Darr Family Blog

Most of this week was pretty rainy. I guess the almanac was right in saying that May is one of the rainiest months in San Antonio. The main road out of our neighborhood has been washed out twice this week (and is currently still closed). Luckily, there is more than one way to get out of the neighborhood, so we haven’t been stranded at all. You know that there’s been a lot of rain when even the ducks look for higher ground! 😉

We took advantage of the breaks in the rain to get Joseph out of the house (avoiding getting cabin fever). We took walks and enjoyed beautiful scenery and sunsets:

We also made sure to frequent the park. It’s really nice having a park in our development. Joseph loves looking at rocks and sticks. He likes to hit the sticks against the different playground equipment to hear the different sounds (I think he does this more than actually playing on the equipment, lol). One of his new words this week was “park” (said in a questioning tone as we drove by one day…almost as if he were asking if we were going to stop and play).

The major thing that happened this week was that we decided to completely stop using baby food with Joseph. He’s been doing really well with snacks, so we decided to see what happened if we started feeding him table food all the time. It’s gone remarkably well! He doesn’t want to eat as much in one sitting as he did with the baby food, so I just offer him more snacks throughout the day. He still has a bit of a hard time chewing certain meats, so I try to give him other high protein things (like peanut butter or scrambled eggs) to make up for that. His occupational therapist was really impressed and thinks that we’ll be able to stop having therapy visits soon (she wants to continue for a bit longer to make sure that he doesn’t regress). It’s nice to not have to buy any more baby food, and meal time is a lot easier. It makes going out to eat a bit easier as well.

New words/phrases for this week: park (as mentioned before), happy, dance, pretty song (he said that today after we finished singing the Sacrament hymn at church)…and so much more, I’m sure. I can’t seem to keep up with it anymore!

 

Joseph seems to be growing up so fast! This past week has been full of reminders that he’s not a little baby any more. He’s beginning to try to exert his opinion about things (telling me he’s not ready for food or a drink by waving his hand at me and telling me “no-no”, or if I ask him about things like what show he wants to watch or what music he wants to listen to, he’s good at saying “no” to what he doesn’t want, lol). He also is beginning to figure out that he can manipulate certain things to his will, like pillows. 🙂

Another thing he likes to do is try on different articles of clothing that don’t necessarily belong to him.

One thing that reminds me that he’s getting bigger is that his nap times are becoming more hit-and-miss. He used to take a 2.5-3 hour nap every day, like clock-work. Now, I put him in his crib (he hasn’t learned to climb out yet, thank goodness) and sometimes he’ll fall asleep right away while other times he’ll play for a good long while before falling asleep. Today was one of the days that he fell asleep right away, which made me not feel AS bad when we had to wake him up to get him ready for church.

As you can see, he has plenty of things to entertain him if he doesn’t feel like sleeping, lol.

The biggest change this week, is that he has started to drop two-word sentences here and there. The first instance occurred when I was putting him in his car seat. He likes to fasten the chest straps, so I was letting him do that, telling him that he was such a big helper. He said, “I helper!” It was awesome! It was also great when he was playing with a toy, held it up, and asked me, “Wat dis?”. Thirdly, just today, he showed Paul his monkey and said, “It’s monkey!” We’re very proud of him. 🙂

As far as other adventures, we’re having to get used to the humidity that is ever-present during the spring/summer in San Antonio as well as discovering all of the new “wildlife” in our area. This week was bug week. In addition to the “regulars”: scorpions (outside only, thank goodness) and spiders, we found these 3 guys:

A new adventure every day, I suppose!

 

 

 

 

Before I start my recap for this past week, I need to mention one thing I forgot to write about in my last post: the huge and (almost scary) thunderstorm that we had almost 2 weeks ago now. We were home (thank goodness) and starting to get Joseph ready for bed when it hit. We’ve had some pretty big storms while we’ve been here, but nothing compared to this monster. The wind was blowing so hard that the rain (big, fat raindrops) was literally hitting our house sideways. Lightning was flashing, thunder was booming, our lights were flickering, and rain was just pounding  the house (the weather-stripping on our front door couldn’t hold out the water, so Paul had to lay down towels in front of the door to keep the entry way from flooding…thank goodness we have tile there)! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it starting hailing. Now, I’m not talking pea-sized hail. It was the the size of quarters…almost golf-ball sized. Paul braved going out in it for a split second to throw some boards over my potted plants in the back (he saved them by doing that…they would have totally been torn up). The next morning, the weatherman was saying that our part of town got 5 inches of rain in that storm alone. Crazy! The wind and hail knocked some of our fence boards loose, but Paul was able to secure them back where they’re supposed to be. He’s so handy. 🙂 Luckily the worst part of the storm came while Joseph was still awake, so we could reassure him and let him know that even though it sounded scary, we were safe. He’s pretty mellow, so with our help, he took it all in stride.

