Thankful

Welcome to the holiday season! I am woefully behind on blog updating and I haven't even started thinking about what to do for Christmas cards, but I still wanted to take a quick minute to give even just a small update.

The biggest news (which is old news to everybody at this point) is that we are moving this summer! Nick is joining the faculty at... drum roll...


Hurray! I am very excited to move into the South and I look forward to hearing Joe eventually say (in a Southern accent, of course) "Hi, I'm Joe and I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina!"

In not so happy news, Joe has been sick fairly often the past few weeks and it seems that the whole family has been suffering as well from the various illnesses Joseph has been catching (including poor Uncle J, who threw up rather violently for 24 straight hours over Thanksgiving break). Currently, Joe has a slight fever and has been generally "under the weather". Nevertheless, every morning without fail, he looks at us and says, "COAT! MARISSA! COAT!" Which brings me to my next (happier) topic: Joe's new best friend, Marissa.


(This is not an actual photo of Marissa, but it looks a lot like her.) Marissa is a little girl in Joe's class and apparently they spend most days playing together. Joe's teacher, Ms. Padma, says that they like to "make trouble together". When Marissa gets in trouble, Joe pets her and says, "Good girl. Good girl." Today when I went into Joe's class to pick him up, he was trying to show Marissa how to put her coat on.

Lastly, Joe's picking up more words every day and when he sings, it's much clearer. Joe Daddy recorded a singing session tonight with me and Joebert that I think you might like. It's just audio, so to get it to post on the blog, I had to make it into a "video" using an old farm picture. Enjoy!


My brother is coming to P-ton for Christmas and Aunt M is coming here for New Years, so you can look forward to some super cute posts in the not-so-distant future! See you next time!

I'll Take "Halloween 2010", Trebek

Hello, everyone! My apologies for taking two weeks to get back to the blog, but it's been super busy around here. Let's start out with an explanation of Joe's Halloween outfit.

Originally, Joe Daddy bought an outfit so that Joe could be a Transformer. Joe was going to be Bumblebee and Joe Daddy was going to be Optimus Prime. Unfortunately, the costume was a little too large (and not really warm enough), so we agreed to go with Plan B: a skeleton.

The first activity was Joe's Daycare Halloween Parade. He was the leader for his class, however about 1/4 of the way around the parade route, he thought he saw Joe Daddy and started to wander into the grass and then... well, here's the video:



Here's Joe running around outside in his outfit:


After the parade, everyone went inside for snack time:


Then it was time for the Main Event... Trick or Treating!

We double layered him and got his candy bucket ready to go!


Overall, Joe did a fantastic job! He understood very quickly that the object of the game was to run up to a door and knock on it until someone came with a bowl. Next, you grab as much as you can and put it in your bucket. He was a natural!


Occasionally, there was a doorbell, so he needed an assist from Dad or there was a spooky person and he needed an assist from Mom. Uncle J was there too for support -- I was surprised at how scary it can feel to take a toddler out in the pitch black dark to run around! We went down about two blocks before calling it a night.



Here's a video:



Finally, we got home and Joe got a look at all his loot. He was impressed! The candy ended up being donated to Joe Daddy's work.


So there you have it! Halloween 2010 was a success! But that's not the only thing that happened since I last posted on the blog...

Aunt M was on Jeopardy! Holy cow! It was amazing to watch. I got teary just watching the intro.



She lost to the law school guy, however he was totally into her and then emailed her about how all his friends thought she was super cute when the show aired. So, in that way, she was a winner. :) Alex Trebek asked about her tattoo and she won a couple grand for 2nd place and HOLY COW, SHE WAS ON JEOPARDY! I'm always proud of her, but this was one of the coolest things that she's ever done. I'm sure she would say that being the first person to hold Joe was the number one coolest thing she's ever done, but Jeopardy is a close second.

I believe that we have the final list of places that Joe Daddy is interviewing:

1. ekuD
2. llenroC
3. T.I.M.
4. egelloC ynehgellA
5. dnalyraM fO ytisrevinU
6. eessenneT fO ytisrevinU
7. nisnocsiW fO ytisrevinU

Unfortunately, I can say nothing more about it at this time. I will say that for every interview, Joe Daddy is gone for at least two days and this constant "I'm here, I'm gone" pattern has been difficult for Joe. Of course, this is necessary since what happens over the course of this fall will affect our lives likely forever... but in the here and now, it's very hard for me to watch Joe be so sad/angry/confused. As I write this, Joe Daddy is gone again and Joe won't see him until he wakes up on Wednesday. :( Sorry to end on a downer, but the good news is that this process should end within a month and hopefully Joe Daddy will never have to do this interview process again for the rest of our lives. And Joe will probably forget all about the weird Dad absences of fall 2010.

