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Before we dropped Grandma and Grandpa off at the airport to go home after their stay with us, we went over to see Great Grandma and Great Grandpa for a visit. It was fun to chat with them and see their reactions to little baby. Josiah was fascinated with Great G-pa's whistling and baby J flashed him a big smile which we got on camera here.
For those of you that have it, there are more pictures from this visit in the snapfish album called "Family Photos." If you do not have this album, let me know and I will send you a link.
Grandma and Grandpa came to visit for a few days after Christmas as "their gift to themselves," which was a lot of fun for baby Josiah as well as for Heather & David.
Grandma helped Heather get the house a little more organized by getting various "organizational tools" for the living room and baby's room to clean up the clutter a bit. This included getting a 4 drawer filing cabinet for all my music, (yeah for that!) a couple of bookshelves and a side table to replace the dangerous bookshelf (sharp edges) that we had before, and for the babies room some Sterilite drawers for the closet to organize my craft stuff and one for the baby's clothes and another little shelf with tubs on it to put many of Josiah's toys and books.
It was a huge relief to get all this stuff organized and a BIG THANK YOU goes out to Grandma and Grandpa for this gift!
While Grandma and Heather were organizing, Grandpa had a lot of quality time with baby Josiah. He got to feed him squash and let him grab the spoon and "feed himself" as well as grab the bowl to lick out the remainder of the squash. This of course made for a very "squashy" Josiah to which Grandpa had a little cleaning up to do. It was very cute though. Grandma got her time in with baby J too though when she would read to him and play with him. Now he is spoiled and wants us to give him attention every second!
Josiah says, "Why is this bow on my head?" We were trying to get a good picture of him smiling with this bow on his head under the Christmas tree as our BEST Christmas present this year, but Mr. Josiah was not in the mood to smile. I looked back at this picture and just laughed and laughed at how mortified he looked with this bow on his head!
Since he had plenty of toys and things already, instead of more gifts, baby's favorite toys today were the wrapping paper and the bows. Mommy got him some special baby books with Bible stories as well though. Our first Christmas with baby J was a special one and we wouldn't trade it for anything. We started out by reading Luke 2, then we opened gifts and did the stockings last. One of David's gifts to me was a jigsaw puzzle and since he and I like doing them together, the present is also the time spent with him doing the puzzle. This was a very popular gift! We plan to go to church later today and then to lunch afterward at some place that is open. Tomorrow Grandma and Grandpa Walker are coming to spend some time with us. We had a Marti Walker Christmas this year....all the presents opened and cleaned up before 6am! We run on baby time here!
Today is not Josiah's birthday as many of you might know since he was just born last June. However, "the girl next door" just turned one year old and had a balloon to spare that Josiah was allowed to borrow since he is a balloon lover. I got lots of fun shots of him with the balloon that I posted on snapfish if you would like to see more pictures. These were the best though. He gets to a point with the balloon where it seems he is afraid of it, but at the same time loves to play with it. It is really funny. However, if there is a balloon in the room he will find it and strain to reach it until you bring it over to him.
Today baby J was practicing sitting up and so I had him propped up with pillows so he could be supported and was giving him toys to play with. I left momentarily to go to the bathroom and when I came back I found him in this state. It was too funny not to take a picture! He is getting pretty good though at sitting up, but his balance is still lacking a bit as you can plainly see! He is reaching for things more now and gets fixated on things that he WANTS and reaches for them. He will throw little fits if you don't give him what he wants too...and the fun begins! Ha ha!
He has also been teething, which really hasn't made things too bad as he has been handling it rather well. His earlier refusal to take anything into his mouth other than mommy's acoutrements has been upgraded to include cold stuff such as this frozen teething toy to help numb his hurting little gums. Anyway...must go, baby emergency!
Grandma & Grandpa Carpenter just sent Josiah a bunch of clothes and this outfit is one of the many they sent. The onesie says "Monkey Around" on it and it is very cute! I added the Santa hat to go with it and baby had some nice holiday attire!
Thank you Grandma & Grandpa for my new clothes!
