Darr Family Blog

Thankfully we’ve had no (major) adventures in parenting this week. There have been no stitches or cut tongues, and no new illnesses that needed antibiotics. The only minor (funny) thing was that this morning I was changing his diaper and didn’t cover him up (I haven’t had to for almost a year now) and we had a little fountain action occur. I had to comfort him because he seemed a little upset/possibly embarrassed about the whole thing. Potty training might not be as far off as I was originally thinking. 🙂

A couple quick funnies before we get to the pictures. This week, Joseph has shown an increased interest in superheroes. He has a Batman shirt, a Superman shirt, and an Avengers shirt. In order of preference, it’s Avengers, Superman, and then Batman. One day, both the Avengers shirt and the Superman shirt were dirty, so we were left with Batman. At first, he wasn’t too happy about it. Then I started singing the Batman theme song (“na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Batman!”). He thought that was pretty entertaining (enough to get the shirt on him) and the rest of the day he kept pointing to his shirt and saying, “na-na-na, Batman!”. He also points to his Superman shirt and says, “Superman!” in a sing-songy little voice.

Another thing he’s started saying is “Yee-haw!” The other day, I was sitting on the couch and had my legs crossed. He straddled my foot and then stated bouncing up and down and saying, “Yee-haw!” He also said it today (in the middle of Sacrament meeting, of course), while he was making his little knight action figure (his reward from the doctor who stitched up his face) ride his toy Velociraptor (a gem from the dollar bins at Target). I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised…we DO live in Texas.

One day, Joseph was a little cranky (it was right before nap time), so I started singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It”. Surprisingly, he started singing along with me…all 4 verses. His favorite, by far, is “shout hurray” 🙂

Finally, a few nights ago, I was trying to get him calmed down before bedtime (and failing, miserably…he was hyper!). We were sitting in the rocker in his room. I was holding him in a way that if he leaned back, he could see me. He pushed my glasses up on top of my head and looked at me, opening his eyes really wide and raising his eyebrows. I copied him, which he thought was hilarious. He started laughing really hard, which made me laugh (which made him laugh…vicious cycle). Pretty soon we both had tears in our eyes. Well, this freaked him out (seeing tears in my eyes and also feeling tears in his) and he started crying. I had to tell him that it was okay and that I was happy. Poor little guy didn’t know what to do with what seemed like a conflict of emotions!

Now for this week’s pictures:

And just in case we haven’t reached the ultimate level of cuteness in this post, here’s a short video of Joseph laughing. We were watching an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos and there was a video of twin baby boys. One baby was hiccuping and the other one was laughing at him. Joseph found this hilarious, as you can hopefully tell from the video:

Get ready for picture overload! I was too tired last Sunday to do a post, and it just didn’t happen during the week. Paul actually took more pictures than I did, which was good. 🙂 The high note two weeks ago was that we were able to finish Joseph’s occupational therapy. He’s met all the goals that we set for him (and has even excelled in some areas). He no longer pockets food in his mouth, he doesn’t gag on solid food, and he’s been eating table food for over two months now. I’m so proud of our little man! The low note for two weeks ago was that Joseph fell off the piano bench and bit his tongue quite severely. We didn’t realize how bad it was since he wouldn’t let us look at it. It bled quite a bit, but then Paul was able to get it to stop. Early this past week, we took him into the doctor because he had a fever that just wouldn’t quit. We found out that he had a double ear infection and strep throat (poor baby!), so he is still on antibiotics for that. The doctor looked at his tongue at the appointment and that was when we realized how deep of a cut it was. It was really deep! She said to keep an eye on it and to come in if it looked infected (though she said that the antibiotic would probably help keep it from getting infected). We got home that evening and Paul and I were so worried that we decided that it would be best for Paul to give Joseph a blessing. He gave it to him right before he went to sleep. That was the first night in over a week that Joseph slept all the way through the night without coughing, and his tongue looks like it is healing up nicely. I try to always remember to never underestimate the power of the Priesthood as well as the power of faith. Joseph’s appetite is returning, and he’s pretty much back to being the crazy, sweet, happy, loving boy that we’re used to. I’m going to have the doctor look at his tongue when he goes in for his 2-year visit (in a month and a half…wow, where did the time go?!) to make sure that it healed properly and that he doesn’t need to have corrective surgery (in case there’s too much of a bump). Other than those crazy things happening, our two weeks have been pretty much the norm. Joseph surprises us every day with new phrases and actions and we naturally think that he’s the smartest, funniest, and cutest thing in the world. 🙂 Okay! Here’s the picture overload:

