Smitten with kitten sittin'

Meet Riddles, our feline house guest for the week. Josiah is absolutely in love with her: "Mommy, I LOVE her," he says emphatically, several times each day. He keeps me posted whenever her dish is getting low on food, keeps track of her whereabouts at all times, and gives her tons of cuddles. He's also delighted that she shares his interest in Thomas. And I have to agree: She's easy to like. She's still really young and little, is unbelievably friendly, is super active and bold, and is simply a great mix of curious-cute-and-naughty. As I type, she's spread out on my lap in the most unabashedly content and unladylike pose with her purr-box going like a lawnmower! 

Oh, and Rojo? Poor little guy is spending the week under a rusty strainer. :) 

All's right in our world

How about in yours?

Two of Josiah's favorite activities are 'chasing' and 'crashes.' He gets a lot more of both when both Jesse and I are around! 

Home again, home again, jiggedy jig

What a treat to be writing this with Jesse just returned home! (Wow, I'd forgotten what a treat domestic travel is, where we don't sacrifice 2-3 days in flights alone.) Anyway, since I'd dutifully snapped a few pictures of Josiah today, I'm posting regardless: Giving his very pink baby doll a drink, and saving Skarloey and Thomas from the perils of couch travel. He's a well rounded kid. :)

Playtime

Josiah attempted to engage, innocently enough, in two socially frowned upon pastimes this evening. First, he's been taking an interest in his potty in recent days, and of course I'm all for that! After using it tonight, though, he wanted to play with it — experimenting with how it comes apart, whether he could sit on it upside down, and so forth. Although it was clean and disinfected at that moment, I felt obliged to explain that we don't ordinarily play with toilets...even though they sound like "toy"lets...because invisible things called germs live on them...and...well...hmmm. Not too convincing to a 2-year-old. And then a bit later we had a run in with snot. He's had a runny nose for a few weeks, and he's oddly fantastic about not wiping it on his sleeves. He just calls out, "Mommy! I have snots!" or sometimes even fetches his own tissue. But tonight after I fished a Serious Snot of Significant Size out of a nostril (you know, one of the solid, gummy sorts), and obligatorily displayed it to him for oohing and ahhing, his fingers darted out and he plucked it from the tissue. "Josiah eat it?" he queried. "No, we don't eat snots. They're not for eating," I replied. "Oh. Oh," he said back, nodding matter of factly and rolling it between his fingers. "Snots are just for playing. I play with it." 

(Speaking of that runny nose, we've started a really short run of Prednisone today. Our first doctor visit in months and months, and we're hopeful that he won't sound like he's coughing up a lung much longer. Good news: Doc heard no wheeze, no sign of pneumonia, nothing. Just an intractable cough and a freak, occasional fever that should go away sooner or later. Looking forward to uninterrupted sleep in a day or two if the steroids work!)

Big boy

Today Josiah has seemed so old. First, he was (hooray!) just fine at day care drop-off this morning; I left him there contentedly painting as I headed off to work. Then, I was greeted at 5 p.m. today with the news that he'd used the potty two times while at school – unbelievable! He put on his own coat using the good old flip-it-over-your-head approach (with just a tiny bit of help), and he chose to walk down all of the stairs instead of taking the elevator. We had proper conversations on our ride home about Daddy coming home, about what we should make for dinner, about his friends at school. 

Sometimes he still seems so little, but today he seemed so big. 

A sad tale:

Josiah got it in his head that you were coming home today. At breakfast, he kept saying, "Daddy see Josiah, after school." I explained several times in simple terms that you weren't coming for two more days, not today, but...it turns out he didn't give up on the idea. When I picked him up from day care, I wasn't greeted with his characteristic huge smiles and hugs; instead, his face fell, and then he started crying – tantrum level, in fact – and pushing me away, "No, Mommy, no! Daddy! Daddy get Josiah!!" But of course the glass is more than half full: He will be so happy to see you when he awakes Thursday morning! 

I didn't take out the camera today. Instead, here's a photo from Sunday. Josiah was having trouble chasing his beef stroganoff and noodles around, so he came up with the idea of using both his fork and spoon at once! Ingenious. 

