Darr Family Blog

I think that winter is finally here to stay (for a bit, at least). We did not get any snow (though it has been cold enough that had there been precipitation, it would have snowed). The Dallas/Fort Worth area (about 4-5 hours north of us) got 3 inches of snow as well as a huge ice storm…glad it stayed up there (though it would have been cool to see snow in San Antonio). They’re predicting freezing rain overnight, but it’s not quite the same, lol.

Faith-restoring story for the week: While I was emptying my cart at the commissary, getting ready to pay for my groceries, someone walked up to me and without a word, handed me two $3 off coupons for diapers (which were going to be the bulk of the bill, since I had two boxes). That made it possible for me to stay not just on, but under my grocery budget. What a blessing! I actually almost started crying right there in line because I was so grateful.

Joseph funnies this week:

During the week, I decided that I would wear a dressier shirt just for fun (so basically NOT a t-shirt, lol). Joseph saw me, immediately asked if we were going to church (to which I answered in the negative), then asked if we were going bye-bye (also receiving an answer in the negative). He then paused and said, “Pretty, Momma” (what a charmer, hahaha). Perhaps I need to get dressed up more often. 🙂

He was “reading” a book (The Napping House, which is rather repetitive, in a “this-is=the-house-that-jack-built” type of way) to himself and I was surprised that he was getting most of the words right, and on the right pages. That boy is seriously like a sponge!

We were headed to Paul’s work to drop off some extra Christmas decorations so that Paul could liven up the library a bit. As soon as we got through the gate on the base, Joseph started to look around, more interested. He then said, “See Daddy?!” I told him that we were indeed, going to go see Daddy. Then he said, “Yessss!!” Pretty amazing that he was able to recognize it that quickly. 🙂

Another teasing story: He was dipping his chicken nugget in ketchup (a condiment that he would like to dip almost anything in, by the way) and he looked at me (with a mischievous glint in his eye) and said, “Mmm, mmm, mmm! Cho-co-let. Mmm, mmm, mmm!” I burst out laughing, and so did he. 🙂

One of his favorite TV shows is Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood ( a spin-off of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood; it’s a cartoon about the place where all the puppets live). At the end of each episode, Daniel Tiger gives the screen an Eskimo kiss (rubs his nose against it) and says “Hug-a-muga!” The other day, Joseph was saying something that I couldn’t quite catch, and trying to rub his nose against mine. It took me a couple of times to figure out just what, exactly, he was doing. Now if I say, “Hug-a-muga!” he’ll say it back and give me an Eskimo kiss. 🙂

As I’ve mentioned before, Joseph loves A Charlie Brown Christmas. He likes the part where Charlie Brown looks into an empty mailboxes (looking for non-existent Christmas cards) and says, “Hellooooo” (with an echo). Joseph always runs over to our Christmas tree (because, believe it or not, we have an ornament that looks like a mailbox), opens up the door to the mailbox ornament and shouts, “Hello!!!”. Pretty funny how he makes the connection. 🙂

This Week in Pictures:

It seems like the weather just likes to ping-pong back and forth. I always check the report in the morning before getting myself and Joseph dressed because today’s weather could very well be drastically different than yesterday’s was. For example, most of last week was super cold and today it’s supposed to hit the upper 70s to low 80s…BUT by Friday, the high is supposed to be 48. It just makes me laugh and say, “Oh, Texas!” This past week was pretty laid back since Thanksgiving was on Thursday (Paul had both Thursday and Friday off, so we had a lot of kick-back time). The first part of the week was pretty normal. We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home, which I was totally fine with because I know that Christmas at Mom and Dad’s is going to be crazy (but oh, so fun…I LOVE it when we can all get together)! We introduced Joseph to several different classic Christmas movies. He loves “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, as well as “Frosty the Snowman” and “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” (though he thinks that Pete is pretty scary as The Ghost of Christmas Future). Friday, when everyone else was out shopping, we put up Christmas decorations (which Joseph kept calling Halloween, lol) and then went to Sea World and saw Joseph’s favorites: the dolphins, sharks, fish, alligators, and penguins. They had the park decorated for Christmas and it was pretty neat. Saturday we went to Bass Pro Shops to see their Christmas decorations and Santa’s Wonderland. We didn’t have Joseph sit on Santa’s lap because we weren’t sure how he would deal with being put on a complete stranger’s lap. He had a blast doing other stuff, though. There was a model train that they let the kids control, so he got to make it go faster and slower, as well as buttons he could push that made different train sounds. He also got to color a picture and ride a carousel (as soon as I put him on the carousel animal and gave him the reins to hold, he got super excited and said, “Yee-haw!” even though he was riding a deer, hahaha).

Way to go, Joseph! moment: At some point last week, Joseph ran over and pointed at the clock on the wall and said, “Octagon!” in a really excited voice. I looked at it, counted the sides, and said, “Hey, you’re right! That is an octagon!” He then ran over to a display case that I have on the wall, full of shells (they were Beth’s) and he gasped before saying it again, “Octagon!” Right again. He knew that those two things were the same shapes…I give Sesame Street all the credit! Joseph also recognizes all his letters and can count to twelve by himself (after which he almost always yells, “Blast OFF!”)

