Joshua is quite a weird little kid.  His little quirks are very interesting & make me smile (almost) all the time.  At our FunFit classes, he takes awhile to get used to it but then he has a blast.  He spent a good portion of this morning’s class running around the room with the balls & spinning in circles to the music (don’t worry Dad, nothing was around for him to get hurt).  As I’ve complained about before, Joshua has lost his sharing abilities since our trip but he’s gradually getting better.  My friend Kristen came over this afternoon with her almost-1-year-old daughter Chloe, & Joshua was pretty good.  He did move several toys out of Chloe’s reach but he didn’t grab them out of her hands like he’s done with other kids recently.  At least that’s progress.

Joshua is talking a lot more which is great.  He loves making animal sounds, especially “maw” for the cow (which he yells pretty much every time).  He’s even learning to read, which I think is amazing at his age!  We were at the grocery store the other day & Joshua looked up & started pointing to the “B” in beef on the wall above us (we were in the meat section) & said “B” over & over.  He can pretty consistently say A, B, C, O, & Z when I point to them.  He likes to go over the letters in his name that hang above the crib before bedtime, so it would be great if he keeps this up & learns to spell his name early.  I’m also amazed at how well he can identify animals.  He loves pointing them out in his books & making the animal sounds for many of them (he can even make a better elephant sound than Erick or I!).  And he likes going over colors & will point out pretty much anything that’s yellow (”lellow”) or purple (”puh-pul”).

Our little boy is quite the smart, cunning kid.  He knows how to procrastinate everything, especially going to bed.  He likes to say “cuddle” when he’s done nursing & we go to brush his teeth.  Then we’ll brush teeth & he’ll ask to cuddle again.  He knows that Mommy & Daddy love to cuddle & thinks we’ll fall for this trick.  Sometimes we do, but as soon as we lay down, he’ll get up & start jumping on the bed.  When we get up & start heading for the nursery, he’ll ask to cuddle again.  But we don’t usually fall for it twice in one day (usually).  Joshua has finally learned to clean up his toys—yeah!  He just needs the right motivation.  Stickers & coloring are usually the best motivators.  If I agree to let him watch his Jo Jo movie, he’ll literally clean up all of his toys even if every one of them is out!

Our latest project is potty training, although we’re still in the early stages since he’s so young & not fully ready for it quite yet.  We’ve had a potty seat in the living room for awhile & he’ll sit on it to read his books, usually preferring to keep his pants & diapers on.  It is nice that Joshua will sometimes tell me after he goes & will go sit on his potty after he poops.  On Monday, we even tried having him sit on it bare-bottomed for 45 minutes while I let him watch his Jo Jo movie & read several books to see what would happen.  And less than a minute after I gave up & put the diaper back on, guess what happened?  Yep, he pooped & peed—a lot.  Eventually, we’ll do this more often & see what happens.  I am sooo not looking forward to having to clean out a potty seat (to me, that’s worse than changing a diaper), so it would be nice to progress him to using the regular toilet soon.

We went to a fun run last Saturday to raise money for the Heart Institute at Children’s Hospital.  It was quite a long drive there but we had a great time.  Joshua enjoyed his stroll but then ran all over afterward & played on the playground until we dragged him away.  Then Erick left the next morning for “camp.”  He’s playing doctor in the woods with his classmates for a field training exercise—one of the perks/challenges of attending to a military medical school.  He gets back tomorrow, which is his birthday.  The cool thing is that he’s supposed to come back via helicopter (which is especially great because they’re up in Pennsylvania!).  Happy birthday, Erick!