Josiah has become quite the talker! It’s so cute. I just love hearing his little phrases. All this is since December, when we saw my family at Christmas and he only had a small handful of words.  Here are a few notable ones:

"Wha choo doin’?"

"Whassat?" (He asks this about EVERYTHING.)

"Wha matter?" (I came into the living room to find Analise engaged in
an intricate play set up with all her people and a little drama going
on. Right next to her, Josiah had 2 little Care Bears, playing on his
own, making one say this to another. So sweet! These parallel play
moments between the two of them have been rare, but they are becoming a
little more frequent.) Just tonight, Analise is spending the night at her grandparents, and I overheard Josiah playing with the little bears and people all lined up on the bookshelf. He said, "Wha matter, Do-a? Wha matter?" And then later, "Where’s Do-a?" When I brought Dora up to the party, he said, "There you are!" Which is so comical, because he says, "There you are!" to any where question. For example, Where’s Josiah? "There you are!" Maybe because we say, "There you are!" Or Where’s my belly button? "There you are!"

When a movie ends, like tonight in the car as we were picking up Brian, he’ll say, "Staht it!" I’m working on adding "please" to this phrase.

Tonight he came up to me with a stem from the grapes that had been on the counter. "Eh-ty!" (Empty! Who’d have thought to call it empty?0

"Yeaaah!" and "Oooooo yeaaahhh!" He’s so responsive with these, too.
Like, "Josiah, do you want some cheese!" "Yeah!" and he gets all
excited, and when he gets the cheese, he’ll say, "Oooooo yeahhhh".

"Oh, maaan" So funny.

And "Where going?"

Analise is doing a lot of letter recognition, so we’re often spelling things, talking about letters, pointing letters out. Josiah loves to spout out his letters, "S-T-M-A-A-A" (We hear a lot of A’s because that’s Analise’s favorite letter, of course because it’s the most important in her name.) He can very nearly spell her name, too, which goes something like this: "A-S-E-L-A!"

He’s also picking up counting very quickly. He prefers the even numbers, though. When I start counting something for Analise, like bites of food she’s to take until she’s done, I’ll say, "One…" and he’ll chime in, "Toooo". When we say 3, he’ll say, "Fo. Five, "Si", Seven, "Eh", Nine, "Te!"

I know there are more, but I’ve had this blog open all day, so I’d better post it before it gets saved and forgotten 🙂 I’ll have to come back with some more.

Analise is such a chatterbox.  She’s always got something to say, and sometimes I just wonder where it all comes from! 

This morning, she hurt her finger playing and came crying to me.  I washed it off and suggested a band-aid.  The last time she had a band-aid was after 3-days of antibiotic shots for an ear infection last January.  It was traumatizing.  I think band-aids remind her of that, and to top it off, taking the band-aids off was painful enough that she doesn’t associate band-aids with any kind of feeling better.  So of course, when I suggested that a band-aid would keep her cut clean and make it feel better, she didn’t believe me and cried even harder.  She just preferred to hold her wound, keeping it covered with her hand.

As I put her in the car to take her to school, she told me she didn’t think she could play because she needed to hold her boo-boo.  I told her, "Miss Brenda is going to ask why your Mommy didn’t put a band-aid on it.  What are you going to tell her?"

"I’ll tell her the boo-boo didn’t want a band-aid." 

"But wait… I just heard the boo-boo say it needed a band-aid to keep it covered."

Analise in a high squeaky voice, making her hand talk, "No, no!  I don’t want a band-aid!  I’m fine!" 

Then when we got to school, the school "principal", Miss June, opened the door to get Analise out and said, "Good morning!"  Analise didn’t say anything.  Miss June said, "You’re not going to talk to me this morning?"  Analise said, "Shhh… my boo-boo is sleeping!" 

Miss June got her out of the car and said, "I hope your boo-boo feels better."  And as Analise sauntered in to school, I heard her say, "It’ll feel better when I grow up." 

You get an evening like tonight…

I had dinner all planned out.  Brian was going to be gone for a weekly training ride.  But as I was cleaning up the kitchen to start dinner, the drain started backing up on one side of the sink, and when I rain the disposal, it came up the other side.  ARG.  I tried to plunge it but splattered junk all over.  Brian came rushing in bc he’d had a bike problem he needed to fix and wanted to fill his water bottle.  I was looking for something in the cupboards under the bar area of the kitchen, and came up to CRACK my head really hard on the corner of the counter.  OUCH.  It was the final straw and I broke into tears.  Analise HATES to see me cry. 

I scrapped dinner plans, loaded A& J into the car for a $5 Little Caesar’s Hot & Ready Pizza and breadsticks.  We spread out a blanket in the driveway and had a picnic.   The kids played outside for an hour and a half until it got too chilly as the sun was setting, and I cleaned out the car.  Whew… am I glad the evening turned around! 

The house is still a mess as we’re unpacking from a whirlwind trip to Indiana for Easter with my family.  It was a nice visit, but way too short with family (um, 36 hours including sleeping) and way too long in the car (24 hours!!!).  Brian is amazing for driving nearly the whole trip, largely at night, and the kids were troopers to be tied into their seats for so long.  We’re so lucky to have such good travelers! 

I’ve made 2 more loaves of bread!  This is becoming a delicious, healthy new habit!  The current recipe of choice is a yummy honey wheat oatmeal bread.  Brian’s eating lots of PB&J sandwiches 🙂

Ok, enough rambling.  I’ve got to get the kitchen cleaned up so it’s ready for all that tomorrow has to offer. 

Courtesy of Martha Stewart… these cookies live up to their name!!

