Darr Family Blog

Well, another week has gone by, so it’s time to write another blog entry. 🙂 One of the highlights BY FAR this week was when the construction guys FINALLY decided to move the port-a-potty that has been residing practically in our front yard. Some time last week, a really strong gust of wind had tipped it over and blown it down the street (along with both our trash cans…THAT was a fun clean-up job)…I guess nobody missed it (considering the fact that there hasn’t been construction done on our street for a couple of months now), because it sat on its side until this past Monday when they came and got it. They moved it over to where there is actually construction going on. I did a happy dance when I realized that it was finally GONE! They also cleaned up the HUGE debris pile that was also right next to our yard. Our front yard looks SO much better now. Here’s Joseph doing one of the things that he loves best: checking out the construction workers (in this case doing the two tasks that I just mentioned):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another awesome thing that happened this week: I found out that I will not need surgery on my wrist for at least six more weeks (long story short: a while ago, while we were living in our rental house in California, I tripped over a baby gate, fell, and hurt my wrist. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, but when we moved to Texas, it really started bugging me. The orthopedics doctor did some tests and thought that I tore some ligaments. The hand/wrist specialist didn’t want to operate because he said that the test results said that there was a possible tear, so he didn’t want to go in unless it was for sure. If it still hurts in 6 weeks, we’ll reassess the situation). I’m glad to not have to have surgery (yet) and am hoping that I won’t need to.

Joseph is beginning to pick up vocabulary like crazy! Just this week he added “kitty” and “choo-choo” (in reference to his toy train). He is getting so big! At the beginning of March he goes to nursery, which he’s going to love! He is such a social little guy. He’s ready to hang out with other kids and play with all new toys. I just took him on his first official play-date with a little boy named Boone (who is only 3 weeks younger than him). He had so much fun, that when it was time to go, he actually started to cry! He calmed down after not too long and was my happy, smiling boy again. One funny thing that he’s been doing is trying out new places to sit. Here are the results this week:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, we wrapped up the week (or is it the start of a new week?) with a dance party tonight. Joseph likes anything with a beat, so Paul turned on some Muse. Paul and I started to dance a little goofy to get Joseph started, and then he went crazy! He was running around the room, flapping his arms and bouncing up and down. It lasted a good 15 minutes before we finally stopped. I love the time that we get to spend as a family. I’m looking forward to tomorrow evening when we get to take another walk around our neighborhood (another fun thing that we’ve been doing). We’re settling into life here and loving it!

It is insane how much has happened in a week. I don’t think that I can write it all down, so I chose four major things and I’m throwing in a bonus story that I forgot to write about earlier.

Story #1: The Dreaded Vacuum. This happened about 3 weeks ago. I pulled out the vacuum after a long hiatus. After committing my huge faux-paux with Joseph’s bath time (see previous post), I decided that I would be a little more careful about vacuuming with Joseph around. I mean, who knew if he would think that the vacuum could suck him up?! It turns out my concerns were not totally unfounded. While he didn’t freak out when I turned the vacuum on, he looked very, VERY concerned. I made sure not to point the vacuum directly at him, and he started to warm up to the idea. Then I took the vacuum upstairs. Where his toys were. That’s when it changed from interesting to hysterical. Joseph would take a toy, run up to the vacuum, and (almost) fearlessly toss the toy in front of the vacuum. He would then retreat to a safe distance to observe the effect. I came to the conclusion that he was doing an experiment to see if the vacuum would suck up the toys. When I finally got control of myself (for some reason, the whole escapade struck me as being quite amusing), I showed him (via putting the vacuum right up close to the toy) that the toys would not, in fact, get sucked up. He’s been fine with the vacuum ever since, lol.

Story #2: Waving bye-bye. This one is short, but sweet. We have been trying for a while now to get Joseph to wave bye-bye to people. For a little bit, he would wave, but almost always after the person had already gone. Just recently, he has gotten the hang of it, and now he waves bye-bye all the time. When Paul leaves for work, when my visiting teachers leave, when we leave after we’ve gone visiting teaching, when he says good-night to Paul, and…perhaps best of all…to ANY random person in a store. Yet another thing that I am ridiculously proud of and amused by. 🙂 Oh, and he’ll also do his own version of the sign “all done” (which is done by taking your hands and flipping the palms forward and backward) when he’s done with his food. Joseph’s version is more like waving his hands up and down, but considering the fact that he says “ah doe” when he does it, you can catch the meaning.

