Good News Flash: It looks like Paul will get paid for the time that he was furloughed during the shut down. We’re not sure when he’ll get it, but at least we know it’s coming!
The weather the last week or so has been awesome. It’s been nice and cool (we even had to turn on the heater once or twice). Almost every time I step outside, I can’t help but think to myself, “It feels so GOOD out here!” We don’t get too many fall colors out here because most of the trees are live oaks (unlike other oak trees, live oaks keep their leaves all year round), but at least it’s cooler! The humidity doesn’t seem as bad when the temperature isn’t as high. We ended up going to Sea World twice this week. We went on Monday, since Paul had the day off (Columbus Day), and again on Saturday. It’s nice to be able to just go for a couple of hours to see our favorites (dolphins, sharks, aquarium fish, alligators, and penguins). Joseph doesn’t really care much for the shows. I think we’ve already decided that next year, instead of renewing our passes, we’re going to get zoo passes instead. The zoo is a bit farther away, but it has more of what Joseph likes (which is to look at animals, lol) and the passes are quite a bit cheaper.
Joseph-isms: climbing up into my lap, helping himself to a cracker out of the bowl I was holding and then saying, “thank you, Mommy!”, saying, “thank you, sir” to the man who served us when we were at a restaurant, and calling anything remotely related to Halloween “skoopy” (his version of “spooky”…don’t ask me why he reverses the /s/ and the /p/).
This week in pictures:
Paul reading to Joseph…sort of. It’s a recordable book that he originally got while he was in Afghanistan, but never had the chance to record it and send it home while he was overseas. He recently sat down and recorded himself reading it. It’s now Joseph’s favorite book. 🙂He kept touching Paul’s head, saying, “soft!”Riding on Daddy’s shoulders.I think he liked being so high up.Checking out the scenery at Sea World.Joseph followed me into the master bedroom (usually I keep the door closed because we haven’t “Joseph-proofed” it) and felt like he won the lottery when he saw my monkey slippers…and Paul’s watch.Joseph climbed into Paul’s lap and got really, really close to Paul’s face until Paul let him take a bite out of his apple.He still loves his puppy backpack/leashAnd he loves saying “Cheese” for me now. 🙂Sometimes he’s a little over-exuberant when he says it, though…Loves anything that is a hat…so he loved it when we pulled out the witch hat.Sitting on a hay bale at Sea World (they have it decorated for fall/Halloween), but wasn’t sure of the scratchy hay.Still not sure about the hay, even when sitting on Momma’s lap.Here’s a picture that Paul took of all the hawks that roost on a tower near our house. We thought the construction on the road near-by had scared them off since we hadn’t seen them since the spring, but now we’re thinking that they flew north for the warmer months and then have returned here for the cooler months.And here’s a picture Paul took of a lot of them flying. I lost track while trying to count them after I got past 12…Penguins!This alligator was just hanging out…and hanging out…Puffins. 🙂More penguinsAnother shot of the alligator.Joseph LOVES to watch the fish.He liked it when they would swim right past him.Waiting for fish to swim byHis favorite: the dolphins. He can splash his hands in the water and he loves getting to see the dolphins up close.We have to keep a pretty tight grip on him or else he would jump in for a swim…that kid has no fear, I tell ya’!
Good News Flash: Paul is back to work and it looks like he’s getting paid. Now we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that he’ll get back-pay for the time that he was furloughed. Also good news: they are finally building a house next door! That means that we’ll have houses on both sides and hopefully not as many creepy-crawlies creeping into our house (once the house is done. I know we’ll have more while the house is going up.)
What We Did This Week: Not much, lol. I practiced music for Messiah (so that I could help the sopranos learn their parts as well as practicing for the Youth and Children’s Choir numbers). We played at the park a few times, had a couple of play-dates, etc. The highlight of Joseph’s week was probably when we took him to Barnes & Nobel to play with the big train table that they have there. Not only were they trains, but they were specifically Thomas trains. He kind of pitched a mini-fit when we left (even though we tried to warn him ahead of time. Each time I’d say 5 minutes…3 minutes, etc., he’d just say, “No!”) We’re working on that. 🙂 Oh, and the other highlight of Joseph’s week was when he found out that a friend of mine was willing to let him take home the toy stroller that he played with the entire time we were at her house (she had two, and her kids are a bit older and not into them anymore, so when she saw that Joseph liked it so much, she told us to take it home). He’s been playing with it almost non-stop since. 🙂
Cute Joseph-isms:
1)Playing with his plush giraffe: He said, “Yee-haw!”, put it on the ground, and proceeded to try to sit on it to ride it. The only problem with that was that it’s not very big, so he couldn’t really ride it. He just kind of sat down on it.
2) Joseph’s favorite book this week was “Where the Wild Things Are”. I read it to him at least once a day for a couple of days straight. One day, he was looking at it while I was changing his diaper, and I caught him “reading” to himself, “Roar the roars, gnashy teeth.” Apparently his favorite part is when the wild things “roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth […]”. 🙂
3) Joseph was watching a piece of construction equipment dig some dirt out so that they could lay pipes for the house next door. He said, “Truck digging…hooray digging truck!” He was very sad to see the “truck” leave. He loves watching the stuff going on next door.