We spent some evenings at the park:

We spent a lot of time just relaxing at home:

One sign I knew he was feeling better was when his appetite returned with a vengeance. This is after he had downed a bowl full of rotini noodles with spaghetti sauce:

Sometimes he doesn’t want his picture taken…either that, or he’s trying to get a hold of Paul’s phone, lol:

Yesterday was the day that we were assigned to help clean the church. Joseph loved it when I let him use this duster. He even tried to help by “dusting” things. 🙂

Joseph loves when we go to the car wash (when we bought the van, we were able to arrange for a year’s worth of free car washes from a car wash place) because he gets to see a lot of cars. This time there was a bonus, because I forgot that I’d left his goldfish crackers in my purse, along with one of his toy cars. Mommy was a super hero that afternoon!

Paul was able to get some shots of Joseph at church today. I love how handsome he is in his shirt and tie!

Finally, a video that Paul was able to get two weeks ago. Joseph was hitting single notes on the piano and singing along to the notes. We tried to get him to do it again while we were recording and this was the result, lol:

I’m beginning to sense a pattern. I don’t think we’re in a rut, per se…just choosing to take it easy for a while. This week was another laid-back type of a week. Oh, one cute thing happened on Sunday that I forgot to write about in last week’s blog post: Joseph and I went with Paul as he went home teaching. The family has a little girl about Joseph’s age, and she spent some of the time that we were there chasing Joseph around and tickling him. It was SO funny! He loves being chased, first of all, and second of all, when she would tickle him, he’d get all silly and scrunch up his shoulders and try to edge away from her (but just a bit…I think he liked it when she tickled him, lol). We couldn’t help but laugh at how cute it was. Now back to this week!

Monday we went to Sea World for about an hour in the evening, which was really fun, as usual. Joseph loves being able to look at the animals, as well as all the people that are there. I think we’ve decided that next year, we’re going to get passes to the zoo, because while it’s not as close as Sea World, it’s still relatively close (about 30 minutes away), there are (obviously) a lot more animals to see (which is what Joseph likes the most), and passes are quite a bit cheaper. We didn’t do much else because we needed to give Joseph some down-time to heal a bit. He’s handled this injury like a trooper!

Thursday, we had a bit of a full day. In the morning, we went back to the Urgent Care to get them to take Joseph’s stitches out (another sheet-wrapping ordeal since he understandably didn’t want to hold still for them to take out the stitches), we went to Target for a few things (where we found some cool Spiderman Band Aids to use for his face since it was bleeding a bit and we also wanted to protect his face for the first day at least), and then we stopped to pick up a few dollars worth of fireworks to set off later in the evening.

After a relaxing afternoon and a BBQ with just us (which was nice), we ended up going across the street to set off fireworks with our neighbors (who happen to be in our ward). Joseph had a lot of fun playing with their two kids, and he wasn’t scared of the fireworks like we thought he might be (of course, none of them were super loud). The really loud ones weren’t set off until quite a bit later, when it was dark. They were so loud (and so cool), I was afraid they’d wake up Joseph, but he slept through the night without a problem. One thing I love about living outside of city limits is that there were so many backyard shows. All I needed to do was look out my bedroom window and I got to enjoy pretty fireworks from the comfort of my bed. 🙂

One nice thing about the holiday is that Paul got Thursday and Friday off. He also has tomorrow off, but he’ll have Mondays off for a while due to budget cuts because of the sequestration. Hopefully when the new fiscal year starts in September, they won’t have to do furlough days (or at least not as many). After this 5-day “weekend”, Joseph might be one sad little dude come Tuesday when Daddy has to go back to work…Mommy will be sad, too…but that will be because I’ve already gotten used to having him home helping me out all day, as opposed to only being able to help out when he’s home in the evenings 😉 Saturday

Saturday was the one-week mark since Joseph’s (literal) run-in with the desk, so I thought I’d take a picture to show how quickly it’s healing. Saturday was also a fun day because we went to a couple of different farmers’ markets (and got some really good home-made bread) and the table and chairs we bought for Joseph came in. Now he has a place that is his size that he can use to color, play with cars, or just sit and hang out (which he did a lot of on Saturday). We’re really pleased with the quality of what we got.

All-in-all, a great week!