Darr Family Blog

This week has been better health-wise (Joseph was better and started eating stuff other than goldfish crackers and milk, my allergies have been kind of crazy due to the large amount of mountain cedar pollen, but I’m slowly getting better from the massive allergy attack that hit mid-week), but the weather has been a bit…bi-polar. It doesn’t seem to know if it’s spring or winter. The beginning of the week was in the high 70s. Paul had Monday off, so we went up to Austin and ate at In n’ Out and played at a cool park (Zilker Park) that had this really cool train that took you on a 20-25 minute ride around the park (the park is HUGE). Joseph had a blast riding that train! Mid week was slightly cooler, and then we had another (what the weather guy calls an) “arctic plunge”. This is where the temperature plummets more than 20 degrees overnight. In this case, it was in the 60s on Wednesday and in the 30s on Thursday. Friday, it didn’t get above freezing until the late afternoon. We also had an ice storm on Thursday night which made the roads rather dangerous. Paul got a call that he was supposed to come in two hours later than normal for work (in order for conditions to improve a bit), but because one of the highways was closed due to ice, it still took him almost two hours to get to work. Saturday was back in the upper 50s/low 60s, so we decided to go to the zoo. I love that we got passes. Now we don’t feel like we have to rush to see enough to get our money’s worth each time.

Funny/Cute Stories for the Week:

Joseph on occasion will fake a burp just so he can say, “Excuse me!”

He will often say, “Bless you!” right after he sneezes.

At Target, we were going past the aisle where the kids’ toothbrushes and toothpaste are and he said, “Over there, me teeth!’

He loves to wear my red slip-on shoes around the house. One day, after letting him wear them, I couldn’t find them. After looking almost everywhere, I decided to look in the bench that’s close to our entry-way (it opens up for storage). Sure, enough, there they were! He probably thought he had picked a good hiding spot. 🙂

The other day, he asked for some yogurt, so I put some in a bowl for him. He decided that he was going to dip his mac n’ cheese in the yogurt (key lime pie flavored). I try to let him experiment and not discourage trying new things, so I just…observed. Apparently he found it quite tasty…weird kid. 😉

I try to make it a point when reading to Joseph to also ready who the author and illustrator of the book are. We read a lot of Dr. Seuss, so now he seems to think that all books are written by Dr. Seuss. The other day, I was letting him look at his Book of Mormon. He looked at the cover and said, “Book of Mormon, by Dr. Seuss!” He’s done that with several other books that aren’t by Dr. Seuss, either. 🙂 This usually leads to a brief discussion about who the authors actually are.

One day, when I was just finishing blowing my nose, I looked down to see Joseph staring at me rather intently. He then said, “Good job, Mommy!” I should feel so honored!

Sometimes when I tell him to put a toy or other object away and he doesn’t want to, he’ll hide it behind his back so that I can’t “see” it. Nice try, kid!

We have to be careful when we ask Joseph if he wants to take a bath. Why, you might ask? Well, it’s because he likes his baths so much, that he’ll get super excited, say, “Okay!”, and start trying to take off his clothes. Wherever he is. Even if we’re nowhere near the bathroom. So, yeah…

This week in Pictures (beware: there are quite a few because of the Austin trip and the trip to the zoo):

Bonus! Two Videos! One is of Joseph checking out the monkeys and the other is him seeing (and introducing himself to) the mongoose:

This past week has been a bit of a bruiser. It started out on Sunday with Joseph coming down with a fever, which progressed into a full-blown virus. He was runny-nosed, coughing, and refusing to eat anything. It took five days before his fever went away. The doctor ruled out flu and ear infection, but couldn’t rule out strep because he refused to open his mouth for her to look into his throat (I can’t say that I blame him, the flu test was a swab up the nose…no way was he going to let them swab his throat after that). Since his fever went away, I think we can safely say that he didn’t have strep. He’s still being somewhat of a finicky eater, though. He has only wanted milk and goldfish crackers. We think his stomach just got used to not having food in it and now he doesn’t want to eat much. Either that or he’s remember the couple of times this week where he was eating and got sick (throwing up) and doesn’t want to eat for that reason. We’re hoping that if we continue to give him snacks and slowly try to introduce regular foods back in when he wants them that we’ll get his eating back to normal. On Saturday, we wanted to get out of the house, and since Joseph was feeling a lot better, we decided to take him to the zoo. We also decided to get passes this time around. It was something that we’ve discussed (versus renewing our Sea World passes) and we decided that since both our passes (Joseph’s still free until he turns 3, and then we can just add him on for $15) combined were less than one Sea World pass, that zoo passes were the way to go.We think it will be a better fit for Joseph, since he’s not really into the shows at Sea World…he’d much rather look at the animals…so if he just wants to look at animals, then let’s pay less for it!

Cute/Funny Stories for the Week:

While at the doctor’s, one nurse was working on taking Joseph’s vitals and listening to him breathe. She was new and wanted to make sure she did things correctly, so she called in another nurse to check his breathing. He was sitting there, rather patiently for a two-year-old, but when the second nurse started doing exactly what the first had already done, he looked a little annoyed and said (rather impatiently, but kind of forlornly, since he was sick), “Oh, come on, guys!” Hahaha…NO idea where he’s heard THAT before. 😉

One night, I went into Joseph’s room to make sure he was still covered up (he tends to kick his blankets off) and found him all curled up, snuggling his Snoopy that we got him at Knott’s Berry Farm during our last visit to CA. There are some times that I have to really resist the urge to pick him up and hold him close to me!

Joseph has become sort of obsessed with Charlie Brown. Tonight he was dragging a blanket around and he said it was like in Charlie Brown (I suppose he was channeling Linus a bit). 🙂

This Week in Pictures (there are not many, because most of the week, Joseph was sick and not in the mood to be photographed. These are all from the zoo trip we took yesterday. Thanks, Paul!):

We spent the week getting back to our everyday life: grocery shopping, playing, music playtime, relaxing. 🙂 I must say that there is a low feeling immediately following a vacation. Joseph would ask every once in a while when we would get in the car (especially if it was a trip after dark) if we were going to see his cousins. The first time, I had to hold tears back as I told him no. We all had SUCH a good time on vacation. We’re really looking forward to the next time we can do it.

Cute/Funny Stories for the Week:

One night, we were in Joseph’s room as he was choosing a book for me to read to him at bedtime. He spotted Paul’s little copy of the Book of Mormon (the one he would take with him during his various Army training since it was so compact)…from the side (so no words were showing)…and asked for, and I quote, “Book of Mormon stories, teacher tells me?” Paul and I were kind of blown away. So we read from the Book of Mormon for a bit (Paul went and got our big family one that has a lot of pictures and stuff) before reading another bedtime story. I also sang him the Primary song (along with the various hand motions) and he seemed pretty impressed that I knew it, hahaha. After he was in bed, I got onto Facebook and messaged my friend who does the music in nursery and gave her a huge thank you, since I know that’s where he had to have picked up the song. 🙂 He also randomly started singing Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree later during the week. I love that nursery is sinking in. 🙂

We recently moved Joseph’s booster chair off of the dining room chair that it was on and onto a folding chair, because the dining room chair made him sit too high (we couldn’t get his legs under the table) which was making it uncomfortable for him, as well as making each meal time way messier than needed since we weren’t able to get him closer to the table. One afternoon/early evening, I was relaxing on the couch but could hear Joseph puttering around in the dining room. I heard him moving the folding chair, and then…silence. Anyone with a toddler knows that silence is anything BUT golden. I looked over the couch and discovered that not only had he climbed up into his booster chair (apparently the folding chair is low enough for him to get a foot-hold), but he had put on his bib as well. He then asked me for dinner. When I told him dinner wasn’t ready yet, he got pretty sad, so I caved and gave him a snack (after strapping him into his seat, of course).

Joseph loves his Avengers t-shirt…A LOT. He can tell you who each of them are. One morning, I was asking him who The Hulk was. He told me who he was, and then promptly told me that The Hulk needed a bath! I suppose anyone who is that green probably does. 🙂

One early morning this week (I’m talking 3 A.M.), Joseph woke up crying. I went in, comforted him, and put him back in his crib. It was quiet until about 3:45, he started crying again. I started worrying: Was he sick? Did he have a bad dream? This time, I got him to tell me what was wrong. He very sadly said, “Catapillah still hungwy!!” I should probably mention that The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle) has been one of his favorite books this week. Apparently he wanted me to read him the story. At 3:45 in the morning. Yeah…I put him back into bed, promising to read it first thing in the REAL morning. When he woke up several hours later, the first thing he asked for was the book, so I made sure to keep my promise. 🙂

He was really into music playtime this week. He stayed engaged for almost the entire thing, and actually did some of the hand movements for some of the songs! When we left, he was pretty sad. I told him we would come the next week, and that appeased him a bit, though it didn’t stop him a couple of times from saying, rather forlornly, “Story time friends? Next week?”. He did the same thing with nursery today, when I told him we would go back to nursery next week: “Nursery, church next week?”

Our Adventuresome Day: Tuesday started out normal. We were driving to the commissary when a rather sizable rock hit the windshield and left two big chips in it. I can promise you that I have had more chips in our windshield in the year and half that we’ve lived in Texas than in my entire driving experience in California (so roughly 12 years). Luckily, all the chips up to this point were superficial and did not need repaired. These two, however, were not. We got home from the commissary and I called the insurance company. Luckily, they were able to get the windshield repair place to squeeze us in that day (and luckily we have comprehensive coverage, so it didn’t cost us anything out-of-pocket). This meant for a rather busy day. Since our appointment was for 3, and it was, at that point, already past noon, I decided to fill up the time in between instead of having Joseph try to get in a nap (with my luck he would have not fallen asleep right away and then would have been cranky because I would have had to wake him up in order to make the appointment). So we went to Walmart and got the oil changed (since I needed to anyway) and had lunch at Subway (Joseph is a big fan, by the way. It was his first time there. He ate his entire sandwich, and half of my chips), went to the library to get some books (I’m in charge of the story portion of music playtime this month), and then headed out to the windshield repair shop. They were able to fix the chips in less than 30 minutes, and you can barely see where they were. I was quite happy. We then headed home just in time for me to get dinner started (since I was making pizza, I had to get the dough started). Joseph was a super-trooper the entire time and didn’t complain at all (until the evening, so we just put him to bed early, which he didn’t seem to mind. 🙂

This Week in Pictures: