Birthday Fun

Joshua turned the Big 1 yesterday, and I have to admit that I am a little sad.  He is growing up (sniff sniff!).  He loved getting to eat cupcakes and he loved the icing more than that cake itself. We went to the doctor yesterday ( I know, mean mom) and he now weighs 21 and a half pounds and is 30 inches tall.  He definitely slowed down with the growing.  He likes to crawl so much and he is so fast that he currently has no interest in walking.  He can get everywhere he needs to be by crawling.  Moving around furniture and standing, but no walking.  I'm sure it will come soon enough, so I'm not worried!

Other than that, we are getting ready to go on vacation.  We are headed to the Shore and I am frantically trying to get organized with all of Joshua's stuff and then throw in mine and Derek's. We're looking forward to a week on the beach, plus we will have some friends on the 4th of July coming. Where does the time go?  July 2008 already??

Here are a couple of videos of Joshua...one of him eating cake and the other one is him playing with his new playground set he got for his birthday.  I'm not looking my best in one of them, so pretend I'm not there. :)  The cake eating one is a little long, so I won't be offended if you just watch a little bit of it.  To see the pictures we took over the past month, go here. 

Ticks!!

So as i am playing with Joshua today, I notice a dark speck behind his ear.  Thinking I am just a bad mother and not cleaning behind his ears well enough, I attempt to chase him around for 10 minutes with a wet washcloth and try and clean his ears.  With no luck, I leave it alone for a little while.  After closer inspection and rubbing the back of his ear raw again, I realize that it is a TICK!  I am completely grossed out and have to have Derek help me pin Joshua down to pick it out with tweezers.  

    First of all, I don't do bugs.  Second, I'm pretty sure that there aren't that many ticks in Texas (if there was, I didn't do enough camping/hiking to get any on me).  Anyways, FYI, there are only 12 states that have a high prevalence of ticks that lead to Lyme disease and New Jersey is proudly one of them.  I am now officially freaked out and have been studying the rest of Joshua's body very closely, ready to point out any abnormalities.  The tick that we picked out didn't look like it had sucked any blood, so the chance to Lyme disease is somewhat rare, but the fact that they can come back and I still have to pluck them....ewww!

Our Button Pusher

So this weekend it actually got hot here.  After complaining, it actually bit me in the butt and this past weekend has been in the high 90s and it's suppose to stay like this for a while.  We were able to pull out Joshua's baby pool and let him play in it, which he enjoyed.

    I call him our Button Pusher because he is one, literally and figuratively.  He loves to push any button possible, which is why the DVD player is put up and I have had to tape the buttons on our TV up so he will stop fighting over control of the TV with me.  I have actually taken him to people's houses and warned them of this.  They don't really believe me until he has been pushing the buttons to the TV for 10 minutes straight, turning the TV on and off, turning the volume up and changing the channel.  Then they are like, " Wow, he really does like to play with the TV."  I know they're thinking in the back of their minds, "That's a little annoying."  Oh well!

   In terms of pushing our buttons figuratively, well he does that on a daily basis.  The main thing he does to push our buttons is that if he doesn't want to eat something or he doesn't like it, he has no problem gagging and attempting to throw it back up.  We have to convince him it's ok and to hurry and swallow it before he throws up his meal. He does it with a smile or a little look in his eye...but he melts our hearts with a kiss and a giggle and we forgive him!  Here is a picture of him playing in his baby pool.  We didn't blow it up all the way because we were having a hard time trying to get all the air in and gave up.  Doesn't matter, he won't remember!

Bison watching, pseudo beach and other shenanigans

     It's been a little busy and distracting around here, so I've sort of let this go by the wayside for a week.  Here are the big accomplishments for Joshua that just occurred:

1) He can now actually put his hands together and sort of clap.  Last week, he was still waving and thinking he was clapping.  But he has now progressed to being able to put his hands together a few times.  He is very proud of it!  As are we...

2) He has been able to pick up his sippy cup and drink from it, but he has needed help tipping it to actually getting anything out of it.  Well, tonight he figured out how to tip the cup himself.

3) He can now turn the light switch on and off.  For a while now he has only been able to flip the switch off, but he can now control his thumb and forefinger to grasp the light to turn it on too!

