In my previous post I mentioned how much Joshua likes to eat, especially yogurt, and I have proof this time! I was getting something out of the fridge, and Joshua saw the open fridge from the dining room and bolted for it. It may look like Joshua is reaching for a carton of lettuce, but don't let him fool you. Look what is on TOP of the lettuce, that's right, yogurt. He can be very resourceful for a 13-month old.
And here's what happened the second after the first picture. 
He did end up getting some yogurt, so I'm probably encouraging his behavior. I have still more evidence. I was trying to bake cookies for a friend of mine, and I had Joshua in his high chair in the kitchen because I couldn't figure out how else to keep him out of trouble while I was busy baking. He was content for a little while to play with different things I handed him, but pretty soon he got mad. Really mad. I tried giving him Cheerios, which he promptly threw on the floor. This is what he really wanted.....
I love watching Joshua as he tries to be like daddy (actually daddy really likes yogurt, too, so maybe that's the explanation for Joshua's obsession). Tonight Paul got home from work and put his hat on him, Joshua just had a huge beaming smile on his face and kept taking off the hat and putting it back on. Paul also let Joshua behind the wheel. Before anyone calls CPS on us, it's only from the driveway into the garage, but Joshua gets SOOOO excited.
Joshua also takes after Paul in the way he can't sit still for very long. But I did catch them lounging together on the chair for a bit. Probably only 15 seconds, but it was cute while it lasted.
We're on our way to Illinois for the weekend. I'm really looking forward to spending a long weekend with everyone! Naomi's going to be so surprised to see her "Baby Joshua" walking around. That's right, he's finally doing it. Walking is starting to be his preferred form of movement. His first long walk was from the kitchen through the dining room and into the family room. Joshua and I had just gone to the pet store to get some dog food and I picked up a couple of vanilla rawhide bones for Casey and Junuh. Joshua got to hold them on the way home, and I had him hold them out for the dogs to take, but he wasn't very thrilled about giving them up. So he just followed the dogs around the house until he got one of the bones back. Strange things motivate him.
I'm starting to think I might be able to keep up with this blog thing!
So I've become quite disheartened by all of the Chicago sports teams that I really like. The Bears got Jay Cutler, who I think is a big whiner, and he's done nothing for them so far. The Bulls were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs and fired their coach. Granted, there's talk of them getting LeBron James next year, but I'm not getting my hopes up. And then there's the Cubs. Need I say more really?
So I'm sitting here on a Friday night watching the Chicago Blackhawks, who have a real chance at winning the Stanley Cup. If you know anything about me, you know that I've never liked hockey and am praying daily that Joshua won't ever want to play. That's how desperate I am at this point for a decent Chicago sports team. Also, Paul's out with some work friends at a restaurant downtown that I REALLY want to go to, but Paul has never wanted to go to with me. It all seems very unfair.
But enough about my sports problems. Last weekend was beautiful here in Michigan. Paul, Joshua and I spent a wonderful day on Saturday, walking down to Reeds Lake and having a picnic. I always thought while I was pregnant with Joshua that I would walk down to the lake regularly on my maternity leave and just hang out with Joshua down there. My plans never came to fruition because my son was not a very laid-back baby. If I stopped the stroller, even for a couple of minutes, he would wake up crying. He likes to be moving. I am continually amazed by my friends' children who can be transported anywhere in their carseat and stay sound asleep for hours at a time, whether they are moving or not. So last weekend was actually the first time I went to Reeds Lake with Joshua.
Joshua has become quite the eater. He pretty much will eat everything we give him. He has his moments with vegetables, but does pretty good in general. He will easily eat as much as Paul and I in a sitting. Tonight he had a piece of chicken, some rice, some bread, a banana and a yogurt. I think if I had an endless supply of yogurt he might never stop eating it. We're going to make the makers of YoBaby very rich. So anyway, we went to one of our favorite restaurants in Gaslight Village to pick up some food for the picnic. I've noticed that, as a mom, I am usually the one feeding Joshua......from my own plate.......and I don't get to eat until everything is stone cold. Maybe if I let him sit there screaming for a minute, Paul would notice that his son needs to eat too. My grocery bill is going to be a nightmare in a few years between the two of them. But I did actually catch Paul giving Joshua a bite.
