This has been quite an enlightening week. Joseph has been growing leaps and bounds when it comes to new words and new things that he’s doing. One thing that I don’t care for is that he is perfecting his climbing skills. The rest of the things are pretty cool. He’s getting more interactive with the T.V.: repeating things, saying things along with characters, etc.

He also started doing something else this week that was pretty sweet: he has started to sing along with things. It started last night when he randomly started singing along with me as I was rocking him before bed. I had a hard time finishing the song (a Primary song) because I felt the Spirit so strongly. I have a feeling that he could feel the Spirit as well. He also sung along with the hymns in Sacrament meeting today, as well as with part of one of the songs that is on one of his favorite shows (Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood). Hearing his sweet little voice singing (granted it was a bit of gibberish mixed with a word here and there) just melts my heart. I love that he loves music!

Another thing he did this week was demonstrate that he can count pretty high. With some assistance, he can get to nine (sometimes ten). He’ll usually leave out one number or another, but I still think it’s pretty cool to hear, “one, two, tee, fo, fibe, sis, sebin…nine…” (the two he normally leaves out are “eight” and “ten”, though he’ll occasionally get those and leave out others).

I can’t even keep track of new words this week: chair, bear, hug, back, see you soon…it goes on and on.

And now for this week’s pictures:

As the title of this blog post suggests, there have been a few hats this week. I didn’t get them all in pictures, just these two. It was pretty funny to hear him saying, “Hat!” and realize that he had devised his own hats. 🙂

One of Joseph’s favorite things to do is climb up on the couch with me when Jeopardy is on. He really likes the music and the applause. He gets really excited when he hears the music and says, “Jep-de! Jep-de!”

He has also discovered a few things: 1) he can get the toys that we are currently storing under the guest bed out and play with them (or try to climb into them…he must still remember that he used to be able to sit in the walker) and 2) he is fully capable of climbing up into the glider…he still hasn’t figured out how to get the glider to move, though he tried really hard.

On Saturday, we went out to eat to celebrate Father’s Day. Joseph was pretty excited about getting to color (the restaurant provided crayons and a coloring page), and he loved eating a bit of my dinner. He’s getting really well at eating table food. His current favorites are chicken nuggets, toast, Honey Buzzers (the Malt o’ Meal equivalent to Honey Comb cereal), and scrambled eggs. He also likes to eat noodles, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms (cooked), green beans (canned), cheese and goldfish crackers (which we have to limit because out his lactose intolerance), ground sausage, and pretty much anything else we give him.

This morning, we celebrated Father’s Day by giving Paul Joseph’s present (he had already chosen some stuff to upgrade his computer with, so what I gave him this morning was just from Joseph). I made a simple card out of card stock which said “Happy Father’s Day” on the outside. On the inside, I wrote a message from Joseph (expressing the different things he liked to do with Paul) and had Joseph “sign” it (he got to hold the pen as I helped him write the letters in his name). I then let Joseph color it. It turned out pretty cute. We also got Paul his favorite chocolate and some beef jerky (two things he would consider “splurge” items, so I thought they might make for a fun and inexpensive gift).

After a relaxing morning, we went to church as usual. Here are my boys right when Paul dropped Joseph off for nursery (he does the drop-off since I have to scoot to Primary pretty quickly).

After church, we came home and had dinner (roast beef sandwiches using crock pot roast beef; one of Paul’s favorites). We started to go for a walk, but after a bit it just was too warm (I still have to get used to the fact that it stays warm pretty late into the evening here) so we went home and relaxed on the couch.

In a bit of unrelated news, I finally got brave enough to turn on the sewing machine, figured out how to thread it (thank you, YouTube tutorial videos…after literally hours of trying to use the manual, I got it figured out in just minutes. The top threading wasn’t a problem, but the bottom threading was), and made my first project: a little drawstring bag (to hold some little books that Joseph has) that can go in the diaper bag for church. Joseph was super excited when he saw what material I had chosen (Thomas the Tank Engine). Every time he sees the bag, he says, “Thomas, Thomas!”

All in all, another wonderful week in south Texas. 🙂