Today we celebrated my birthday which was actually on December 5th. David took the day off from work and we had a nice day together. We went to lunch at this place called "The White House Grill" in Post Falls, ID. We had heard about it from our friends Joyanne and David from church. It is a Mediterranean style cuisine (LOTS of garlic) and it was SO good! We could smell the garlic in the car as we pulled into the parking lot there. I had this Sea Bass dish with risotto rice and Baclava for dessert. We also had this French Bread with balsamic vinegar,
olive oil, and garlic for dipping sauce as an appetizer. David had the
"Istanbul" which was a chicken breast with peppers and garlic and a sauce
served with rice and rice pudding for dessert.
Then later in the evening, we had one of my students come over to watch Josiah and went to see "The Chronicles of Narnia," which by the way is a GREAT movie! It worked out really well too because baby slept the whole time we were gone. We tried to work it out that way as he gets really grumpy if there isn't a Mommy there to wake him up to eat!
We have been getting to know our newest neighbors and yesterday Heather (yes she is a Heather too) invited Josiah and I over to visit with herself and her daughter Brooklynn. It just so happened it was also my 30th birthday that day, but she didn't know that. So it was a nice treat for me to visit with a friend on my birthday!
Brooklynn is almost a year old, so she was running circles around Josiah, but he wasn't letting her have ALL the toys! I went over there around his naptime and Heather let me pu
t him in Brooklynn's crib. He had this petrified look on his face as I lowered him down into a crib with PINK sheets and wall hangings. Not the most popular color for macho boys you know! Anyway, he did sleep about an hour, so that was nice...but he wasn't happy about it! Ha ha ha!
It is fun to have a friend nearby to chat with about baby things once in a while. Heather is a stay at home mom too, so we can have these impromtu visits which are fun. It is just a real bonus too that they are also a Christian family...we have a lot in common!
Little baby is as usual too cute to resist taking pictures of! This is how he comforts himself at night when he is sleeping. He hasn't learned yet to make his fingers in a fist, and so he ends up jamming his thumb into his mouth and poking himself in the eye once in a while when he is especially aggressive in his thumb sucking!
He is sleeping really well these days, but I don't want to jinx him! :) He likes to go to bed extra early...around 5:30 or 6:30pm. Then we wake him up before I go to bed to feed him around 10:00pm. He will then usually sleep until 4:30 or 5:00am and will lay in his crib talking to himself until I come and get him. His favorite words are "ooooo, Owwww, ahhhhh" (repeat ad nauseum).
I feel very blessed that little baby lets me sleep in a little more (on occasion) and that his crib can entertain him until I am more awake.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! Here is our special little Santa this year! He isn't bringing a bag of toys, but some dirty diapers, happy smiles, active feet and hands and tons more blessings to the Carpenter household!
We had a little "mishap" as we were getting these pictures taken, but luckily he took good pictures in the first few photos because he wasn't going to give anymore smiles after he bonked his head on the box he was sitting on. They didn't have a very good set up for babies that can't sit up on their own yet and so I was trying to hold him from behind.
At one point I had him adjusted and then he moved really quickly and fell forward and bonked his nose. This was NOT very popular and he wouldn't be consoled for a while afterward! We were very pleased with how the pictures turned out though!
Merry Christmas to all of you!
Although Josiah isn't the greatest at sitting up yet, he can sit pretty well in his high chair and so we have started feeding him in it so that he will get used to eating there. He is wearing a bib that Grandma Betty gave him that says "New kid on the Block" and he is too when it comes to eating solid foods!
David fed him a pretty good sized bowl of oatmeal with banana (the baby version kind) and he seemed to like it. He would open his mou
th really wide (see picture
below) when David would make an airplane sound as it came close to his mouth. David tried other sounds, but it was only this SPECIFIC sound that would make his mouth open. It was pretty funny!
Also...Josiah likes to "help" with his hands, so you can see that Daddy is holding his hands so that the helping doesn't interfere with eating. When Mommy has tried to feed the baby, he will almost always get oatmeal all over his hands at some point.
So I read the instructions for the bouncy Tigger seat that we have and it turns out it is for 4 months and older, so I had him try it out today. He loves it! I have it close enough to the ground where he can walk around in it. He doesn't bounce too much yet, but he is definitely using his leg muscles to turn around and practice this assisted walking.
Thanks to my friend Lin for getting it for us, it will bring lots of joy to this little one I am sure! Not to mention that Mommy gets a kick out of watching him play in it as well!
In honor of going to Uncle Mike and Aunt Genny's farm for Thanksgiving, I thought it would be fun for him to put on his "cow coat" prepare for his trip into cow country! Mara got this little jacket for him and it is just TOO cute!
He wears it whenever we go out now. Still when we take walks it seems he is not the happiest camper. He always has a sullen look on his face or that he is uncomfortable when I take him outside. I know he is warm enough, but I think he just isn't fond of being away from home. He gets really quiet until we come home again and then he is his normal self.
Today was the big day for all my students. There were 19 of them that performed today (though one is not in the picture). I was really proud of them that they all played through their pieces without stopping. We still have to work on bowing with some of them, but that is OK!
We had cake, cookies, & nuts with pink lemonade & 7 UP punch for the reception. It was held at Spokane Valley Baptist Church.
It was really nice to have a big recital again. The last time I had this large of a
studio was when I was in high school! Since I have moved around so much, it seems that just when I get a good number of students I am moving again. We hope to stick around here for a while though, so I hope that it works out that we do. God may have a different plan for us though, and I am open to whatever he has for us and know that he will provide the students for me wherever I go!
Mara came over for a visit for a couple of days and we went to see her parents who were in Coure d'Alene, ID for a craft show. They live in Tacoma, so it was kind of neat that while Mara was here on the east side of the state that she got to visit with her folks.
Mara is a thrift store shopping genius and brought me a whole bunch of clothes that she got for a buck each and now I have LOTS more clothes to choose from. I had been lamenting the fact that I don't fit in most of my old clothes now after the baby and Mara took pity on me and found some that work! Thank you Mara for all the lovely clothes! She has been such a WONDERFUL friend to me and I am truly thankful to have known her all these years!
I was thinking...wouldn't it be nice if someone designed clothes for women AFTER pregnancy? It seems that the maternity clothes are too big and make you look frumpy, but you still need a little extra room in the hips and stomach areas as well as the bust if you are breast feeding. Maybe noone has done it because most people just buy bigger sizes to compensate for a while? Anyway, to someone out there that designs clothes, that is my request!
A funny thing happened when I was out with Mara today. I tried to feed baby J in the car and instead of feeding he got started, but then stopped and kept giggling at me. He got Mara and I cracking up in the car and I got the bulk of his milk meal on my lap. He is a very silly baby and we had fun with him today, but later in the evening since his routine was somewhat altered, he had a hard time getting to sleep. We managed it though and he got back on track pretty quick!
So when we put baby in the crib, his head is right behind Mr. Peter Rabbit on the head board, but he has demonstrated that he has a better way to sleep and that is sideways! When I woke up this morning to change and feed him at 5:50am, this is how he was only with one sock off (he likes to work them off his feet quite often). Then when David came in to get him at around 7:10am, he was back in this position again.
I guess he takes after Mommy in that he is a wild sleeper! My mom said she wouldn't share a bed with me as a child because I would kick her and such.
When he was sick, we would prop him up with a pillow and put his sheet on the pillow and would lay him on it. He would work his way down off the pillow and the sheet would flip over onto his head. We discovered this because he made miserable "come fix this mess" baby noises following this occurrence. That also was pretty funny to see our little "ghost" baby.
God is so good! A week ago a lady from our church that I barely know called to offer 4 bags of clothes and baby things for Josiah. I was just looking at his closet thinking "hmmm we don't have very many bigger clothes (12-18 months)" and then she called and mostly all the clothes were that size!
I am so thankful that God has provided so abundantly for our little Josiah and for us as well! It is a testament to the fact that you never "have" the money for kids, but when God blesses you with a child, he will also provide the means to support that child.
Thank you Carrie and your family for giving us all these nice clothes for baby Josiah!
Recently, Josiah thinks it is really funny to spit out as much drool as he can via doing the raspberry with his lips. At McDonalds the the other day, he kept doing it to get my attention and I probably wiped his face about 15 times because of all the drool!
He makes me laugh and laugh when he does this and he does it now to make me laugh I think sometimes! He is such a sweet little boy and I love him more and more each and every day!
NOTE: I have been informed that technically this "isn't" the a raspberry lip embouchure, but rather more like a buzzing on the trumpet type of deal! Maybe he will take after Uncle Brent in more than just the drooling department (as Brent was a big drooler as a kid) and may play the trumpet too!
