The Boyz!

Mom took this picture and she just loves it as it has all her boys together and we are all happy and smiling, FINALLY. The last few months, as many of you know, have been filled with lots of viruses, ear infections and whatever else you can think of. You will notice that the little guy has become somewhat attached to his pacificer aka "NIGHT NIGHT". Up until a few months ago, he had only been allowed to use it at night, but due to all his recent ear infections and other plagues and other issues, he has been allowed to use it when he was in distress and it virtually became an ALL DAY AND NIGHT NIGHT! (mom says to tell you that the darn pacifier basically saved her from going completely insane over the past few months).

Update: The NIGHT NIGHT has been PHASED back to a "night night" ONLY now and hopefully it willl soon become a NEVER NEVER again:).

He walks the line (not a straight line, however)!

The day has finally come when my little brother "Josh Josh", as he is now referred to, is finally walking on his own two feet. Well, mom says it walking, but it really resembles more of a drunken march in circles with occassional slips and falls. Mom and dad would tell you that they didn't really think this day would ever come. I think although they tried hard not to, they compared his development to mine and we all know that I walked at about 10 1/2 months. Josh Josh is a little older than 16 months, so in all respects it was quite a while later for him. However, now that he is walking, he wants to walk EVERYWHERE! The poor little guy has been so tired at night he can barely make it up the stairs to get to bed.

We are all very happy for this new development and I look forward to really PLAYING with him now. We went to the park today and it was a joy to see him all over the playground, chasing (stumbling after)balls and exploring everything on his own. We love to chase each other around and now that he is walking it will be even more fun!

Way to go Josh Josh! I love you little guy! See the attached pics of me and my little bro in our matching jammies, the little guy "exploring" the kitchen cabinets and lastly, Josh the carpenter. Mom says to tell you that she is aware that he doesn't have any pants on underneath that toolbelt, but it was just too cute a picture to pass up!

Christmas/Hanuakah or Chrisakah or Hanumas!

We haven't posted any pictures or updates from Christmas, so I thought I would do that now. We had a wonderful holiday - it was especially fun for me this year as I really understood what was going on and it was fun to share it with Baby J too! I was an expert helper in decorating the Christmas tree and I also liked to help arrange and rearrange the gifts under the tree. Mom was very surprised that I didn't try to open them and understood that we had to wait until Christmas. We baked (well, really mom) homemade Chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies and left them out for Santa. Funny, but Santa seemed to really enjoy them and ate a lot of them - even ones from the canister in the kitchen that we didn't leave out for him. That wasn't really very nice to go into our kitchen canister, but I will cut the old guy some slack since he worked really hard that night:) Mom and dad seemed especially satisfied and didn't seem to want any sweets the next day...hmmmmm.

Santa brought us lots of fun things to play with. Mine and Baby J's favorite gift was a play kitchen, but I am also very fond of my huge Bruder garbage/recycling truck and my Spiderman bedroom slippers. (FYI - I have now entered a huge Spiderman phase so watch out!!) Baby J loved his Backyardigans pirate ship and we both received matching wool caps.

Mom and dad say that they must be doing something right as they seemed pleased at the fact that I continued to say over and over "That was so nice of Santa to bring us these gifts". I continued to say this for days.

We also went to a Menorah lighting this year. Daddy took me and we went with Grandpa and my uncle and cousins. I wasn't sure what was going on, but there were candles and fire and it was interesting to me and Baby J. Daddy said that Baby J just pointed and was interested in all of it.

I hope everyone had as happy a holiday as we did. Enjoy the pictures.

I am back!

Sorry we haven't posted any updates in about 2 months...we have been busy being sick and celebrating lots of holidays. Along with a wonderful Thanksgiving and a stupendous (my new current favorite word) Christmas, we also got to experience stomach viruses, teething, colds, ear infections, back afflictions (daddy, namely) and more colds! We all seem to be on the mend now and hopefully it will stay that way for a while.

In addition to a big growth spurt, my verbal skills are really "blossoming". I have always been very verbal, but mom and dad are now amazed at some of the things I can do and say and understand. I am not sure why mom said we should put the word "blossoming" in quotes. I think it has to do with my frequently sarcastic and/or sassy vocabulary which includes "I wasn't talking to you", "that wasn't very nice, mother" and "I only have two hands" which is my frequent response when asked to do something.