4) He decided that he needed to put something into his new stroller to push around, so he picked one of his bears. He put it in, pushed it around for a bit, stopped, very carefully picked up the bear by the shoulders, gave it a hug (while saying, “Awwwww”), put it back in the stroller, and continued on his way. I love his tender heart!
5) He decided that different toys needed to ride in the stroller. Some of the more interesting ones were his knight (who’s about 3 inches tall…he put the knight in the stroller and then pretended to snore, as if the knight was sleeping) and his slinky.
6) I was reading him “Mr. Brown Can Moo” and he kept calling the cow “Clara-belle”. Can you tell he watches a lot of Mickey Mouse? lol
7) Two of his most-used phrases this week: “‘Scuse-me” and “Thank you, Mommy!”
This Week in Pictures:
Loving the train tableHe liked that the trains had magnets on the end so that he could link them togetherHappy boy 🙂Watching the work next doorAny time anyone was out there, he was at the window watching.He LOVES this strollerPushing his bearHaving a drink while waiting for the foodSerious face…not sure why; he was pretty happy…Giving his (pretty tiny) knight a rideTwo favorite things: wearing my shoes (well, anyone’s shoes, really, but in this case, they were mine) and playing with the stroller
This week started out promising, but then we had another adventure in parenting, followed by a relapse of an illness. Luckily, the week ended a bit better than it started!
Adventure in Parenting: On Monday, shortly before lunch/nap time, I stepped out of the house really quickly to check on something outside. Joseph took the opportunity (lasting one, maybe two minutes), to lock the storm door behind me. Luckily he left the front door open, so I could see him. He did not have malicious thoughts when he locked the door, he was simply playing with the lock (a knob that seems like it needs to be twisted around a million times before it either locks or unlocks the door). I spent about 20 minutes trying to coax/coach him into being able to unlock the door, but no luck. He almost had it a few times, but he would invariably not turn it enough times or end up turning it the wrong way. I ran across the street to ask my neighbor if I could borrow her phone to call Paul (my cell phone was in the house). While waiting for him to call back (which he wouldn’t be able to do until he was able to check his voice-mail on his lunch break, 20 minutes later), my neighbor and I tried to get him to unlock the door. He was not traumatized a bit. He would switch between trying to unlock the door, sitting on the couch watching TV, and playing with his toys. When Paul called me back, I asked him to come home, which he did. By the time Paul got home, Joseph was tired of it all (he was hungry and tired…it was an hour and a half past his normal lunch/nap time) and was very grateful when Paul unlocked the door. Needless to say, we went out that evening and got a spare set of keys made and have come up with a solution so that it won’t happen again (plus, I made a new vow to always keep my keys with me if I am out of the house and Joseph is in…even if it’s just to run out to the garage to toss trash). Yeesh!
After Monday’s craziness, I was more than ready to return back to normal life. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t in the cards. Tuesday brought Paul getting sent home from work because of the government shut down (He was home this past Tue-Fri. He was told to go back to work tomorrow, but the government isn’t sure if and when he’ll get paid for this past week or any work that he’ll be doing during the shut down. Ugh.) and it brought a relapse of Joseph’s strep. We took him back to Urgent Care (I hadn’t made a follow-up appointment with his doctor because he’d finished his antibiotics and had seemed to be almost better when his temperature shot back up…after the office was closed for the day, of course) and got more antibiotics for him. Hopefully this time it’ll lick it completely!
Cute/Funny for the week: 1) Joseph was playing with his cars and other toys that we have downstairs and I could hear him singing to himself. All I could make out was, “at home, at school, at play!” I love the fact that apparently Primary songs are going through his head while he plays. 2) While playing with his maraca, I could hear Joseph singing, “Marching, marching!” repeatedly. At music playtime, they sing a song and march around the room with different instruments. After realizing what he was doing (especially since he was marching around the living room while doing it), I made a mental note to be sure to hit up music playtime, since apparently it’s sinking in more than I thought. 3) While at music playtime, we were singing a song about dinosaurs. We got to the part in the song where the dinosaurs lay down to rest. Joseph laid down and began to snore…quite loudly. It was pretty entertaining for a lot of people. 🙂
This week in pictures:
My view for an hour and a half on Monday…Playing with carsLuckily Paul had a spare keyboard and mouse for Joseph to mess withPretending to be like DaddyHe liked the sounds the keys madeTrying on Daddy’s “hat”I was showing him how to cough into his arm 🙂A giant stick-bug that was hanging out on some of our Halloween decorationsJoseph has a toy knight (that he got when he had to get his face stitched up) that he was playing with. Paul helped him to make a castle with the Duplo blocks so that the knight had a place to live.If I recall correctly, Joseph decided that his toy dinosaur needed to attack the castle. I didn’t actually see it (Paul was the photographer for the castle pictures)…I just heard a lot of roaring coming from Joseph and Paul making the comment about a dinosaur attacking.Checking out the castle
Here’s to hoping that this next week will be back to normal!