Funny/Cute Stories for the Week: Joseph is now into giving everything (stuffed animals, toys, etc.) kisses. It’s pretty cute. He’s also quite into getting “boo-boos” (even if imaginary) kissed “all better”.

The other day, Paul was putting Joseph into his car seat and Joseph was humming something. It only took Paul a couple of seconds to realize that it was the Bonanza theme song, hahaha! When I bounce Joseph on my knee, sometimes I hum it, so that’s probably where he got it, since we don’t watch the show very often, if at all. He surprised us both by humming the entire thing.

When Paul was vacuuming (getting ready to put the Christmas tree up), Joseph went and grabbed his stroller and was pushing it along while growling. We realized that he was pretending it was a vacuum. 🙂

One day Joseph was eating some chicken nuggets and he looked at me with a bit of a mischievous look in his eye before saying (while holding up a piece of chicken nugget), “Mmmmm…squirrel. Yummy!” He also pretended he was eating monkey. I guess he’s got the Hall sense of humor. 😉

Lately Joseph has been wanting to say the prayer, so one day, I decided to let him do it. He folded his arms and said, “Heavenly Father, thank you day, food, bless it, Jesus Christ, Amen”. It almost melted my heart. Now he gets a turn more often. 🙂

Yesterday, when I went to get him out of his crib in order to get ready for church, I found him with his shirt around his waist. He’d pulled his arms out of the sleeves and stuck them through the neck hole. I have a feeling this is only the beginning….

This Week in Pictures:

And here’s a bonus video. A lot of the carousel pictures were turning out blurry (since it was moving and all), so Paul took a quick video of Joseph on the carousel:

I thought it was cold before…what we had two weeks ago was nothing compared to what we had at the end of last week (and continuing into this week). Yesterday we didn’t get above 41 degrees. For South Texas, this is just obscenely cold weather. Having said that, I LOVE it! I’ve always loved bundling up during cold weather. Because of the weather, we didn’t go out and do too much until the weekend. Paul’s brother, Jason came to visit (because it was less expensive for plane tickets the weekend before Thanksgiving as opposed to Thanksgiving weekend.) We took picked him up from the airport on Friday night, went out to eat (at Jim’s, one of our favorite Texas diners), and came home in time for Joseph’s bed time. Saturday, we bundled up and went to see the Alamo and the River Walk (we didn’t walk too far along the River Walk because it was just so cold). We then had lunch at Whataburger (a Texas burger-chain that has pretty good food). After that, we went home so that Joseph could take a nap and Paul could put the turkey breast on the BBQ (we had an early Thanksgiving dinner) and then did a bit more sight-seeing (we took Jason to Old Town Helotes) before settling down to our early Thanksgiving dinner. Sunday brought church (we all went to Sacrament meeting and then Paul ran Jason out to the airport while Joseph and I stayed for the rest of the block of meetings). Joseph loved having “Unka Jashun” visiting. We have some pictures of family on a bulletin board in his room and we practice every night saying who each family member is, so he recognized him almost instantly. His first words on Saturday and Sunday morning were “Unka Jashun?” (asking if he was sill here) and he was kind of bummed when he realized after church that Jason had gone back to his house in California. He kept saying Jason’s name in a forlorn sort of way. We’re looking forward to getting to spend some time with Jason and the rest of our CA family when we go for a visit during the upcoming holidays.

Joseph-isms for the week:

1) We’ve been watching a lot of Charlie Brown since Joseph loves Snoopy and Woodstock. Lately I’ve been catching Joseph saying, “Oh, brother!” and “Good grief!” hahaha 🙂

2) This morning Joseph came up and said that he had an “owie finger” and showed me his finger so that I could kiss it better. I teased him a little bit by saying that I had an owie on my finger (I really did…I pinched my finger pretty badly in the buckle for his booster chair a few days back). Without prompting, he leaned over and kissed it better. 🙂

3) A few nights ago, I was singing Joseph to sleep and he asked me “da back?” which means that he wants me to rub his back under his shirt. I did so while I was singing and then for a little while after. Then he leaned back to look at me and said, “thank you, Mommy,  da back.” Talk about melting my heart!

Weird story for the week:

So…two of the keys on my piano just randomly stopped working (a C and a C# if you’re really curious). They didn’t come back up after being pressed and they sustained the note (so I knew the strings weren’t broken or disconnected, which was good). I finally called in my piano tuner, He was able to come the day I called (he just lives in the next neighborhood over) and he took the top of the piano completely off (something he didn’t have to do when he tuned it…in that case, he only had to take part of the top off). Well, what we found inside was totally surprising. We found a good-sized handful of rubber bands! One of the rubber bands had worked itself in between the two keys, which is why they randomly stopped working). I was mystified because, well…we don’t have any rubber bands. The tuner and I came to the conclusion that they must have been in there from the previous owners (since we bought the piano after moving to San Antonio). Maybe they had a mischievous child who figured out that he or she could make the rubber bands “disappear” and just kept doing it…at any rate. the tuner didn’t charge me anything for the fix and we had a good laugh about it.

This week in pictures: