Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

Life's been a little busy but I still wanted to put up a quick (belated) Thanksgiving post. We have much to be thankful for this year, starting with these two cuties!

  This group of pictures foreshadows our attempts at taking a Christmas card picture (more on that--including plenty of blooper shots--at a later point in time). This is the "best" one we have in their turkey gear--they're both looking at the camera and mostly sitting upright.

Josiah's looking good...Thomas is not.

I have a feeling that over the next year or two we're going to have a lot of these "nervous" photos of Jojo. He looks concerned about what Thomas might be planning to do next...

More nervous eyes. Not sure what Thomas is doing. 

A little pre-Thanksgiving fun...

Jojo is big and sturdy enough to sit in the bumbo--yay! I love kids in bumbos--they're so cute! 

Having two boys, I didn't think there'd be much opportunity for dress-up, which I loved as a kid. It may have only been hats, but the scene that plays out below proved me wrong.  I brought TJ's fleece hat over to join the party because he was being a little aggressive putting the not-so -soft plastic fireman hat on Jojo's head. Happily, little J didn't seem to mind this game, even when his eyes were covered.

Laughing yet? 

As a bonus, please enjoy the video below. A genuine Jojo smile, with an unexpected twist at the end.

Please note that no babies were harmed in the making of this video. Jojo is still young enough that he's as flexible as Gumby. He didn't even cry.

Birthday Fun

We celebrated my birthday Sunday and Monday. On Sunday, Thomas helped me make a cake. It got just a little messy...

 Scraping the bowl

 "Yicking" (licking) the bowl...the best part!

Helping me blow out the candles

Kathy came to visit on Sunday and brought this enormous sausage coil. We popped it in the smoker, along with a turkey breast, and had twice baked potatoes and cornbread stuffing for a little Thanksgiving preview. Delicious!

 Our pre-Thanksgiving feast!

Mama and her boys

 T's new favorite way to be wrapped up after a bath, and then Ed added the turban.

 Daddy and Jojo watching football

And a little video of Thomas singing me "Happy Birthday"

Some smiles

Josiah gives us these huge smiles--ones that start small and quickly spread across his entire face. They're great, and they're contagious. You can't help but smile back. The one exception to these smiles is when I pull out either the still or the video camera. Then he's super serious. I've gotten a couple good smile photos (and too many rejects to count!), but the huge growing grin has been elusive when I've tried to catch it on video. Here's a little montage of Josiah smiles/faces, but I'm still hoping to catch him at his best.

Oh, and your other reward, besides seeing Josiah's cute little face, for watching the entire 1 minute and 4 seconds of this video? Hearing Ed sing "My Little Buttercup" during the last 10 seconds or so. It's probably good that he doesn't read the blog often...I'm not sure he'd be thrilled to know his performance was up for the world to see! :)

Last weekend

We took the boys to a nearby park last weekend. Jojo slept in the stroller the whole time, but TJ played on the jungle gym and ran around. 

This is our most frequent view of Thomas lately--he's always running, and he's usually running away from us!

  

Daddy and TJ

Some other people (see them in the background?) came prepared for the ducks and geese--with plenty of bread. They were nice enough to share. Thomas practiced his awesome throwing skills as he tossed bread chunks to his feathered friends. 

I bought a desk for (eventually my office, but for now...) our bedroom. TJ was all about helping daddy put it together while I made dinner. It came with far too many pieces, and a few of them were damaged, so the desk adventure included a trip back to the store for some undamaged parts. Happily it's now assembled, and I've enjoyed working at the desk rather than on the bed! Pictures of the desk and the rest of our place to follow at some point (as soon as I take them). 

Jojo signals "touchdown" during the Monday night Packer game.

Josiah is 3 months!

That's right, little J is 3 months old! When did that happen? He has lived in 3 different houses in 3 different states and traveled to Texas already--quite a busy kid! 

Three month stats: 14 lb; 24-3/4" long

Quite a contrast from Thomas, who was 16 lb 13 oz at three months old! 