Humor me, as I watch my baby boy grow up 🙂  He’s so cute… I love his new haircut and all the soft neck I have to snuggle when we’re reading and I’m carrying him to bed. 

Analise and I colored eggs this afternoon, while Josiah played with a couple bowls of water and some plastic eggs.  Oh, and a granola bar.  That’s what he had the most fun with in the water.  He dissolved it into little grain pieces, and called, "Mo water!" 
We started out with a pretty swirly coloring kit, but it didn’t work well.  Analise was more than happy to use her watercolors and paint away.  So glad she doesn’t need much crafting extravagance to keep her happy!  She was so serious, she spared me one tiny smile as I tried to duly document the memories…  Oh, and you can see that her hair is quite a bit shorter (maybe 3 inches), but it’s kind of scraggly because this was right after naptime. 

I feel like this was the end of my baby boy 🙁  It was so bittersweet.  But I’m always one for a deal, and though I wasn’t ready for his first haircut, a local salon was having a grand-opening special with $1/year of age haircuts for kids.  Can’t pass that up! Besides, his sweet little strawberry blond hair didn’t look too bad from the front, but he had a little tail in the back.  I kept hoping it would curl, but it never did.  *sigh*  Brian’s mom didn’t cut his white-blond baby soft curls until he was 3!  I guess 21 months is older than most boys for a first haircut…

Ok, I didn’t get the final haircut picture, but you can see his little curls
(which are only there when his hair has been wet), and his soft, clean baby neck. 
Um, he’s sorting through Analise’s hairclips and bows to find the right one to match his Elmo pj’s. 🙂
I’ll post a picture tomorrow of my handsome little man.  He looks like such a big boy!  Very clean cut!

I made my first loaf of bread today!  Well, technically not first, since I make Tastefully Simple’s Bountiful Beer Bread all the time (I sell it, by the way!!).  It’s delicious.  But I’ve had this bread machine sitting in my cupboard, and it only gets used for pizza dough.  I saw this great recipe online, and thought it looked easy enough, and I’m craving carbs, so I tackled it as today’s adventure. 

I thought bread-making was a bit of an exact science, but I guess not… I didn’t have 1 full T of yeast, more like 2/3.  But it rose well, and it tastes FABULOUS.  Super easy!  Dump it all in my bread machine, turn on the 1.5hr dough cycle, take it out, form it into a loaf, put it in a greased pan, let it rise (on top of my oven, set at the lowest heat) for 45 min or so, and bake for 32 min.  Oooo man, I love me some homemade bread.  This is going to be a regular happening in the Toone house!

Josiah story for the day: On the way to preschool, Analise was munching on a
chocolate chip granola bar (Simple Harvest brand – so yummy and good
for you!). When she had to get out, she handed it to J, who finished it
on the way to the grocery store. When I went to pull him out, I found
he was smeared in melted chocolate chips. What a mess. So I cleaned him
(sidenote: just cleaned him up a little, really, bc somehow I don’t
care.  When did I get to be like that?
mostly I think, well, he’s a boy, he’s going to be a mess!  Besides the fact that he hates me to clean him up.). So in the
store, he got grumpy bc we weren’t heading to the bakery quick enough,
where he gets a free cookie, and I get 20 minutes of uniterrupted
shopping, until he finishes it or drops it, at which point he starts
grabbing things off the shelves… So 3/4 of the way through the store,
after he’s already tried to convince me (unsuccessfully) to give him some strawberries,
we’re browsing the cheese section, and he’s frantic for cheese (my
sweet little Wisconsin-blooded boy!!).  So I got a package of string
cheese, and gave him a piece (which I was going to get anyway, I
think). That placated him until we were in the checkout line. Where,
unbeknownst to me as I’m moving groceries to the conveyer belt, he’s grabbed a Reduced Fat 3
Musketeers MINT bar, gotten it open, and started chowing down   Little bugger. 75cents of my coupon savings down the drain So by the time we got to the car, he’s got chocolate everywhere. My little chocolate covered rugrat.

And the story from yesterday: I made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast.  We all enjoyed one.  Later J comes wandering out of the kitchen munching on a muffin. I’m
thinking, hmm… he got himself a muffin… it couldn’t have been that easy… Sure enough, I find the stool up to the counter, and the tops
are torn off 5 muffins, before he decided on the one he picked. Silly boy. And now they’re all contaminated from his snotty hands.

Analise
is ok. Drippy sick, grumpy bc her teeth hurt to suck her thumb. But the
dentist said the x-ray looked fine, and now we just wait. The teeth
could still die or abcess, but at least we know there’s no fracture in
the root. She was pretty good.  We actually have a regular dentist appointment for a cleaning and checkup in April, so hopefully nothing happens between now and then. 

There’s always something, isn’t there? Analise just stumbled and bumped
her 2 front teeth floor. Blood, tears, wiggly teeth… enough to make
this mom panic. I called her pediatric dentist, hoping he’d say it was
no biggie if they hadn’t fallen out
But he offered to see her ASAP or tomorrow for an x-ray. Analise was
frantic at the thought of seeing the dentist, so we’ll go tomorrow.
Hopefully the little wiggle will tighten up, though they’re still
seeping blood around the top an hour later. I hope she’s not following in the footsteps of her Daddy whose front 2 teeth are both capped.

I’m sure no one has noticed the lack of thumbnail pictures on the front page, but it’s a sign of how hard Brian’s been working. He’s swamped with school, directing the Science Olympiad which happens later this month, preparing a presentation for a conference next week, and designing a new website and business he’s hoping to roll out soon. He’s so excited about it, and aside from working, he’s spending all his extra hours programming and tweaking. Here’s a glimpse…