Joshua at 6months....well...7 months!

Joshua turned 6 months....last month! Yesterday he turned 7 months old. I had every intention of posting his 6 month pictures with all his stats a while back but never actually did it until now.

My adorable little guy is a whopping 20lbs already (I think 95th percentile) and I can't remember the exact height but it was in the 50%.

Joshua is the best little boy ever! He is a champion sleeper, eater, crawler, and mess maker. He loves to hold very lengthy conversations with his toes and always gets a huge grin on his face whenever his daddy is around. Sometimes when he wakes up either in the morning or from a nap I won't even know he's awake until I come through and he's rolling around checking out the world making the cutest little noises. He loves his big brother so much. He takes his fair share of lickings from John but can dish it right back when John is least expecting it. He likes peas. His hair is getting darker but his eyes are staying blue. In some lights his eyes look green but whenever I take a picture of him they are always a vibrant blue. His cheeks are SO much fun to kiss, and I absolutely love getting slobbery kisses back.

He's growing up way too fast, but I LOVE each and every day I get to spend with him.

Here's a short clip of when he first started to crawl (army crawl). Daniel was in Utah for an audition so I made sure to get this on my phone so I could text it to him. He got distracted by the Buzz Lightyear and therefore wasn't tempted with the red feather anymore...but at least I caught him doing it for a few seconds. He's doing it ALL. THE. TIME now so I'm sure I'll get more and more little videos of it.

Home Depot-Kids Workshop (Feb)

Does anyone else take their kids to the Kids Workshop at Home Depot on the first Saturday of the month from 9-noon? Well, we sure do! Last month Daniel happened to be going to Home Depot at just the right time and happened to see a big sign saying "Kids Workshop" Free. He went over to check it out and they gave John the cutest little apron, a pin depicting the craft of the month, and a small packet with all of the pieces of the project with instructions. John had a blast hitting everything with a hammer while daddy put together the little shelf thing. He took the cutest pictures (which I don't have on my computer so I'll have to wait to post them until I can get them off of his computer) and they told him to come back every month for a new craft and a new pin.

This month it was my turn to take the boys. Daniel was working that morning so I packed up the kids in the double stroller and headed out. By the time we got there John was extremely tired (that's what you get when you wake up earlier then usual) and wouldn't wear his apron so I instead put it on Joshua. I thought he looked SO cute.

My handsome little handyman!

John was fine as long as he could stay in the stroller with the hammer.

Joshua had a lot of fun just looking at it and eventually slobbering all over it.

Even though they were both tired we still had a lot of fun and I got the cute pictures I went for!

Bet you can't guess where we will be next Saturday morning?!

Speech Therapy

Meet Wendy...

Wendy is John's Speech Therapist. She comes to our house twice a week and spends 45 min each time playing games with John and helping him progress with his speech. Back at the very end of Sept. we had John's 2 year doctors appointment. At that appointment John's pediatrician noticed that he wasn't speaking...pretty much at all. He had 5 words that he would say and wasn't even attempting to string them together. After asking a million questions she referred us to the Early Start Program. Over the next few months they came by and evaluated EVERYTHING. After all of the testing and observing they determined that he is at the right levels on every category except for his speech which was at a 12 month level for speaking and 15 month level for understanding. We started the speech therapy in November and I feel like it's been a really big help not only for John but for me. At first when all of this was happening I thought this was my fault. If only I were reading more books with him or working more with him then maybe he'd be up to par. However, Wendy has been helping me realize that this isn't my fault and it isn't even a bad thing. He just hasn't developed those skills yet. Nothing is "wrong" with him at all.

I'm proud to say that John is doing fantastic. He is taking his time and even though the improvements don't happen very fast they are still happening. When we first started the Speech Therapy John could say:
Mama
Dadda
Bubble
Apple
Nana
(if he says it in his normal voice he means banana but if he says it in a higher pitched voice he's referring to Joshua. Any time he sees a baby he calls it "Nana")

Now his list of words consist of:
Mama or Mahzo
Dadda or Daddy
Bubble
Apple
Nana
Susu (milk)
A-ter (water)
Moe (more)
Bok (block)
Kaker (cracker or cookie)
Lie-lie (Eli) *his BFF
Jui (juice)
A-peas (pizza or grapes)
Up
Hap (help)

and his favorite word= No
He uses No for a variety of things "Knock Knock", "Hello", "Don't" and the regular "No" when he's trying to tell Joshua not to do something.

I'm so grateful that I have 2 healthy happy boys. I was a little nervous at his 2 year appointment because I thought perhaps I was going to find out that he had autism or something of the sort. My sisters little boy has autism and he was in many different kinds of therapies before they figured out what was wrong. I can't even imagine what my sister had to go through to figure all of that out about her son. And now seeing what she does with Logan every single day I have a profound respect for any mother with an autistic child. I love my nephew so much. He is turning 4 years old in just a couple of days and I can't even believe it. He's getting so big. It's been over a year since I have seen him and I miss that kid like crazy.

Anyway, Speech Therapy is going great and John gets SO excited every time he knows Wendy is coming over. I really need to start writing down all of the little things he does or tries to say during each lesson so I can see the improvements... even the small ones.

Eating Solids-Video

Daniel stayed home with the kids from church today because John has Croup and Joshua was throwing up. He had way too much fun making this while the kids were taking a nap....silly, but awesome!

MLK Day

This is January here in Santa Barbara...




Blue sky, perfect weather...a wonderful day at the beach. It would have been for me too if I hadn't just had a root canal before meeting everyone at the beach. Daniel and the kids had a lot of fun though. We went with a bunch of friends and it was such a GORGEOUS day. I wish I could have postponed the dentist one more day so I could have enjoyed it more but guess what.... THIS IS SANTA BARBARA! The weather has been absolutely perfect here and we've had many more beach trips since then. I have spent more time at the beach in January and Feb then I did during the summer.
Even my little baldy boy liked to get out in the sun...even if he did sleep on his Dad's lap or in Lee's arms most of the time :)
The boys were pretty tuckered-out by the time we left.

I love it here. Can I just bring Santa Barbara with me when I move so I can have days like these forever!?!

Eating Solids

On Sun January 30 (2 days before he turned 6 months old) we started Joshua on solid foods...well rice cereal with breast milk. He turned out to be a champ eater from our first try with the stuff. Daniel was home that night (one of the only nights of the week we actually see him) so he did the honors of the first bite. It took a little while but we eventually got through the small bowl I prepared for him.

Such a big boy already!

While we were feeding him John was sitting in his chair eating his dinner. He was so excited we were feeding the baby that he wanted to do it too. Me being the picture loving mother I am thought along the same lines as my good friend Jo, "That would make a great scrapbooking page...Big brother feeding little brother". I grabbed my camera and Daniel grabbed the video camera and we gave John the spoon...
The problem was no one was monitoring what John was actually doing...


He seemed to be doing great for a second then all of the sudden...

Wham! Right to the back of the throat!!

After that Josh wasn't too keen to eat with the spoon; he much preferred slurping it from the bowl.

....Still makes for a GREAT scrapbook page!

Just a sample

So I promised my sister that I would update my blog today...finally. It's technically past midnight so it is in fact tomorrow but since I haven't fallen asleep yet in my eyes it is still today! I have many many things I want to blog about and keep track of but I will again have to put it off until I can find time when my child (John) is not trying to press all the buttons he can every time the doors to my computer desk open, my other child (Josh) doesn't start demanding attention the moment I sit down to the computer, and when I am not half asleep or dozing off trying to stay coherent enough to see the screen properly!

Until that time I will take the advice of my 6 month old (yes, he's already 6 months old) and follow suit :)