Today Daddy was showing Josiah all about computers. He was very interested and wanted to "help" play Daddy's game!
He is getting pretty good at holding his head up now and is also starting to try to put things in his mouth. Daddy let us hold the toothpaste tube and we tried to suck on the cap and got a weird "what is this?" face that made Daddy laugh out loud.
Josiah definitely wants to be where the people are and lets us know it if he is by himself (in the crib or under his play gym)!
His cries are getting more varied everyday. Last night, he woke up at...you guessed it 4am...and I heard him doing some little "I'm scared" cries and when I came in his room I noticed that the wind was whistling outside and also that he was trying to work himself out of his blanket, (that Mommy had tucked underneath him) but was unsuccessful in ousting himself from blanketland.
Today was the first day that feeding the baby something other than breast milk didn't result in a crying, unhappy Josiah. I have been experiementing with rice cereal that didn't seem to be popular, and so I resorted to trying applesauce yesterday with a little success, but didn't get him to swallow very much of it.
Daddy was home today and so we decided to try feeding him some applesauce again. We got him to eat more than yesterday, but it still wasn't enough to fill him up. However, this is progress and soon I am sure we will be able to feed him more as he is getting used to swallowing something other than milk!
So much to Mommy's dismay, little Josiah likes to get up at the crack of dawn, which around here is either 5 or 6am. He is like Daddy in that he doesn't like to eat first thing in the morning, but likes to be awake for a while and THEN eat.
This means that Mommy has been up playing with little baby most mornings. Not that she is complaining about playing with the baby mind you, but rather she wonders "why can't this be at 7 or 8am?" Baby seems to be the most talkative in the morning ("owww, ahhwa, owwa" are his favorite words) and so I can't help but smile and pretend I am a morning person! So I play with him for about 30 minutes, give him a feeding when he starts to get fussy and then he goes off for his morning nap and sleeps for a good 2 hours usually. This is when I get caught up on housework and/or take a shower. He seems to be back on his nap schedule and on some days (like today) he has been sleeping a lot. Maybe he is having a growth spurt! Last time we checked he was 16 pounds and about 25 inches long. He is a big boy! His 4 month check up will be on October 28th, so stay tuned!
So unlike most moms I have talked to, I don't give Josiah a bath everyday. For one thing...he doesn't get that dirty and what DOES get dirty is washed 8-10 times a day with baby wipes. Also, I had read somewhere that babies skin has its own oils and such and if you wash them all the time then you wash away that natural oil that mosturizes their skin. However, this makes for a very disoriented baby when I do give him a bath (about once a week) because it is pretty new everytime I do it. Not to mention, it seems most everytime after I wash him, he decides to pee on the towel afterwards which is always fun.
Today I brought a metal bowl to bathtime and poured water on his hands. His expression was pretty static and he was a little worked up, so much so that he got the hiccups. I would like to enroll in one of those baby/mommy swim classes, but I probably will wait until he can hold his head up better. He can hold it up now of course, but it still wobbles a bit.
Today baby Josiah was on a mission to stay awake and he lost! I took him to Women's Bible Study with me this morning and the ladies in the nursery said that he didn't really sleep much even though they knew he was tired. When we got home, I tried to get him to sleep as well, but he really wanted to be up.
Daddy was home today too (a surprise day off) and while I was taking a nap, Daddy put baby J in his Pack and Play and after working his way around it as is our usual style, (to end up as he is now rather than his head over to the right of the picture) he finally fell asleep!
One of my nicknames for baby Josiah is "my little pumpkin." Though we don't celebrate Halloween, I couldn't resist dressing him up as a pumpkin at least for the pictures! My friend Joy from the westside loaned me this costume as her little guy was too big to fit in it already. He was born a month before Josiah. When we went to the fair with my parents a while back, we took a picture of him sitting on (with the help of mom and grandma) the "biggest pumpkin" at the fair. We also took a shot of him amongst some smaller pumpkins too as you can see below.
Before we dropped Grandma and Grandpa off at the airport to go home after their stay with us, we went over to see Great Grandma and Great Grandpa for a visit. It was fun to chat with them and see their reactions to little baby. Josiah was fascinated with Great G-pa's whistling and baby J flashed him a big smile which we got on camera here.