And here he is after we ate, thinking to himself "I wonder if there's any more food in that bag????"
Joshua still isn't a very adventurous walker. He's very able to do it, but he gives up easily. He still prefers to hang onto things while he walks. Paul is very disappointed about this, and tries to work with him on it all the time. I personally think it's really cute that he prefers to hold our hand while he walks, since I know that soon he won't want anything to do with holding mommy and daddy's hands. Here's Paul trying to convince him to take more than a few steps on his own.....he's not very successful.
My sister Emily called yesterday to tell me that her husband applied for a position at the new aviation high school here in Grand Rapids. He's a flight instructor at Southern Illinois University right now. I am so excited about this that I am already looking at houses for them. It's the one thing that I don't like about living in Grand Rapids, the fact that we don't have any family here. Emily and Caroline both say they want to live here, but I've noticed neither one of them does..........hmmmmmm. I'm still working on both of them. We've tried with different members of Paul's family, too, but we haven't talked anyone into it so far. Maybe it's just a matter of time!
I'm baaaa.....ack. At the request of Joshua's many fans (OK, my mom and Alison), I have decided it's been long enough and I will be posting regularly again. I figure at least once a year.
So much has been happening that I am not going to try to catch you up to speed. I'm just going to start with what's been happening the last couple of weeks and go from there.
Joshua and I were very lucky to have a visit from my friend Krista, who was my very first college roommate, and her 3 beautiful kids. Seriously, they seem like the happiest children I have ever met. Everything you said to them was met by huge beaming smiles. Apparently life on a New Zealand dairy farm does wonders for your outlook on life. It was so good to catch up with them, even for a short time. It left me wondering (again), how all my friends ended up in so many different places. I could use up 5 years of vacation time just visiting them.
Joshua can walk, but he doesn't think he can. He will take 5 steps toward me and do a dive-bomb the rest of the way. He also hangs on to one of our fingers and drags us around. He prefers to run, but can't quite get his feet moving fast enough to keep up with his upper body. He does climb stairs though, here's a video from the first time he did the whole staircase. I love the panting, it shows you how hard he's trying.
One of Joshua's very favorite activities is going out in his stroller. No matter how grumpy or tired he may be, that can always cheer him up. He doesn't like to lean back on the seat, oh no. He has to be sitting up holding on to the tray in front of him. However, when he gets tired, that means he doesn't have a nice comfy seat to lean on. He goes face-first into the tray.
Joshua got his first diaper rash and I was a little at a loss about what to do. His diaper cream didn't help, so I was trying to find other things to help him get better. One of the things I tried was letting him go naked so he could air it out. It wasn't that effective, but it was humorous. Only later we found out that he had Hand, Foot Mouth disease and that's why I couldn't get rid of the diaper rash. So here's Joshua in the buff with his books. (He is healing nicely now, by the way.)
One of the gifts my parents got Joshua was a red ball for Valentine's Day, he's pretty fond of it, and here's a video of one of his new tricks, throwing the ball. I love how excited he gets about each new thing he learns, it makes me appreciate life more as well.
Joshua has a thing for boxes. He likes opening them, chewing on them, pushing them around, and the newest thing discovered is that he likes lounging in them. He had taken one of his Pampers boxes and pushed it all over the house. He finally got it wedged inbetween the couch and the coffee table. First he got mad that he couldn't get it to move any more, and then he decided that after all of that pushing the box around, he was tired, and the box looked like as good a place as any to chill out for a bit.
I just took a quick Starbucks break, and I've decided it's time to drink my coffee. Downloading pictures and videos takes a looooong time. I'm sure the remedy to that would be posting more often, so there weren't as many pictures in one post. I'll think about it.
