August

Last month, Josie discovered what may be her new favorite place: the library. As one of our Mommy/Josie outings, we went to the library to read until it closed, then went to a pet store to look at the animals, and then picked up dinner to bring back home to Ryan and Audra. I told Josie to go ahead and pick out some books once we got to the kids' section at the library, and maybe she just thought it was too good to be true so she felt the need to act with some immediacy, but she probably needs to work on her strategy. She basically tried to clear out whole shelves at a time... of baby books. I ended up taking over the book selection role so that we could read books more appropriate for her age level, and then she picked out some books to check out and bring home, which was almost more than she could handle.

[Josie with her books that she didn't want to let leave her sight]

She also really liked looking at the animals at the pet store, too, although she did decide she was scared of the fish (possibly because I told her that she would scare them by knocking on the glass). We went out to pick up burgers, and her meal came with a soda so I gave her maybe a couple of inches of sparkling flavored water, which she was super excited about... at least until she tasted it. She kept saying, "It's soda! It's spicy!" and seemed pained to be drinking it, yet still finished it, announced she didn't like soda, then decided five minutes later that she actually did like it :)

For our second Mommy/Josie outing for August, we rode on the "train" (on the new Metro line that recently opened somewhat near our house) and went to the mall for some ice cream. Besides some stress on my part (all the construction by the new station was a little confusing, and it turns out I still don't like the mall), Josie was super excited about riding the train (although she put in a request for a black one the next time, instead of white) and eating some black cherry frozen yogurt (picked entirely based on color, since it was pink). Josie apparently really appreciated the frozen yogurt, because as I was trying to navigate her down three floors at the mall, through the Saturday afternoon hordes of people, she grabbed my leg and told me how much she loved me :) So sweet, until she did the same thing to Ryan the next day when she happened to have frozen yogurt again, so maybe it's really just the frozen yogurt that she loves so much ;)

[We're on a bridge!!]

Josie's other big outing for the month was finally going to the National Zoo. She went with Ryan to work in the morning (where she apparently ate quite the hearty breakfast, with seconds and thirds of fruit), and then they headed out to the zoo for his company picnic. She had a lot of fun seeing the big cats and monkeys, and, of course, naked mole rats. And then when I got home from work, I asked her how the zoo was, and she said "Frozen!" Which apparently was short-hand for "I can't talk right now, I'm watching Frozen. Again." Oh, well.

Josie had a rather unfortunate milestone this month: after transitioning her out of her crib almost a year ago, she fell out of bed for the first time... followed a couple of weeks later by the second time. It was a little odd, though, since Ryan and I asked her how she fell, and she kept saying over the bed rail - which seems unlikely since it sticks up from her bed by a good foot. But as far as we can piece together, she was leaning over her bed rail to get a drink of water, and then must have just fallen over it... and then laid there, sadly crying on the floor until Ryan went in to get her ;( Then she went over the foot of the bed a couple weeks later (so over the rolled-up towels that are there as a bumper), and similarly laid on the floor crying until I went in to get her.

As Josie's language skills improve, she increases in funniness too ;) Here are some snippets of conversation from the indelible Miss Josie:

• She asked if the library was closed, and I said yes, so she said "And still?" repeatedly for maybe over a minute, with no feedback evidently needed from me. I was in the other room when I noticed it was suddenly quiet, so I finally answered with "yeah", and she sadly said "oh." 
• She said ""Get out of my seat, buddy!" as she was getting in her car seat, then claimed Ana said that in Frozen (is this true? Neither Ryan nor I remember that part if so...).
• She asked where the horn was in my car, then insisted it was on my stereo. I kept telling her no, she kept telling me yes, then eventually she said "You'll just have to trust me."
• When I asked her what the name was of the book she had chosen, she said "Go to sleep, Rabbit!" I thought that was a good interpretation of "Goodnight Moon." ;)
• She asked to sleep in bed with all of us, but Ryan told her there wasn't enough room, so she listed off everyone who would fit (all of us plus Ryan two more times). Ryan said again that not everyone would fit, so she offered to lay on him instead.
• She yelled "I have to show you a question!", then launched into a long list of activities she needed to do in order to find her lost rubber duck. Nothing was shown to or asked of me in this exchange.
• As she watched me bag up some blueberries to take to work, she told me she was going to take blueberries to work too when she was "bigger, bigger, bigger and work at [redacted] like Daddy." That sounded like a good plan to me!
• I passed her and Ryan on the road as she was driving her tractor, so I asked her where she was going, and she responded "I'm going to the grocery store to buy a watermelon." :)

Josie has also really been into matching lately, yelling "This is the same!!" to many things that don't necessarily seem the same at first, like Audra's swaddler and my shoes (linking feature: both were pink). She is also completely out of diapers now - we were continuing with diapers overnight until we ran out of the stockpile we had built up, but Josie asked to not wear them before that happened, so here we are. She's doing fine overnight and with naps, although she still has the rare accident during the day (strangely enough, mainly just at home though).

After a few too many nights of heavy negotiations, we ended up rearranging her books for bedtime reading, so now we have the "two book shelf" for the shorter ones, and the "one book shelf" for the longer books, to make it easier on her (and us) to determine if she gets to read one or two books before bed. But either way, books as a whole take longer to read to her now, since she asks so many questions about everything, and often has us flip back a few pages so she can ask follow-up questions or point out something that matched.

Ryan also asks her to tell him a story all the time, and Josie actually obliged for the first time! Exciting, until her story was basically about various times she cried at school :( Poor thing does still cry quite a bit, but the rest of the time (even when stuck home for days on end with a cold and potentially pinkeye like last month) she's such a silly, funny, affectionate kid.

[I feel like I get this face from her a lot - I think this was her "angry" face]

[Scared!]

[Happy!]

The relationship between Josie and Audra continues to be such an awesome thing to see develop. I had no expectations going into this about the relationship between the two kids, and just hoped that Josie wouldn't try to aim for Audra's soft spot when we weren't looking. So seeing how much enjoyment they seem to get from each other is just great :)

And while it seemed it would maybe be a bit one-sided, since Audra clearly thinks Josie is the greatest while Josie wasn't quite as sure about Audra at first, Josie now needs to know where Audra is at all times, asks about her when they're apart, and often tries to speak for Audra to Ryan or me. She asks to wake Audra up to play, and then actually does play with her when she's awake. Audra started to get a bit fussy in her bouncy seat one morning as I was getting breakfast ready, and Josie came running up, saying "What do you want to play with, Audra?" and proceeded to pull everything out of her purse to show Audra (and put on her head), which quickly brought an end to the fussing :) She also played with cars and her O-ball with Audra, and while Josie does still get a little possessive about some of her toys and books, she usually comes around as soon as we ask her to show Audra how they work or to read to her. And the affection Josie shows to Audra is so sweet - she'll sometimes stroke Audra's hair as I'm nursing her, and often she'll open the door to peek in on us as I'm putting Audra down at night. One time she saw I was up so she came right in, climbed on the bed, and started loving on Audra, who was quite thrilled with that turn of events - much better than sleep! :)

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[That's not quite how it works...]

[Thumb!]

[Trying out some virtual reality]