Josiah has chub rolls, but he's definitely more averaged sized than TJ was. 

He shares these contagious whole-face grins with us--so fun to watch his face light up. He's also started grabbing at things, like hair, shirts, toys, though it's still rather hit or miss. His favorite thing to put in his mouth is his wet, slobbery fist. 

Of course, TJ had to get in the picture action as well!

Potty Training Postponed

After some apparent signs of readiness recently, we decided to make a big push toward potty training this past weekend. Here's how Saturday went:
7:30: put on undies (pair #1)
8:45: made T try to pee before we left to run errands
8:50: peed while standing at the front door watching for Ed to come back from the car; changed into pair #2
9:00: dropped laundry off at laundromat (including the recently peed-in undies and pants)
10:30: While I was feeding Jojo, Ed had Thomas try to go; nothing happened. Ed left to pick up the clean laundry.
10:35: TJ looks at me and says "I made peepee." He turns around, and I see the double whammy. That load in his pants meant that it wasn't only pee... Time for another load of laundry! Changed into pair #3
11:30: I took Thomas into the bathroom to try. No dice. I walked across the hall to the kitchen to heat up lunch. Thomas continued to play in the bathroom.
11:35: "Mommy, peepee on the floor!" Changed into diapers.

The morning's total: 3 pairs of underwear, 1 peepee on the potty, 3 accidents, including 1 mother lode.

Consensus: He's not ready. We're going to wait a couple weeks before trying again.

Our kid ate broccoli!

TJ is fairly anti-vegetable. If it's green, he's particularly suspicious of it. He'll eat carrot sticks and peapods if offered with dip (white ketchup), but that's pretty much it. And even then, half the time he chews the carrot for 20 minutes and then spits out a mouthful of carrot mush. Gross. 

However, in the past week or so, we've been able to slightly expanded his horizons. First, he ate a mushroom, which he called "mushmeat." Then, he ate broccoli from our ham-broccoli roll-up dinner. He ate everything on his plate and then asked for more broccoli. I couldn't believe my ears...

Yes, Mom, I really do like it.

So we moved on  to cauliflower (this light green stuff is Romanesco). He willingly tried it, but then spit it out. We'll keep trying...

Thomas really likes snuggling with Jojo. 

 A picnic lunch on our patio last weekend

Photo crazy

I pulled out the "good" camera this weekend to try to capture some shots of Josiah. There aren't as many of Thomas for two reasons--first, he's not changing as rapidly as little J, and second, he's entered that phase where when you ask him to smile for the camera he either puts on a dopey, squinty-eyed grin or says "cheese" while looking away. Not a great photo subject right now! But this little guy cooperated nicely! It was too hard to narrow it down to just a few, so there are lots.

 These two are my favorite. Look at those big blue eyes and that sweet, innocent expression!

 Brotherly love!

 Look at those chubba chubba thighs! And yes, he's still looking like a red head.

These next four are like a flip book of smiling and falling over.

Josiah is looking at Thomas like he's concerned about what might happen next. I think this is an expression we'll see often over the next few years...

Life in Kalamazoo

We've now had a week together as a family in Kalamazoo, and we're getting settled into our temporary townhouse. We're mostly unpacked and we're getting into daily routines. 

Here are some pictures from week 1.

 Jo-Jo passed out, with arm extended

 Bathtime for Josiah. Thomas likes that there's enough countertop space for him to help!

 We went to a nearby farmer's market Saturday morning. So many people liked TJ's hat!

 Josiah all tucked in for the farmer's market. Check out his cute hat!

 Great variety of veggies and even fruit to buy! Ed also found the sausage stand. I bought butternut squash and made soup, and also bought some romanesco cauliflower just because it looks cool.

 Thomas loved all the small pumpkins.

Toga towel time. He ran until he tripped, and then got up, got rewrapped and ran until he tripped again.  Repeat. 

Ed's first trip (ever, I think!) through the tunnel.

It's tough to be the little brother...