Uncle Tim & Auntie Holly

This evening Tim and Holly came over. Josiah was so excited! He had lots of fun building and knocking over towers with Auntie Holly, and then Uncle Timmy introduced him to the idea of building towers that Thomas could drive into and crash. And in characteristic fashion, as I was putting Josiah to bed, Tim continued playing with the toys. :) See his castle creation below. We then greatly amused ourselves watching YouTube clips of an old, favorite Muppets video that Tim, Kara, and I watched countless times times in our childhood. I think it's safe to say a great evening was had by all! The only improvement I can imagine? Having you here too, Jesse!

Music

Hi Jesse! The theme of our day was music. For starters, before leaving for church this morning, we watched a PBS show that featured lots of simple songs. We sang them together and even did a hula routine before it was over! Later in the morning, I kept Josiah in service with me at church (since I couldn't face the prospect of another tearful abandonment in the toddler room after doing it all week at day care). He sat happily enraptured through all of the singing and spent much of the sermon whisperingly asking me for "more singing." In the afternoon, up in his room, we had the CD player going and he began dancing -- rare for him to do spontaneously. He asked for the same track to be repeated probably a dozen times, and by the end he seemed to have developed a relatively specific choreography. It was great! This photo is a poor depiction of part of it, a sort of wide legged rocking back and forth. :) And finally, I'm so disappointed -- and frustrated -- that I can't get a video to load (5 hours of off-and-on trying and errors, so I've given up!). After supper as I was tidying up, Josiah began singing Edelweiss, and I managed to record it. He sings the entire thing almost perfectly when concentrating, but this was a covert recording of him just messing around on the couch and idly singing to himself. Guess you'll have to enjoy that one when you get home.

Bean counting

The fact that I've started running calculations can only mean one thing: We're ready for you to come home, Jesse! The tally since November puts us at 1 day with you traveling for every 1.6 days together...and that's not figuring in evenings away for local stuff. You're loved and oh-sooo-missed! Thought you might enjoy this picture of Josiah "flying teddy" this afternoon just like you fly Josiah on your feet. And Josiah looked super cute before bed tonight.

Special Tweet

Despite the fact that he always has a good day at school in the end, Josiah hates leaving the house each morning -- runs to hide from getting his shoes on, his coat on, whatever; cries in the car; and often has to be pried off me by Miss Jade or Miss Kristen. It's an hour-long performance each day (and getting longer; the last few nights he's begun asking before bed if "Josiah stay home with Mommy all day after sleeping?"). We've tried routines of being firm...of being soft...of quick departures...of drawn-out ones...and who knows how many other tactics. Other moms told me that drop-offs would be smooth as silk after the few few weeks. Eighteen months of day care later, I'm still waiting. And in the meanwhile, I (a) choose to view it as a testament of how much fun we have together, and (b) have resorted to bribery to make some mornings easier. Today we had the promise of French fries. When I arrived to pick him up today, Josiah could hardly spit out the words as he hugged me: "Mommy - Josiah - Josiah special tweet? Josiah go to the restaurant? Fwench fwies? Come on Mommy! Come ON!" Sharing a small order of fries with lots of ketchup at Wendy's before coming home was indeed a special treat that we both enjoyed immensely. Of course I forgot the camera in the car, so here's an action shot taken back at the house. 

Afghanistan

Jesse's in Kabul for 24 hours, not a great place at the moment. So, we're anxious to get word from him tomorrow when he hopefully makes it uneventfully on to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In the meanwhile, Josiah and I enjoyed a trip to the library this morning. We'd hoped to attend their weekly story time, but alas, it was cancelled at the last minute. We had fun anyway! Josiah took out some Clifford books, The Cat in the Hat, a story about a big boy bed, and one about a dragon.

Trick Play

Yikes! It's taken a month for me to put up the final post to close out Jesse's last trip. We gingerly managed to collect Daddy from Boston Logan on 12/12 in the midst of that terrible ice storm that wiped out power to much of NH for a week. And we've been moving at high speed ever since! Here are the sorts of things Josiah only gets to enjoy when Daddy's around:

Football.

Josiah starts by choosing which play they'll run, then they get set, hike, and ordinarily he runs to catch the ball then spikes it on the floor. The play I caught here, though, seems to be some sort of trick running play...

Sledding.

We got a nice, big snowstorm in Rochester, NY the day we were packing and leaving (after having a wonderful Christmas week with all of Jesse's family!). Josiah had a blast playing in "real snow" for the first time. Please join me in grinning at Jesse's camouflage, borrowed winter wear. :)