Darr Family Blog

Well, sort of. The week started out normal; kind of chilly, but normal. Then on Thursday, we had a weather adventure. We had the right conditions to get a mixture of ice, sleet, and this stuff called graupel, which is like pellets of snow encased in ice, making it look kind of like Styrofoam pellets or, as it was referred to by several of my friends, “Dippin’ Dots snow”. It hung around all day Thursday and well into Friday before it got warm enough to melt it all completely. I took several pictures, since this experience is all new to me. We played in it for a bit, but didn’t stay out too long, because it was still bitterly cold. Other than that, our week was pretty average with grocery shopping, music playtime, and oh! I forgot that we had a play date! I went over to my friend Celeste’s house so that Joseph and her daughter could play and we could hang out. She has become a really good friend. 🙂 We also had another friend of mine over with her two sons for dinner (her husband is currently out of state for work). Joseph loved playing with the boys, even though they are nowhere near in age to him (one is 7ish and the other is less than a year old).

Funny/Cute Stories for the Week:

We were driving down the road one day and Joseph saw some cows in a field. Usually I’ll draw his attention to them. I didn’t have to this time. I heard from the back seat, “Look, Joseph…cows!” He also told himself to look at several other things on that trip. 🙂

One afternoon, Joseph was stomping around the loft and I asked him what was up. He told me, “I a giant! Stomp, stomp!”

My friend Celeste and her family have a gerbil named Panda (he’s black and white). When we were over for our play date, she got Panda out so that Joseph could pet him (she was awesome and recognized his apprehension, so she got him to pet Panda’s back while she held the more wriggly end toward herself). After he pet him, she said that he could tell him hello, so Joseph leaned forward and said, “Hi, Panda, I Joseph!”

This week Joseph has really been into “keep-a-boo” (his version of peek-a-boo). The other evening, we were lounging on the couch and he was covered with a blanket. All of a sudden, I heard him say, “Where’s Joseph?” So I asked him where he was and he popped the blanket off his face (he’d pulled it in front of his face) and shouted, “Keep-a-boo!” This kept us both rather entertained. He also surprised me by demonstrating that he knows most of the words to the “Tickle was the tall one” rhyme that I do with his toes (and grew up with Mom and Dad doing it to my toes).

He’s also into giving kisses. After we have family prayer (right before he goes to bed), I’ll tell him to kiss Daddy on the head and he’ll go over, put his lips on Paul’s forehead and say, “Muah!” He’ll do the same to both my cheeks (though tonight, he kissed both my cheeks and my nose…but he was stalling, trying not to go to bed).

This afternoon, when I was putting his shoes on in order to leave for church, he said, “Oh no! They disappeared! Again.” I think he was referring to his toes.

We were watching home videos tonight, and I put the one on of Joseph’s first bath. He watched it for a little while and then started to get a bit concerned (in the video, he’s crying quite heartily). He kept saying, “Stop crying, baby!”

This week in Pictures:

Here’s a couple bonus videos:

Joseph zooming with his airplane:

Joseph showing how much he likes a show on PBS called “Word Girl”, which is about a superhero who uses a lot of different vocabulary:

We’ve been living in Texas for well over a year now, so I should totally expect the weather to be unpredictable and to change quickly…but I’m don’t. It’s been bouncing back and forth from cold and miserable to warm and pleasant all week. I’m thankful for our walk-in closet, because it affords enough room for me to be able to have both warm and cold weather clothes out at the same time, since I switch between them so often! Other than the flip-floppy weather, our week has been relatively normal. We got new phones, which has been fun and a blessing. We’ve had Sprint for a very long time (Paul had it before we got married and I got a phone as soon as we got married, so that’s almost 12 years for me and longer for him), but their coverage in our area here has been less than ideal. We switched over to T-Mobile, which has been much better. We get better coverage and have a cheaper bill. We also switched to Texas numbers, which makes it feel like we really belong now. 😉 The only other thing that stands out from this week is that on Thursday Joseph was really excited to have his “story friends” over for music playtime. I don’t know when it happened, but somehow something just switched in his brain and now he LOVES music playtime (before he liked it a bit, but got bored easily. Now he’s engaged the entire time and is sad when it’s over). Awesome! Oh, and on Saturday we took Joseph to the Old Town Helotes market day. One booth had helium balloons which they were handing out to the kids. We had Joseph walking with his puppy backpack/leash, so Paul just tied his balloon to the leash. He was SO into that balloon. He kept telling everyone we saw, “Balloon! Balloon!” I wish I would have gotten a picture because little did I know that about 15 minutes later he would trip and fall, land on the balloon and pop it. He was sad, but didn’t cry (I’m surprised it didn’t scare him). Later, while we were at HEB, we decided to get a bag of cheap balloons to just blow up at home. He was super excited about that. We blew up two of them (rather small so that they were less likely to pop) and he’s thoroughly enjoyed them. 🙂

Funny/Cute Stories for the Week:

Joseph, upon finding out that we were going to have macaroni and cheese for dinner: “Mac n’ cheese? Mac n’ cheese?!” (I answer in the affirmative), *he runs out of the kitchen, into the living room, starts dancing around, and doing fist pumps while jumping up and down* “Hurray! Hurray!”

We were driving past Jim’s (one of our favorite diners) and Joseph said, “Daddy, Uncle Jason, eat.” while pointing at Jim’s. He remembered that we took Jason to eat there when he came to visit back in November. He also remembers that it was Jason that gave him one of his trains for his train set. He’ll show me the train and say, “Uncle Jason!”

Joseph was playing with his cars and found the little bobcat construction thing (I really should know the names of the different construction equipment by now, but I don’t) that Grandma and Grandpa let him take home from their house when we visited this last Christmas. He got excited and ran over to me saying, “Grandpa’s house!” His memory amazes me sometimes!

When playing with his balloons, he was pounding them on the ground, saying, “I a monkey!” I guess he was pretending to be a monkey like at the zoo. 🙂

Joseph’s showing interest in “older” shows (I still can’s imagine them being THAT old, but whatever) like Gilligan’s Island (which he calls “the island”), M*A*S*H, and the original Batman. He mostly likes the theme songs, but he’ll laugh at some of the slapstick stuff that happens on Gilligan’s Island and he gets pretty concerned for Batman’s safety at times (He couldn’t care less about Robin, haha).

This Week in Pictures:

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: