A Week to Recover

This past week was a recovery week. Joseph had a bit of an icky stomach, which didn’t manifest itself in more throwing up, but more in the icky diaper area. After 3 days of no change, I took him into the doctor (especially since he had some painful gas bubbles the night before which made his stomach rock-hard). They tested for strep (in case that was what was causing the unpleasant diapers) which came back negative. His ears also looked fine, but his throat was a bit red. When I told the doctor he had pretty bad allergies, she said that there was some children’s allergy medicine that I could give him. Yay! She also said to continue to give him some probiotics to fight off the stomach bug (Paul and I had already started the night before with those along with cutting out all dairy except yogurt, which has probiotics in it). The next day, he was completely back to normal, which was good, because then I got it. Luckily, mine only lasted for a day. Also during this week, we got crafty and painted Joseph’s name on his wall using fun colors and letter stencils. He knows what each of the letters are (well, he knows all his letters, but he knows those best of all since we repeat them the most).

The Weekly Weather: I’ve decided to add a bit about the weather, since I find it interesting how quickly it changes and how varied it is out here. The week started off nice, in the upper-60s to low-70s. Then we had one cold day where it dropped down into the 40s-50s. After that, the rest of the week was warmer, sometimes reaching into the 80s. Then there was today. Mild, warmish morning and early afternoon. When we walked into church, it was in the mid-70s. When we walked out, 3 hours later, the temperature had plummeted over 30 degrees and a freezing wind was blowing. Needless to say, we pretty much sprinted to the car. The next couple of days are supposed to be cold and then it’ll warm up again. No wonder our allergies are going crazy!

Funny/Cute Story for the Week: Joseph did tons of funny and cute things this week. The only one that really sticks out though, is the yogurt episode. Let me preface the story by informing you that Joseph LOVES yogurt. It is probably his favorite of his newly-acquired dairy snacks (along with goldfish crackers). Okay, so I had let him have some yogurt as a bedtime snack a couple of nights ago, and when it was gone, he was kind of sad. Paul came downstairs and Joseph (very hopefully and maybe even a little on the innocent side) asked Paul for yogurt. I had to jump in and say that he had already had his yogurt so that Paul would know that Joseph was seemingly attempting to pull a fast one on him. Sneaky kid!

Oh, I almost forgot. Paul was able to get a copy of the “Cars” movie, which Joseph immediately fell in love with (he was already familiar with the characters because of some things that he’s seen on the Disney channel). He now goes around the house saying, “Ka-chow!” (something that the race car, Lightning McQueen says a lot) and he gets excited when he sees either Lightning McQueen or Mayter (the tow truck). One of Paul’s co-workers gave him a “Cars” book that belonged to her daughter when she was younger (she’s now a teenager) to give to Joseph. It is his current favorite book. 🙂

This Week in Pictures:

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There are times I just can’t resist this sweet face. 🙂
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He loved thease ears! He wore them out, though. I kept taping them back together, but one day I had to sneak them into the trash while he was napping because they were just too far gone. He hasn’t seemed to miss them (such is the way with a two-year-old).
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Trying to entice me to play cars with him…it’s so much fun being this little boy’s momma!
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Paul doing the finishing touches on the letters. I had helped up to this point, but stepped back to get a couple of shots.
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Peeling off the stencils
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Almost there!
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Ta-da!
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After a haircut. This was a big moment for me. Up to this point, Paul has had to cut Joseph’s hair because he (Joseph, that is), puts up such a fight that I was too apprehensive to get it done efficiently enough (I was scared I was going to hurt him). This time, though, I wanted to do it myself. He still cried and occasionally screeched through the entire thing, but he didn’t thrash about as much. In my book, that’s a win!
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Reading the “Cars” book with Daddy
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I must admit, it’s a pretty cool book…
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“Is my yogurt really all gone?!”
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“There’s GOT to be more in there!”
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Giving me a goofy face while munching on goldfish crackers.
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I decided to change up the dry-erase board in Joseph’s room. It took a bit longer than I originally planned, but I like the results. I copied most of the animals off of a little blanket that one of my friends made for him when he was a baby.
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He loves it when we flip the screen on our phones so that he can see himself on the screen as I take a picture. He kept opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue, hahaha!

Bonus Video/Audio: This needs a little explanation. Paul and I were recently talking about how we need to get it on video when Joseph sings along to songs (usually this happens in the car). Tonight, when I was singing to Joseph before he went to bed, he started singing along, so I told Paul I thought it might be fun to record it. Hence why it is dark through the whole thing. There isn’t anything wrong with the picture, it’s just dark because we had the lights off. We recorded it mainly for the audio. 🙂 Plus, Paul had to kind of hide the video camera because if Joseph saw it, he’d probably stop singing. At the very end, he noticed what Paul was doing and did exactly what I thought he might do… 🙂

Whirlwind of a Week

After the rodeo fun on Monday, I thought we were going to have a relatively quiet week. It wasn’t quite so. It was fun, but it was busy!

Tuesday we had a play date with Joseph’s favorite little friend in the world, Kysen. Kysen’s mom is my visiting teaching companion, so we’re together a couple times a month at least, but it was fun to get to go to her house and chat while the boys played.

Wednesday we had yet another play date. One of my friends from high school recently moved to San Antonio, so I invited her and her girls over to play. After they played for a bit, we went to Chick-fil-A for lunch. Joseph loved playing in their play area.

Thursday was music playtime, which Joseph always loves.

Friday was another Chick-fil-A day. Our ward was split last week (we were just too big) and some of the ward boundaries were changed, so Friday was a chance to get to see people we knew we might not get to see as often anymore. The moms lunched and the kids played to their hearts’ content.

Because the week was so full of activity, I decided to make yesterday a completely lazy day. We went grocery shopping in the morning and then came home and spent the rest of the day relaxing around the house. This was good, because late last night Joseph randomly threw up. Everywhere. We got him cleaned up and I comforted him while Paul was on clean-up duty. He cleaned up bedding, stuffed animals, the crib liner, the walls…everything. Joseph went back to bed a little while later, but it was a late night for Paul and me (I tried to go back to sleep in case Joseph woke up again, but with my mommy ear tuned in to see if he was going to throw up again, I didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight, and Paul was cleaning everything as well as doing a load of pukey laundry). Joseph didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a fever, and didn’t throw up again (yay!), and was back to his normal, happy self (he was a little cranky last night and refused to eat dinner, but we didn’t attribute it to illness, we attributed it to him being a toddler), so we went to church as normal.

Today was an interesting day because it was the first day that our ward didn’t have a lot of families that we had before, and gained a lot of families that we didn’t have before. I felt kind of bad for the new people, because I know that they are leaving friends in their old ward, but I think they’ll soon find out that we’re a really friendly ward and they will start making new friends fast. We will, too. 🙂

Joseph’s appetite isn’t quite back to normal, but we think he was a bit traumatized about the whole throwing up thing, so he might be scared of eating a lot of food. Hopefully we’ll slowly get him back on his feed. 😉

Funny/Cute Stories for the Week:

One night this past week, Joseph came up to Paul and uttered a long string of gibberish. When Paul asked him what he said, he repeated the same string of gibberish. It was clear that he was trying to get SOMETHING across. When Paul listened carefully, he noticed that intermixed with the gibberish were the words, “wanna rough-house” so he asked Joseph if he wanted to rough-house. Joseph (looking very pleased), said, “Okay!” A rough-housing session then commenced. Let me say this: I am so grateful for my husband. I would be exhausted if I had to try to keep up with Joseph like that!

I was reading Where the Wild Things Are to Joseph the other night and he noticed the sticker on the front (it looks like a gold medal) that represents the fact that the book is a Caldecott Medal winner for best storybook. Joseph got really excited and said, “Gold doubloons!” One of his favorite shows is Jake and the Neverland Pirates. One of the things that Jake and his friends do is collect gold doubloons whenever they solve a problem. I guess it did look a little like a fancy coin. 🙂

Joseph is super friendly. Today when he was leaving nursery, he looked around and said, “Bye, friends!” I love that he loves nursery and that he thinks everyone is his friend. 🙂

He has REALLY been getting interactive with his shows as of late. If a character waves at the screen, he waves back. If they say goodbye, so does he (or often he’ll say, “See you later!”).

He’s starting to form slightly longer sentences. Today, he and Paul were waiting in the car for me to get done in Primary (we usually park right outside the Primary room). Paul said that as soon as Joseph saw me come out, he got super excited and said, “Mommy out the door!” He’s getting so big!

Earlier this week, as Joseph and I were headed somewhere, I was listening to my favorite country station. A slightly over-played song came on, so I decided to change it. No dice. As soon as I did, I heard a little questioning voice from the back saying, “Want that song?” I turned it back, glanced back at him, and saw him grinning at me. I guess he likes country. 🙂

This Week in Pictures:

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This was several hours after we got home from the rodeo…
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…and he was still wearing the cow ears.
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While at the rodeo, we acquired a complementary red handkerchief, which Paul later decided to make into an impromptu cape for Joseph.
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He kept looking back at it as he ran, which created several close calls with walls!
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Then he got a marvelous idea…
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…because…
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…every super hero needs a sweet ride.
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When he got tired of wearing the cape, Paul put it on Bear.
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Joseph LOVED that idea.
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Bear has become Super-bear.
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Joseph showing off his new shoes (his other sandals were hurting him, which was what I think was a case of just the wrong type of shoe to be comfortable for him). He loves them! He also calls the “Kysen’s shoes” since his little friend has shoes that are similar (same type, different color). They’re basically knock-off Crocs, so they are really comfortable.
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The boys rough-housing…
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Paul pretending to surrender…
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…and smiling at Mommy, who is observing from a safe distance.
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Smile for Daddy!

Bonus Video:

Joseph has really been into planes and rockets as of late. He loves to count down and blast off…though he doesn’t always remember to count DOWN, hahaha:

Rodeo San Antonio!

Bonus Blog Post! Today we went to the rodeo/stock show that comes into town every year about this time. It was so much fun! Today was a Dollar Day, too, so it only cost a dollar for Paul and I to get in (Joseph was free) and some of the food was only a dollar (we had hot dogs for lunch). We saw a bunch of animals (pigs, cows, and some wild animals and reptiles that are native to Texas), watched the sheep dogs compete in herding, walked around a bunch of booths, visited the petting zoo (they even had a wallaby there!), and did some other fun stuff. We had a pretty good time. 🙂 Joseph walked everywhere with us, and did a pretty good job listening. We thought he’d crash once we got back to the car, but he surprised us both by not doing so…in fact, he didn’t nap at all today, which made for a very tired momma and daddy. Here are a few pictures that Paul took of our fun day:

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Petting the wallaby
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He was so soft! Incredibly docile, too.
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Joseph really liked brushing the different animals
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Every time he saw a cow (real or not), he’d say, “Mooooo!”
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He didn’t really want to “milk” the cow, though…hahaha!
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Our little tomato
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This is what happens when the two-year-old rushes the camera
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Paul had to get a picture of the prairie dogs. He said he’s got a lot of pictures of prairie dog holes (from his mission) because the prairie dogs themselves were too fast to be captured on film. 🙂
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Joseph loved the reptiles
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Checking out the pigs
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Joseph kept saying, “Oink, oink!”

See ya’ next year, rodeo!