Sunday, November 10, 2013

October

Josie was very fun and entertaining last month, due in no small part to her improving language skills and imagination. She just loves our new car, since she can see out of the back window better - and she has realized that she can interact with the people behind us. As shy as I am, I'm kind of horrified by this development, but she is also a wonderful and ridiculous child so I'm trying to deal with it :) So several times now, she has managed to charm the people behind us into waving at her: tired commuters, teenagers, etc. I've caught sight of them all in my rear view mirror grinning and waving at her :)

She has been singing more and coming up with little games, and is never at a loss of great ideas for us to do (which is how, after several "Mommy do this?" requests, we ended up with our hands behind our heads giving each other high-fives with our elbows instead of eating breakfast). Although usually every time Ryan or I note how fun or hilarious she is, the hilarity is quickly followed by a meltdown... ah well. Two is still proving to be far more enjoyable than either of us thought it would be, so we'll take it :)

Josie has been such a good helper lately. She has enjoyed cleaning for a while, but has also been helping us in the kitchen more (trying to clean the dishes, loading the dishwasher), and with food prep (putting ingredients in bowls, helping pull the guts out of her pumpkin). We also got light switch extenders so she can turn some of the lights on and off on her own - which has led to a few strobe light moments, but she seems to also really enjoy being able to do that on her own. She has also kicked Ryan or I out of her room a few times lately and then shut the door - this is much more ok now that it's finally fully child-proofed in there, so we can usually safely leave her alone until it gets too quiet (quiet = she's doing something she shouldn't be). The other day she was squealing for a while so I finally went in there to see what she could possibly be up to... and all the squealing was over the two books she had pulled off her bookcase to read. When I questioned her, she yelled "I'm reading!", waved at me, and went right back to squealing.

As far as food this month, Josie has been enjoying the tour of "Stacey's favorite foods" we've been conducting lately - lots of avocados, artichokes, pomegranates, and peanut butter on everything.
She learned how to scrape her own artichoke leaves, which made me very proud :) She also is remarkably good at pulling out pomegranate seeds, which I guess shouldn't be that surprising given that small fingers can probably get at the seeds better. But she really enjoys that, and loves the couple of slices of avocado she gets just about every day - although her pronunciation could still use some work ;)

As I mentioned, we finished child-proofing her room last month, so it was finally time to take the front rail off her crib and start transitioning her out of her crib. We switched out some of the furniture in her room, but still need to get a dresser and we'll move her full size bed in there in a couple more months probably. Her first nap in the new configuration didn't go super well - she climbed out of bed four times, although, oddly enough, she immediately dove under her bed to lay there each time rather than go play with her toys. But we immediately went in to put her back in bed each time (and the last time she jumped back in bed herself as soon as I opened the door), and she seems to have gotten the message since she hasn't tried to get out of bed again since.

We had been planning to move Josie to a new school anyway a couple of months before the new baby is due to arrive, but our timeline ended up getting moved up some. Josie had started biting again at daycare (once on a kid's face... eeesh), and since she mainly seems to bite when she's trying to assert dominance now (since it's almost always when a new kid starts daycare), we thought it might do her some good to not only get into a different environment where it's a little more school-like but where she's no longer the oldest one there. So we toured five different schools in the area, and really liked one (conveniently, it's also the one closest to our house :) ). It seems like it will be a good move for her, once she's fully transitioned (I'll probably give more details on that in the November update, since we're still in the thick of that now), since she's doing pretty well with learning the routines there, and is already picking up some stuff from the other kids in her class (who are all just a bit older than her).

My dad and stepmom brought a pumpkin and some pumpkin decorations for Josie when they visited earlier last month, so Josie got to decorate her pumpkin and I got to avoid potential carving injuries. I was really impressed by her first attempt - she got almost everything spot on, although we're still working on what exactly mustaches are and their appropriate placement ;)
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We also went to a pumpkin patch with my mom, Ryan's sisters, and the cousins, and had a great time walking all over the place, seeing all the animals, and going down the slides. Josie got to pet and feed some goats, we went through a corn maze where she was enamored with her (distorted) reflection in the mirrors, and she had a great time playing on some hay bales. She also picked out her own little pumpkin to take home, which she is still decorating over and over again, now that we've cut up and eaten her original big pumpkin ;)
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This year was the first time we went trick or treating with Josie. She did super well walking all over Ryan's parents' neighborhood, and while she tried to go in each house at first, she figured it out soon enough. She was quite excited about getting to ring the doorbells and grab the candy - she wasn't too forthcoming with saying "trick or treat", but she did very well with "thank you" and "you're welcome" (she normally says both herself, and "you're welcome" comes out more adorably as "i yoakam"... which made me wonder - for the first time ever - what Dwight Yoakam has been up to lately).
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Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[Another entry in the unflattering Josie pictures collection I'm working on - this was during her attempts at climbing onto a stool]
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[Her tv-watching location of choice]

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