Well, I am finally gonna bit the bullet...I mean come on, what does it take 15 minutes?! I have four or five random things that I wanted to write down about Josh and Audrey and keep putting it off. But today, I am clearing off all minor To Do Lists. That's right, just the minor ones. I have about 50 different To Do Lists: Post Its, Lists on Fridge, about 5 different emails with a subject of To Do, several different Notepad documents on my PC's desktop, a separate 'To Do Folder' on my PCs desktop with even more documents inside, of course BTR's Task Manager website, a couple of lists from Ann, and to top it all off I have about 50 things in my head that I keep forgetting to do. But today is going to be different. I'm going to knock off as many small To Dos as I can (both work and personal) and consolidate all other lists.
August 25 - Becoming Sneaky
Well, today Josh started really pushing boundaries with Mom and Dad. He's known how to lock doors in our house for a while now, but he's never actually 'used it against us'. After getting Josh out of the tub and putting on his PJs, we headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb his hair. For a while, Josh had some cold sores on his lips from licking them so much so after teeth and hair we'd always put on lip medicine (Vaseline). So to continue the story, we walked towards the bathroom, and I forgot something in his changing room, so I turned around and Josh continued to the bathroom. You all know where this is going... When I came back to the bathroom, the door was closed and locked.
"Josh, unlock the door."
"I'm putting on lip medicine!" Great, I thought to myself. I'm imagining the Vaseline all over the place. In his hair, on his face, on anything he touched, etc.
"Josh, open the door now." I said a bit sterner.
"I probably putting on lip medicine," Josh said. He likes to inject 'probably' in the 'wrong' spots of his sentences but it's still funny when he says it.
"You're probably going to be in trouble if you don't open the door now!"
"Just about done," Josh says, and I envision him nodding his head up and down to make sure I know he's telling the truth.
"Open the door now Joshua!" I said in my 'mad tone' and the door promptly swung open.
"I put lip medicine on, yep." Josh said with a smile and to my surprise the 'lip medicine' was only on his lips. :) So how could I not smile at Josh when he was beaming up his big smile at me all proud of what he had done? I continued to tell him that he can never lock me out of a room with the door and he can't touch medicine when I'm not around. Josh was complying with his head nodding while starring into my eyes with the utmost sincerity, so I knew he was paying attention :)
August 30 - Becoming Clever
OK, so there is no privacy left in our house :( I must provide a little background for my behavior that I'm going to describe so I don't sound like too much of a 'freak'. For those of you who don't know, the Hennen's (and thus Ann too) have an 'open door policy' in their house. Even if a door is closed, nothings to stop someone from opening it and bursting in. If you haven't figured out what I'm talking about yet, I'm talking about being able to go to bathroom 'in private'.
So as I said, Ann still has this 'policy' in her blood. I've begged and pleaded for changes but to no avail. I guess Ann just likes to have company and visit while doing her business. Me on the other hand, I like to have doors closed, but as I mentioned, a closed door is nothing more than an obstacle for Ann when it comes to entering a bathroom - not to mention, there is no warning via knocking. So yes, in my own house, I've resorted to locking the door everytime I go to bathroom. Sounds weird I know, but what choice to I have? If I don't get into the habit of locking the door, not only do I have Ann busting in on me, but if in-laws are at our house I risk the chance of having to 'visit while going to bathroom', so I've just resorted to locking the door all the time.
So along comes Josh. Josh is the one and only person (at least up until this point) that I don't mind in the bathroom with me. Plus, he needs to see 'how to go to bathroom' so he learns. However, he doesn't always close the door when he comes/goes, so I'm left with a door wide open. So again, I've started locking the door keeping even Joshua out so that I can keep my peace of mind.
That 'peace of mind' is now gone. Josh must have seen Ann 'pick' a lock in the house; you know poking little 'pin' in the door handle to pop the lock. Now, if Josh comes to bathroom door and it is locked...
"Daddy, you locked in!"
"No Josh, I'm just going to bathroom, I'll be out in a minute," I say hoping Josh will just wait for me.
"I going to get the key!" Josh yells and he sprints off towards the kitchen. I can imagine him high stepping out there with a sense of urgency that he is going to 'Save his Dad!'. Seconds later, Josh arrives. "I got the key Daddy! Unlocking the door." I hear the pin rattling around door handle, but I'm not too nervous as I don't really think that Joshua will figure out how to pop the lock. Just as I think that, "Pop!" the lock opens, and immediately after, the door swings wide open. "Daddy, I unlocked you from bathroom!" he says, then takes off sprinting for the kitchen to put the 'key' away again. I'm left there, door wide open, hoping no one besides Josh walks by the door :S. So as I said, me being a private person, this new found skill of Josh's is definitely going to put a kink in my comfort levels. I'll have to start rigging the doors with chairs or something. He's come a long way since his Click! incident though :)
September 8 - I closed my eyes, yep!
Josh has always been a great napper (note that Audrey is slowly but surely becoming good too). He usually takes a 2.5-3 hour nap every day. Every once in a while, and I mean once in a while, Josh decides he is not going to sleep. Ann usually makes him stay down there for an hour or two, but my policy is that he's going to be 'in bed' for three hours. If he wants to sleep fine, if he wants to lay there awake fine, but in either case, he's going to relax and regroup for a while. Well, today, Josh made the decision he didn't want to sleep, but he was being a little too rambunctious. That is the one thing we don't allow. Him 'playing' or 'yelling' while he's in bed. So I went in there to calm him down.