First School Pictures

Joe got school pictures taken a couple of weeks ago and they came in this week. Unfortunately, Joe had a bad cold, so the pictures include some 'sneeze ready' faces and some snot. Nevertheless, I thought I would share them with you since they are his first ever school pictures:





I love the days-of-the-week in the background. "Sunday, Friday, Saturday, Tuesday..." Classic.

Joe Daddy is going to be gone all this week on job interviews. So far he has interviews at... well, I'll spell them backwards to thwart the Google engines:

1. ekuD
2. dnalyraM fO ytisrevinU
3. .T.I.M
4. llenroC

Joe Daddy and I were reminiscing today about our drive from T-town to P-ton a few years ago and how exciting it will be to move again this summer. Joe Daddy will probably drive a big Penske truck again and I will drive our car, only this time, there'll be a little one singing in the back seat. Getting a PhD from P-ton is certainly a monumental accomplishment, but I think we all agree that nothing trumps little Joebert.

Oh! One more thing! The costume this year for Halloween? Hint One: Joe Daddy is going to dress up too. They will be going as a pair from a major motion picture. Until next time...

September Wrap-Up

Since Joe said "bye bye" in one of the older posts, I thought it would be good for him to say "hi" and start off a post!

I have great news regarding my concerns from the last post and that is that Joe loves his new school! When I drop him off, he walks over to the table and sits down in his seat and says, "PEACHES!" which sounds more like "PEE-cha". He loves the food at his new school and almost all of his new words are food or food related: "peaches" "apples" "done" "more" and "snack time". Here's a little taste: (pun intended)



We did have one hiccup at the new school, but it was minor. They called to tell me that there had been an "incident" but that after applying ice, they thought everything was fine. Around noon that day, Joe heard the door open and saw the lunch cart being wheeled in and before anyone could do anything, Joe jumped up, screamed and leaped towards the cart -- the next thing anyone saw was Joe tripping over a chair at one of the tables and going down towards the floor. He busted his bottom lip and cried, but after they tried to apply ice, he just kept reaching towards the lunch table, so they let him eat lunch. By the time I got there, he was happy as a clam (see below). What can I say? The boy comes from a long line of people who enjoy lunch:


In other news, Joe recently visited a local farm with his Uncle J where we got to take some cute pictures and Joe got to meet a few new animal friends.




We were lucky to be able to go to the farm that weekend, because almost the entire rest of the month of September, it was super rainy. Although we weren't able to go out quite as much, we still went out of few times to let Joe play in the puddles. Here's a great shot that Joe Daddy got on his camera phone of Joe having fun after a rainstorm.


I noticed recently that there aren't a lot of pictures of me or Joe Daddy on the blog, which is mainly due to the fact that we are almost always behind the camera. I tried to hold the camera myself and take a picture while hugging Joe, but alas, I couldn't get Joey to cooperate:


Joe Daddy tried the same thing moments later and had no problem. That's what I get for being in a house with two ornery boys. But, see how adorable they are?!


Thankfully, Joe was slightly more behaved a couple of days later and Joe Daddy captured a cute moment on his phone:


I've been very sick this past weekend and Joe was out of school today for Columbus Day, so Joe and Joe Daddy got to have an extended boys-weekend. They got into all kinds of monkey trouble together, which included Joe Daddy teaching Joe to 'clap' to The Office theme song and throw his fist in the air while yelling "YEEEAH!" at the end of the song. Well, you have to see it to believe it:



Although I was very sick the past few days, who wouldn't feel a little better to watch this out your window?



Because I was sidelined this weekend, I missed out on the Halloween Outfit shopping, which means that Joe Daddy was able to pick out the costume this year. You'll recall that he picked out Batman last year... any guesses as to what he decided on for this year? Find out next time!

A Tough Week

It's the beginning of a new school year, which means that it is time for Joe to move up to a new class -- from infant to toddler. As it is, we were driving 2 hours a day for Joe to go school and it was really becoming difficult, so we decided it was the right time to switch his school. He had a normal first week and as a former child care provider, I know that it's always harder on the parent than on the child, but it's much harder to be on the other side of things than I ever imagined it would be.