Anyway, here is a picture of me displaying my intimidating presence and awesome cuteness! As you can see, daddy has firmly planted the idea of playing ice hockey in my brain and I am looking forward to "tearing up the ice" one day soon.

More updates are coming soon, I promise!!

Trick or Treat!!

Guess what I dressed up as for Halloween? A fireman - no, really, how did you guess that one???? I had a really cool outfit with a hat, badge, an axe (what was my mom thinking?), a fire extinguisher and a walkie talkie. It was just perfect for the evening because it rained here a little bit - it was sort of a fireman rain slicker. My mom - she's apretty smart gal, isn't she?

Joshie dressed up as a monkey (this outfit has been worth its purchase price since I have worn it for 2 previous Halloweens myself). He was so cute and miraculously left on his ears most of the night.

I loved saying trick or treat and after each house I ran to Mom and said "Okay, let's go to the next house!!" By the end of the evening I had an entire pumpkin full of candy. Yes, Mommy got to go this year - you might remember that she was laid up at home due to Joshie being born just one day earlier last year.

I was especially afraid of anything spooky this year and refused to go to a couple of houses on our street. I saw a couple of costumes that also terrifed me (one tall kid in a furry ape costume and another kid in the "Scream" outfit). Mom said that particular costume scared her as well!

Joshie and I got to wear our costumes twice this year as we wore them to a kids place and got a reduced admission to play. Also, earlier in the week, we went to the pumpkin patch and I got a ghost painted on my face. See the cute pics above of me and several of my little friends on big night!

Happy 1st Birthday to Baby J

Can you believe that Joshie is 1 year old? His birthday was yesterday and Mommy took him to the doctor for his checkup. Poor little guy, he didn't sleep well the night before (possibly teething???) and then he had to get three shots at the doctors office. His official stats were 31 inches height (85% percentile) and 20.1lbs weight(20% percentile). These were exactly my stats at the same age, but I weighed about 1.5 ounces less. Wow, that's amazing, isn't it? We are just little carbon copies of each other.

Because the little guy was so cranky on his birthday, we have decided to do a little birthday celebration over the weekend - we had thought about a party, but decided against it. We will probably just get a little ice cream cake and sing happy birthday and that will be all. We did meet my aunt, uncle and cousins out for dinner, but it was short and sweet as Little J was not very happy.

Joshie can get just about anywhere now and is very fast with his crawling. He is definitely a climber and can get up the stairs very quickly. He can also stand up and pull up just about anywhere and is now discovering how he can move his feet to "cruise" along the furniture. Mommy thinks it will be about 1 more month before he starts to walk, but with the way the little guy moves around, it could be sooner. He can say about three or four words (Mama, Dada, ball and "hey") and he has waving and pointing completely mastered. He understands a lot of what we say and will point and look at the light in a room when asked.

Happy 1st birthday little J - WE LOVE YOU!!!

Beach Boyz and Water Babies

Mom, Dad, Joshie and I went on a family vacation this past week to Carlsbad, CA. Carlsbad is just north of San Diego and there are lots of fun things to do there including SeaWorld, the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park and LegoLand. We rented a beautiful house right across the street from the Tamarack Surf Beach and our days were filled with wonderful views of the beach and surfers everytime we looked out our windows. The house also had its own COOL pool with a hot tub and a waterfall and we swam everyday and had lots of fun.

This was the first real time that I had played on a beach. I had seen the ocean from a distance when I was about 2 years old, but this time I got to play in the sand and run and chase the waves. Daddy and I played "here it comes" with the waves several times and we both got very wet and sandy. I didn't particularly care for having sand in my pants and protested loudly, but after a bath I was okay again.

See several pictures of us all at the beach and pool, a view of the beach from our porch and a shot of mommy and Joshie on his second plane ride. Upon boarding the plane, the captain let me take a look in the cockpit too - that was a blast and I had lots of fun. I did pretty well on the plane with the exception of a minor meltdown due to my ears popping upon landing.