scrape and say "agnfdahfda [gibberish to fill in the words she doesn't know] boo-boo", said in an appropriately sad and reverential voice, given the seriousness of the situation.
Other things Josie loves: washing her hands (she magically seems to appear at our sides when she thinks there might be some hand washing that she can get in on), cleaning (she'll grab any paper towel-like object and wipe down counters, walls, her face, etc.), eating (for the most part, and especially corn on the cob right now), talking on the phone (bonus points if it's not actually a phone, such as her coat sleeve or a diaper), and coloring. She's able to draw a circle, line, and dot when asked (shouting "dot! dot! dot!" each time for emphasis when doing the latter), and is now able to identify a circle, star, and triangle. We went to storytime at the library again, and although she was quiet at first, soon enough she pushed herself off my lap since she needed to DANCE - she proceeded to bounce around and fling her arms around, mimicking the teacher and other kids, all the while with a look of delighted joy on her face :)
Miscellaneous cuteness:
[Josie has her own earmuffs now :)]
[Still one of her favorite faces - which is good, because it's going to get stuck that way]