Story #3: The Bow-Tie: We recently decided that we needed to get Joseph some “real” church clothes. I was able to find him a couple of button-down dress shirts (he already had pants) and…some ties! I was excited because they are not clip-on ties. They have a loop of fabric (which is adjustable) that fastens in the back. Best.invention.ever. So now Joseph has a regular tie and a bow-tie. He wore the bow-tie to church today and got SO many compliments (I guess it helps that he looked ridiculously cute)!

Story #4: One, Two, Threeee! Another one for the record books. Not too much explanation, since there’s a video. I believe I posted about Joseph saying “two” after I would say “one”. Well, he’s now added “three” to that…only he seems to be under the impression that fun things happen when you get to three (it could POSSIBLY be from his experience that when we spin him in the computer chair, we count to three and then he gets to spin). Well, he decided to take things into his own hands. Enjoy!

Story #5: Gimmie “5!” Just tonight, we got Joseph to give us “5”. This is after many failed attempts by other people to get him to do it and Joseph looking at them as if they had lost their minds. Tonight I decided to show him by giving Paul “5” and then make the attempt again. Well, it worked better than I imagined. It only took him one time of seeing it before our little monkey was able to do it. 🙂

I find it interesting that we’ve only had a few weeks of “real” winter weather. Most of the time it has been really mild weather, but today was ridiculous. It was 80 degrees. In January. It makes me shudder to think what summer will be like…but anyways…with the weather the way that it’s been, Joseph hasn’t really had a chance to wear the cute winter stuff that we got him. Thank goodness for dress-up days!

 

In other news, I have realized that one of the funnest things about the age that Joseph is at is the fact that I can dress him up in cute outfits (he has Star Wars shirts, Transformers, The Beatles, Angry Birds, Captain America…pretty much anything that Paul and I like, lol). We discovered a while ago that we could get him onesies that look like Star Trek uniforms. These have been a favorite of ours for a while. My only minor complaint is that the neck-holes are a little on the small side (either that, or our kid has a larger than normal head, which could totally be the case, lol).Doesn’t he look thrilled? lol He’s probably tired of me taking pictures. I could seriously do it all day. 🙂

It’s hard to believe that our little man will be 18 months old in just over a month. We are all looking forward to nursery. Joseph knows that there are toys and other kids in nursery, so (we think) he’ll be pretty excited to get to go. He LOVES playing with other kids. Paul will be excited to finally get to stop walking the halls during the second and third hours of church (since I’m serving as the Primary pianist). I’m excited because…well, because I have a feeling that he’s really going to love nursery, and anything that makes him happy, makes me happy.

Here’s a little bit of what we’ve been up to: work for Paul is going really great. He loves his job, and really likes getting to interact with people from all over the world. I love being able to stay home with Joseph. Every day is an adventure. Like bath time. Joseph LOVES bath time. There was a short period of time that he was scared of bath time (even though he never had a problem before). We now think (after reading about it on the Internet) that he became scared of being sucked down the drain with the water. So after a couple weeks of no baths (though we attempted to give him one several times), and a few rocky starts (crying when he first went in, but fine after a few minutes), we got him back into the tub. He has a few new toys and we no longer drain the tub while he’s in it (oops, rookie mistake, I guess…I had no idea he could develop such an irrational fear). He’s back to loving it now, which I am grateful for, but now it’s hard keeping the WATER in the tub. He’s quite a vigorous splasher, lol. He’s also getting more and more responsive every day. He uses lots of hand gestures to get his point across. When he doesn’t want to do something, or doesn’t want something, he won’t just say “no”. He says, “No, no, no, no” and either waves his arms at us or shakes his finger. When everybody raises their hands to sustain someone at church, he has to raise his hand, too (though not always at the correct time, lol), When he wants us to pick him up, he’ll reach his arms WAY up and open and close his hands in a grasping motion (what parent can ignore that?!). His vocabulary consists of: no, uppp, tek-oooh (thank you), baby, dad, daddeeee, mommm (emphasis on the last “m”), mommy (only in dire straits), woof-woof (in reference to any dog), yessss, and beebee (different than baby…he pats his stomach when he says it, so I think he’s trying to say “belly”). He loves watching Dinosaur Train, Super Why, and Thomas the Tank Engine, he loves playing with anything with wheels, he likes going out, even if it’s only for a walk to get the mail (instead of each house having their own mailbox, we have a whole set of mailboxes all in one area. It’s just down the street, so it’s an easy walk), and he loves swinging in the swing that Paul attached to our back patio. He is such an easy-going, mild tempered, sweet little spirit. We are SO blessed to have him in our lives!