His reports for his first week were as follows:
9/7 -- "Joe had an ok day. He got to know his teachers and other friends in class a little. He had some happy time and was a little sad. He ate good and did work on colors and shapes."
9/8 -- "Joe had a very good day. He started off with different table toys, puzzles, etc which he loved. We worked on the alphabet and colors."
9/9 -- "Joe had a wonderful day. He played with play-doh, coloring and puzzles and we read the book 'Ten Little Monkeys'. He was happy overall and cried very little."
9/10 -- "Joseph is getting there. He has happy and sad moments. Please bring pictures of his family for Monday so we can share them with the class."

I'm afraid that if I got a report, it would have looked something like this:
9/7 -- "Joe Momma burst into tears and refused to let go of Joe for five minutes. We had to pry them apart and force her to go to work."
9/8 -- "Joe Momma rocked Joe in our rocking chair for 5 minutes, cried and then went to work. She did slightly better today."
9/9 -- "Joe Momma did not cry, but instead got angry and threatened us that if we didn't do a good job taking care of Joe she would break our legs."
9/10 -- "Joe Momma is the most difficult, sensitive parent we've ever had."

Hopefully I'll do better next week. Here's a couple of pictures that his new school gave me. They had a welcome sign for Joe this week and also gave me a couple prints of Joe playing with his new friends. My scanner's down, so it's a picture of a picture, but you get the idea. All I know is that I'm so happy it's the weekend.

Class Picture

This is Joe's teacher Judy and his class (L to R): Finnegan, Ava, Zachary and Joseph (or as I know them, Finn, Ava, Zach and Joebertson)


Wonderful kids, wonderful teacher and wonderful place for Joe to spend the past 9 months. Look how happy they are! If a normal picture says a thousand words, this one says a million. I also want to note that Zach and Joe are the same age and represent the smaller and larger end of the 16 month spectrum. :) Love it!

Water Sports and the Black Eye

Joe says, "MOM! I'm so MAD that you missed a month of the blog!!!" Well, it's been rather busy around these parts and I got behind on the updating. I hope to make up for it with an extra long post of pictures this time. The picture above is Joe in the middle of a tantrum -- he has those now. They are short and to the point and happen occasionally when he doesn't get his way. Joe Daddy and I think we're hitting the "terrible twos" early. He gets frustrated, but doesn't have the verbal skills to express what he wants or why he's upset, so he usually slaps his hands on the ground, pinches us or falls onto the ground and whines. Nevertheless, it's rare and we hope it stays that way.

I'll start with the bad news first:
Joe got his first black eye this past month. He got into a fight with the rocking chair at school and the rocking chair won. Poor Joseph! They applied ice and by the time I got to school, he was playing and having a good time, so he seemed to be a real trooper about it. It faded in about four or five days.


In better news... one of the reasons why the blog was not updated in July is that I got to spend the first part of the month in Omaha with Joe's Aunt M! I had some work drama that ended with me getting some time off and a big promotion, so naturally I hopped a plane to O-town just as fast as I could. It was great to see M and finally get to check out Omaha. We marched together with her church in Omaha's annual Gay Pride Parade, which was a lot of fun. Omaha is a nice place and her church is one of the most welcoming, loving places I've been in a long long time. I hope to visit her again soon (like when her Jeopardy episode airs?) and maybe take Joe and the crew with me.


When I returned, the summer was in full swing, so we took Joe to the fountain at Joe Daddy's work to see if Joe might be interested in swimming a little this summer. He really didn't want to get into the water any more than just getting his feet wet, but he still had a lot of fun.




Uncle J came to stay with us for just over a week while he had a conference in the area for his work. With the extra help, we decided to take Joe to the beach. Joe was stunned by the ocean and spent most of the time sitting in one of our laps and watching the waves come up and go back out over and over. He did a little bit of playing with buckets and shovels in the sand and overall handled the whole thing very well. I think we'll try it again later in the summer!






Finally, just a couple of days ago, I went to visit the boys I used to nanny. (My "practice children"!) They loved playing with Joe and were very sweet to him. I can't believe how much they've grown!! Time flies! Before we know it, Joe will be their age.

If you haven't done so in awhile, I highly suggest going back to some of the first blog posts and watching a couple of the videos. It's unbelievable to see Joe so young that he couldn't roll over yet or so small I had to feed him Pedialyte from a medicine dropper. It's one of the reasons I created the blog in the first place -- you can really see the progress that Joe has made! See you next time!