"Josh, you need to take a nap. If you don't take a nap, then we aren't going to do XXX." I don't remember what XXX was, but you get the point. "Now close your eyes," at this point Josh squints his eyes while listening to me finish, "and take a nap. I don't want to hear you anymore."
"Like this?" Josh asked in his curious voice as he squinted his eyes.
"Close them all the way and go to sleep Josh, and I don't want to hear you anymore," I said in a stern voice as I walked out of the room. It did the trick, I didn't hear Josh for the rest of his nap, but the 'entertaining' part was about him learning that sleeping meant closing his eyes. When I woke him up, the first words out of his mouth were, "I closed my eyes!" He said it while squinting and touching his eyes. "I closed my eyes and just went to schweep, yep."
It's been over a month since this happened now, but 90% of the time when we wake him up, without us inquiring, he quickly declares, "I schweep good. I closed my eyes yep!" Note that that percentage jumps up to 100% when he actually doesn't sleep. If we hear him babbling downstairs in his bed, but leave him there, after he's rested enough, and we get him up, he insists that he closed his eyes. It's all I (probably Ann too) can do not to laugh because of the sincerity in the way he's telling me that when I know he didn't, but at the same time, I don't know when I should bust out the Truth vs Lying speech ;)
September 9 - Language Skills
As anyone who has or has already gone through raising a toddler knows, the rate at which they learn the English language is fascinating. Just ask my sister Cathy, I think she still expects Josh to be a mute as she is always so impressed by how much he talks. To this point (at least for me, I can't vouch for Mom while at home), I hadn't really made an attempt to 'teach' Josh any songs, phrases, or counting. He knew how to count to 10 or more, but I *think* he just learned it somehow ;) As I type this, I realize how silly this sounds. Obviously Mom must be working with him at home. But, I know she hadn't worked on the ABCs yet. Josh had a couple of songs in his arsenal, but not the ABCs so we decided to teach him.
Josh picked up the ABCs incredibly fast - at least I thought so. Within about 2 hours, he knew the song and it amazed me. Thinking about the song and the lyrics (letters), it'd be like learning a foreign language song. I mean think about it, Ann and I don't walk around saying the 'letters' of the alphabet in our daily conversations, so to my knowledge almost every letter was a new sound/word he was learning. Except for P, which he always gets a sly smile on his face when he sings it :) So, like I said, I was pretty impressed at how fast he learned it, but little did I know how big of a 'mistake' we made. Josh immediately became obsessed with this song. Sometimes this obsession was cute/impressive, like the time we were at a park and some kid a bit older than Josh started singing the ABCs and stopped mid-song and Josh picked right up where he left off as if they were a duet. Impressing Dad and other parents at the park. But other times, it was torture. Like when we drove up to Grandpa and Grandmas 4.5 hours away and he sang that song back to back to back to back to back - I'll quick typing, but it's suffice to say that he sang it back to back the entire way to Morris. I thought my head was going to explode, especially when he kept insisting that Mom and I sing it with him.
One of the 'language phrases' that really sticks in my head that is cute and impressive (to me) at the same time is:
There my are.
This is really supposed to be 'Here I am'. When Josh plays hide and seek, when he reveals himself, he enthusiastically blurts out this phrase. Obviously very cute, but it impresses me in the way he is trying to use different nouns, pronouns, or whatever those words are called ;) (I always slept through English class, so I didn't pick up the finer details). It's just fun to watch the 'wheels turning' as Josh constructs his sentences and puts thought into picking the correct 'tense' of a word to use.
Note, good and bad...Josh no longer says 'There my are', so he's learned the proper way to say it (good), but we no longer get that cute saying (bad) :(
September 11 - Audrey's Update
Audrey is still an extremely easy baby. She's almost always pleasant to be around (as long as Mom or Dad are present). In fact, she is so easy going that she is often 'taken for granted' I think. Actually, probably the inverse. Josh is so busy is what really causes this. Anyway, I just feel bad some times when I haven't blogged about her a lot or taken a lot of pictures, but I guess that is the downfall of a being a second child ;) As soon as she gets just a bit older, I'm sure it'll pick up as she become more mobile and active, thus 'entertaining'.
Anyway, by this date, she has two teeth and is sitting up on her own. She's so proud when she's sitting up and shows it by clapping her hands when she gets excited. It is so cute. As I write this, I realize I should have gotten some video tape of this, but I've missed my chance now. I'll have to force myself to be better ;)
We've just started messing around with solid foods, but at this point, it is purely to get Audrey used to trying to eat. She definitely didn't take to it as fast as I remember Josh taking to it, but my memory could be fuzzy too. But she's getting it, even though most of the time getting food into her mouth is like breaking into Fort Knox.
So those are the few items that I've neglected to write about for a long time. I'll have another post coming shortly about Josh's trials and tribulations over the last week, and I promise to be better and posting - assuming Josh and Audrey do something that is worthy of a blog ;)