Okay, Now for this past week: Monday and Tuesday were our shopping days, as usual, so not much happened on those days. Joseph is perfecting his climbing skills (which I’m not very happy about, but it’s life, lol). I now have to gate him into his room when I take a shower in the mornings so that he doesn’t get into trouble. The first day that I did so, he was SO not happy. He probably cried the entire time that I was getting ready. Each day got progressively better (at Paul’s suggestion, I started playing his kids’ music station on Pandora which seemed to help tons, along with him coming to the realization that I wasn’t going to leave him in there forever) and by Wednesday, he went in without a complaint and we haven’t had a problem since.

On Wednesday, we went to playgroup at the park (this past week’s location was a park that we hadn’t been to for quite a while…I’d forgotten how cool it is). Joseph loved running around, and he even found an old friend (I have another picture of him sitting on this same toy, but he was quite a bit younger) that he had to climb on right away:

Two funny and cute things that have happened this week: One morning, I went into Joseph’s room to get him up for the day, and he popped up in his crib to greet me. This time, instead of his usual excited “HI!”, he said to me, “I see you!” I guess that all those games of peek-a-boo and “Where’s Joseph?” have really rubbed off, lol. The other funny thing is that Joseph has really started…relishing his food. The boy has always loved to eat, but now…almost every bite is immediately followed by him saying “UMMMM” (his version of “yum”). Paul managed to capture Joseph right at the height:

Oh yeah…he’s also getting better at his spoon control. He still goes pretty wild and crazy if I let him have full control (the other day I spent some time trying to get oatmeal out of his hair and eyebrows), but he gets better day by day.

Saturday, we decided to go to Old Town Helotes in the early evening to walk around. We got there a bit too late to look in any of the stores (it seems that most of them close around 5…we got there around 6) but we were able to walk around some pretty cool places anyway:

To wrap up this post, I’d like to talk about my awesome Mother’s Day. It started out with Joseph sleeping past 7:00 (divine!), followed by breakfast. After breakfast, I was presented with my gifts:

Paul knows that the book “Guess How Much I Love You” is one of my favorites (I actually got him a copy the Christmas before we got married), so he decided that Joseph’s gift to me would be a smaller, board-book version (so I can read it to him, since one of my favorite things to do is read to Joseph) of the book. Paul’s gift was a necklace that has two parts to it. One part says “I love you…” and the other part (on the moon-shaped piece) says “to the moon and back”. It’s actually my favorite quote from the book. My sweet husband put so much thought into this present, that I actually cried when I realized what it said. After breakfast, Paul gave Joseph his bath and then he watched him so that I could get ready for church. It was nice knowing that I could take a long shower and take more time getting ready, knowing that Joseph was in very capable hands. We then gave Joseph lunch and put him in for a nap…which he didn’t take (though he played very happily in his crib for an hour and a half, lol). After that was church, which was awesome! Beforehand, the leaders had arranged for substitutes for ALL of the women who normally don’t get to go to Relief Society (due to other callings) so that we could go for a special lesson (and treats)! The lesson was based on the 6-week scripture challenge that we just finished (we had 6 different sets of scriptures that we read, devoting an entire week each to each set, and recording our feelings in a journal that the Relief Society presidency provided for us). It was an amazing challenge, and an amazing lesson. It was mostly sisters bearing their testimonies about how the challenge helped them learn and grow. At the end of the lesson, we got cookies and milk, which were yummy! It was so great to be both spiritually and physically fed! After church, we went home and had dinner and then enjoyed a walk around the neighborhood. When we got home, we decided we’d better get Joseph to bed early, since he’d been up for 12 hours at that point (a LONG time for him). I love getting to put my little man to bed. As I was rocking him, watching him fall asleep, I was reminded of just how lucky I am to be his mother. He’s such a little miracle, that Paul and I created with the help of our Father in Heaven. As I moved him up to rest his head on my shoulder, I wanted to hold him like that forever…I realized that he’s getting so big…I want time to slow down just a bit so that he can be my baby for just a bit longer…but time marches on, and my little man is growing up, which is wonderful. I’m amazed at the things he accomplishes each and every day, an I love to see it happen. I hope and pray that he will turn into a good, strong man and worthy priesthood holder, just like his father. I love the men in my life!