100% Boy

Mom made the comment today that Josiah is 100% boy. I know what she means. He's CRAZY about trains, balls, and things with wheels. They spent ages outside this morning watching heavy equipment working on the house lot a few doors up from us. He runs everywhere, is constantly getting grubby, and eats like a champ. And today he enjoyed visiting the Habitat Re-Store shop with Papa, where we poked around building supplies and salvaged house parts. He (Josiah, not Dad!) especially enjoyed it when we left the store and could watch trucks speeding by on the highway. We look forward to you coming home this weekend, Jesse, since this 100% boy definitely needs daddy in addition to his girly-girl mother!

Halfway Point

Today was a relatively quiet, normal day. Josiah enjoyed a new book from Nannan and Papa that features a battery-operated stop light. It's been perfect for doing "red means stop and green means go"!

A Tale of Two Teddies

Well, Jesse, disaster struck this morning at 8:45 a.m. Before heading off to work, I scrambled around and started a big load of laundry. Somehow I managed to get Teddy *AND* Mo Teddy into the load, which only was discovered a few minutes later as we piled everything into the car to head to work and day care. By that time it was too late. They were both completely sudsed. With no small amount of apprehension, off we went to school as I concocted an elaborate story of how the Teds were having a special day with Nannan, since Josiah began asking for Teddy before we even backed out of the driveway. (For non-Jesse readers: Josiah's absolute best, inseparable friend is Teddy, and Teddy has a stunt double just in case Teddy should ever come to an unfortunate end. Josiah is happiest when he has both bears simultaneously; when he has a Teddy in his arms, he often asks for "more Teddy," which comes out "mo' Teddy.") Anyway...the drop off went well enough, I explained The Story to his teachers, and I finally bolted over just in time for several meetings in my lab. The plan was for me to dash back home as soon as I was free a couple of hours later, in hopes of delivering Ted in time for nap. Alas, I got a call just as I was grabbing my things to head home to retrieve the clean bear --- Josiah had done fine initially but had been sobbing inconsolably for time at that point. :( Knowing that, I went and got Josiah immediately and we spent the afternoon at home. Now I'm looking at a late night given how much I didn't get done today, but the good news is that Josiah had a great afternoon and evening in the end!

Birthdays

Today was Mom's 57th b-day and Tim's 24th, so we enjoyed a birthday supper with them here this evening. It wasn't quite as festive as I had hoped since today was CRAZY at work, leaving no time to do fun things like buy balloons en route home, but we enjoyed one another's company and ate a big, yummy supper. I took this photo right before Josiah's bedtime and couldn't induce him to remove the pacifier, but he managed a pretty good grin saying "cheese!" in spite of it. :) And I don't know where he picked it up, because I don't recall telling him that you were flying, but at dinner Josiah suddenly seemed to realize that you were missing. "Dada?" he questioned. I agreed that you weren't here, and after a moment, he said matter-of-factly, "Dada, plane, in sky, bye bye." Wow! I was blown away! We miss you!!

Missing Day

Well, Jesse, it must be odd to have pretty much entirely lost Sunday somewhere up in the air. Rest assured it actually existed for most of us! This morning Josiah and I made it to church in good time and I taught toddlers. This afternoon we played lots of Thomas, I introduced him to Kipper the dog (huge hit), we danced and played, he learned how to climb up my back and roll off (hilarious, I assure you), we played Thomas, we made a big chocolate-n-raspberry-with-cream-cheese-frosting birthday cake for Nannan in prep for tomorrow, we did several loads of laundry and got the room ready for Nannan and Papa, we played Thomas. We also did some Play-Doh, as you can see here. What I didn't catch on tape, but so wish I had, was him reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear." It's obvious he knows the entire thing off by heart given how he'll fill in words for us, but tonight I left him sitting on the big chair in his room with the book and his Teddies while I ran down to grab a paci. As I was trotting back up the stairs, I heard him chanting along, "Brown bear, brown bear, brown bear, see? Brown bear, see? Red bird, see?" and so forth. Clearly we've had a great day for you, since you didn't really get a Sunday of your own!

Traveling Circus

You wouldn't know that the cost of gasoline is through the roof to look at our family this weekend. Jesse left this afternoon for a quick trip to the Philippines. We don't envy him the 16-hour flight from Detroit to Manila, which he's on even as I type! He left just as Kara arrived; she and Matt are in the midst of a 48 hour trip to PA so Matt could do tiling in Tim and Holly's kitchen today. They were gone by suppertime, but the dinner table was full between Tim, Holly, Holly's two brothers, and a girlfriend, all of whom also were here basically for just the day to help with the kitchen renovation, and of course they ate here since Tim and Holly presently have a work site (or disaster zone?!) in what was their kitchen. One of Holly's brothers will spend the night here, and they're due to be heading back north by 6:30 a.m. tomorrow. To round out the travels, tomorrow Mom and Dad will drive down from NH -- you guessed it, to help with the kitchen.


Anyway, Josiah had a great day. We went to Market with Auntie Kara this morning, where he got to make a fresh blueberry, yogurt, and granola cup compliments of a local, just-launching food place. He played lots of Thomas at his train table and enjoyed all the new faces at dinner. I forgot to take the camera out at any point, so here are photos from yesterday, when we washed the cars before Daddy left.