A Gentleman and a Scholar (and a Model)

Well, I thought that I could wait to post until after Joe's birthday, but so many cute things happened since my last post that I just couldn't hold off! Plus, it's been chilly around these parts (see picture above!) so I have some extra time indoors to blog.

While the weather may not indicate it here in P-ton, it is in fact March and along with March Madness (which I am absolutely obsessed with this year... GO BUTLER!), we celebrated St. Patrick's Day. A trip to the dollar store afforded us some cute hats and headbands that made the holiday festive both at Joe's school and my work. Here's Joe in the car on the way to school and Joe Momma at work with Dee.

One week shy of Joe's second birthday and he is really starting to exhibit some serious talent and smarts. I don't know where he gets it. :) I present Article #1: Two awesome pieces of artwork that Joe created using his hands and feet:

I present Article #2: Joe loves to match the Audio/Video cables by color on our DVD player. Red, White and Yellow... this boy has got it down! Every time, perfect matches.



Finally, I present Article #3: Joe isn't even two years old and he can count to ten. He doesn't like to show off this skill, but I got lucky in Target today. I played a game where we would go back and forth with the numbers until we got to ten.



I know I'm bragging, but I'm not going to stop yet. It's school picture time again and Joe's pictures are just out of this world adorable. I've been showing them to people at work who say things like, "You should enter him in contests with Gerber or something" and then I tell them that he was in fact one of the faces of "Earth's Best". Look at this handsome boy!

Joe's class picture was even better. In an unbelievably providential moment, Joe's lady friend, Marissa, was dressed in a ekuD cheerleading outfit for picture day! Apparently her parents are ekuD alumni. Joe stood behind Marissa with his hands on her shoulders. It's just precious.

I want to end this post by saying a little something about family. I define family as the community of people who love you. With that definition in mind, I want to say that I love my family. I love how they have welcomed me into their life and how they've surrounded Joe with the same love. Two of these folks, Aunt M and Uncle J will be coming into town for Joe's second birthday in just a few days. I know that Joe will be surrounded by love and I know that there's no better gift than that... but I'll save all the mushy talk for the next post, which will most likely be Joe's 2nd birthday post. (I really mean it this time!) I leave you with a cute impromptu family photo.

See you next time!

Member of the Uncle-Thomas-Cherokee Tribe

As a belated birthday present for Uncle J, we took a trip to Washington DC to visit him (and eat ham and lemon meringue pie). I came up with the idea that perhaps Joe could sleep better at someone else's place if he could sleep on the same cot he uses at school. So Joe Daddy asked his teacher if we could borrow a cot and they said ok and bada-bing! It worked!

Joe had so much fun seeing Uncle J's place and slept very well, which means we were all able to sleep well! As was posted in an earlier entry, Joe's present to Uncle J was learning how to say the word "Uncle".

It's unclear whether learning the word "Uncle" was the cause or if Joe just suddenly decided he missed his Uncle horribly, but between our visit to DC and Uncle J's next visit to P-ton (which was about a month), Joe used most of his free time to ask for (read: beg for) Uncle. Call Uncle. Phone Uncle. Where's Uncle? So when Uncle did come and visit, he made a short video so that Joe could watch it and get his "Uncle fix" anytime. And it has worked! Joe loves to watch his Uncle video.



Joe has also become obsessed with Thomas the Train. He loves watching the Thomas videos, so it made sense that Joe's first big boy underwear should be Thomas underwear.

He now pees exclusively in the toilet. He poops about once a day and sometimes overnight -- so far, it's always in his underwear or his overnight diaper. But he almost always comes home in the same underwear he goes to school in, so I consider him mostly potty trained at this point. I credit much of this to the fact that I have told him, "You don't want to pee on Thomas." He takes that pretty seriously. Look at how handsome he is! He's already a model.

For some reason which we cannot understand, just as Joe became potty trained, he became terrified of taking a bath. My best guess is that he thinks that the bathtub is a big toilet and he's going to get flushed. I tried everything to help-- I even got in the tub and took a bath with him to try to wash him, but he screamed anyway. Joe Daddy saved the day by purchasing tub crayons and large foam letters that stick to the tub tile. Joe was hesitant at first, but Joe Daddy drew Thomas the Train on the tile and before I knew it, Joe was happily playing in the tub for the first time in at least three weeks.



Along with potty training and talking up a storm, Joe has become a great little helper when it comes to chores, especially cleaning and laundry. He loves to help out and do big boy things. Joe Daddy put together a set of clips while Joe helped him in the laundry room in our apartments.



The most monumental update for this post is that after almost two years, Joe finally got his Cherokee tribal membership! See us receive the happy news:



We still have to have a little ceremony and I have to buy him his Cherokee present, so there will probably be one more blog post about this wonderful development.

I leave you with two adorable photos of Joe. Playing with Dad and sitting at the kitchen table. The next post will probably be a birthday post... I'm getting teary just thinking about it. See you next time!

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