4) He turned 11 months old!  Not really an accomplishment, but I can't believe that he is going to be turning 1 next month!

     We had a great Memorial Day weekend.  The weather here FINALLY cleared up and we had a great 75-80 degree weekend with no rain.  On Saturday, we went to a local Bison farm (who knew there were bison in NJ??!) and we looked at the bison and saw some horses.  Of course, the farm is there to actually sell bison meat, so we purchased some and had it tonight for dinner.  The meat is much leaner, but what was great was that the freshness of the meat made it taste so much better! 

     Today, we went to a state park that is near our house and went to the pseudo beach.  Since we are now New Jerseyans, we are going to The Shore this summer and we thought we would see how Joshua would do with sand.  This state park near us has a 'pseudo' beach....it's really just a very small sandy shore along a lake.  That's why I call it our pseudo beach!  Anyways, Joshua LOVED the sand....it took him a minute or so to get used to it, but he keep picking it up and letting it drop out of his fingers. We didn't get in the water since it was still only 58 degrees, but we put his feet in it and he actually sat in it because he wanted to touch the water.  So, that makes us look forward to our trip to The Shore even more now that we know that Joshua enjoys it.

    Other than that, we went to the playground and played and overall had a terrific weekend.  It was nice to have Derek hang out with us for an extra day.

I want my superhero name to be....

Bakerella....this is actually a blog of a woman who does the most amazing things with cupcakes and other baking things.  Granted, there are probably better things that I could aspire to be as a superhero, but some of the things she does is really cool. The name just sounds like a superhero....maybe I could bake things and throw them at the evil guys and then eat the leftover power cupcakes....:)I want to be able to have the desire and patience to do the things she does. Here's an example of what she does. It probably helps to have the counter space and time to do these awesome things!   I wonder what my outfit would look like if this was my superhero name...hmmm.  If you get a chance, check out her blog here.

Teeth, teeth and more teeth

Joshua is currently in the process of getting 3 teeth at the same time and this made our weekend a little stressful.  Poor kid just doesn't want to eat and that is definitely not like him.  We're not really sure if his runny nose is attributed to his teething or if he is getting sick.  We have been really lucky in that he hasn't caught a cold or anything since he has been born.  But since he hasn't ever been sick, we really can't tell if he's not feeling well or if it's because of incoming teeth.  I'm sure we will find out soon enough!

Happy belated Mother's Day to everyone out there.  The weather is still really iffy these days, changing from 70s back down to the 50s, so we have had a hard time trying to get used to that.  But other than that, we had a nice weekend. Joshua was a little crabbier than usual, but we had guests, so he was more than happy to show off for them.  His biggest accomplishment while our guests were here was that he can now climb the whole staircase.  He initially was only able to do the first landing, but now that he had people cheering him on, he climbed the whole thing!  Yea for Mom getting to watch him! :)

In other news, we had to move the DVD player out of sight because he has now figured out which buttons open and close the player.  In addition to that, he discovered other buttons on the machine that I have no idea what they do.  I think that's a sign that he is going to be outsmarting me pretty soon!  Here is a video of him playing and talking with the DVD player.

Fake petals and other accomplishments

The 2 pictures that you see are some of Joshua's big accomplishments this week.  The first one is the pile of petals that he has picked off of my fake plant next to the TV.  Since I can't keep any type of plant alive (except for Ivy...ours survived a week on a moving truck), I have a house full of fake plants.  Anyways, Joshua has taken to picking off the petals of this plant one by one and now that it is pretty much picked clean, i have decided to move it.

Joshua's other accomplishment was that he has figured out how to climb stairs.  He can't get all the way up the staircase, but with some encouragement (mainly from Dad), he can get to the first landing of our stairs.  No standing by himself yet, but he is holding onto things with one hand and is cruising a little.  The picture is him peeking through the banister.  I know, I know the A&M hat is offending some, but it's cute and it's from his aunt!  If you don't want him to be affiliated with A&M, send us another hat and I will gladly put it on his head.  :)-

Lastly, 2 of his top teeth have broken through and I think that this has made life a little more bearable for him and us.  He has been in a much better mood (so far) this week so I hope it stays.  The weather has finally gotten back to being warmer, so we're not stuck in the house as much either which helps both of our sanity! :)