Scraggly to studly...the first haircut

Before...we love his curls in the humidity...but when it's dry, he's just a scraggly mutt!

During...mad when the water was being sprayed but then generally OK!

 After...this handsome dude is loving his lollipop! Couldn't be cuter if I do say so myself!

My how they've grown in a year!

Look at how much our kiddos have grown in just a short year! These are photos of them at their birthday celebrations last year, and this year. Wow...I am learning that it just keeps getting truer and truer when people with older kids tell me not to blink, or I will miss it!

Isabel turns 4!

Isabel turns 3!

Josiah turns 2!

Josiah turns 1!



Halloween 2011

And Jo-Jo the gray puppy...

Meet Isa"Tinker"bel...

...who were very excited to go trick-or-treating this year.
Josiah is looking up to his big sister for instructions on how to do it!

Our little leader was happy to forge
ahead and show Josiah the ropes!

"Come on, Jo-Jo, this is Kyla's house! She has candy for us!"

Yes, even Mommy participated this year in the costume fun!

Soon, Isabel wanted to go faster than a 21-month-old
can, so she and Daddy forged ahead while Mommy
and Josiah went home. Josiah was happy to dig in his
pumpkin bucket 'o loot (he actually tried M&M's but
wasn't quite sure what to think of them)...

...and watch out the door for trick-or-treaters!

We allowed her to eat 5 pieces of candy
(one night a year we cave on the limiting of sweets!),
so this must be the crash after the sugar rush!
Happy Halloween!
Until next year...

Rub-a-dub-dub

Rub-a-dub-dub four kids in a tub!

Bread alone

Josiah is...for the most part...a very mellow, easygoing 16-month-old. But not when it comes to eating! The kid is without a doubt, 100% ADDICTED to grains. As a baby, we fed him a wide variety of baby food...various cereals, veggies (mostly homemade), and fruit. He was not a picky eater and ate almost everything. His favorite by a mile was homemade pureed sweet potatoes. We thought this had set the stage toward non-finicky eating as a toddler. But, we are learning the age-old lesson that even the best laid plans fail!
We started to notice his penchant for grains when he would consistently polish off whatever grain (bread, rolls, crackers, pasta) happened to be on his tray, leaving the rest of his well-rounded meal untouched, and then clamor (increasingly loudly) for more of the grains. We have tried everything to encourage him to eat more of the other food, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.  The more successful measures have included:

• Fork-feeding him (this was a Jenna trick and was successful in getting him to eat diced peaches)
• Making a big deal out of handing the other food to Isabel, and emphatically smiling and chanting "Yum, yum!" when she eats it, then handing a bite of that same food to Josiah (this was successful recently in getting him to eat raspberries, and to try blueberries (though he promptly took the blueberries out of his mouth again))

Our newest attempt, a couple of nights ago, was to place only the non-grain items on his tray at the beginning of dinner. This was a colossal failure which we may have paid for with a slight loss of hearing! The blood curdling screams that came out of his mouth were shocking at best, and though we tried to ignore them, they grew louder and louder for the better part of 5 minutes (and Isabel joined in the crying because she wanted him to stop crying). To stop the cacophony and be able to enjoy our meal ourselves, we finally gave in by handing him a piece of bread.  I am not exaggerating when I say that his screams instantly stopped.  He went from completely hysterical to completely at peace, gnawing on his precious bread.  This is what I mean when I say he is addicted!

I often loosely quote the Bible to him, saying, "Josiah, man does not live on bread alone" (Matthew 4:4). But he is bound and determined to prove me wrong! Could this mellow fellow have some of his sister's stubbornness in him? Uh-oh...watch out world...

Letter of the Week - I

Isabel has really been getting into the Letter of the Week. Every Saturday, she asks me, "Mommy, what letter is it going to be next week?" And I always say, "I am not sure. I have to call Jenna." So last Saturday morning, she asked me the same question and then answered her own question by saying "You need to call Jenna!"  Since we were actually going to see Jenna that morning at gymnastics, I told Isabel she could ask Jenna herself, which she very excitedly did. Jenna didn't have one picked out yet, so she graciously allowed Isabel to choose, and not surprisingly, Isabel chose the letter I. I was less than thrilled to have another vowel to do, so soon after we did U, but since it is "her" letter, I decided to make the best of it!

The letter I
Memory verse: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phillipians 4:13)
Words: Isabel, ice cream, igloo, iguana, inch, inchworm, independent, I love you
Songs: The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, Inchworm
Isabel decorated her letter with: Isabels! (I printed out a couple dozen tiny pictures of Isabel and she glued them on all by herself. When we were done with the uppercase I, there were 7 photos left and she could not bear to throw them away so we made a lowercase i as well! :)


We had a very busy week and unfortunately started it out with a pretty bad injury. On Monday evening, at Luke's softball game, Isabel slipped and fell on the bleachers, biting nearly clean through her lower lip and (we found out later) loosening three of her top teeth (the middle two and the second tooth from the middle on the left side). I felt horrible as I was standing right there with Josiah on my hip and was close enough to see the look of shock and terror on her face as she fell, but not close enough or fast enough to do anything about it. She got lots of TLC over the next couple of days as we first had to go to our regular dentist, who was unable to get a look at it because of Isabel's (understandable) hysterics, and then to a pediatric dentist, Dr. Sally, where every single person in the office had incredible patience and a clear love for children (I am totally sold on pediatric dentistry and in my opinion, each of them should be dubbed heroes!) After complete hysterics in the dentist's office the day before, Isabel allowed them to get two x-rays and complete a thorough examination. She was very excited to show off her four stickers to her classmates at school that day. We have a follow-up visit in three weeks to see if the teeth have tightened up, but are very thankful that they do not think the permanent teeth were damaged or affected in the fall.  Part of Isabel's therapy this week has been soft foods, including a trip to DQ for ice cream right after her first traumatic dentist's visit.

Interpretation of above photo string: Injured lip and teeth...equals mommy guilt....equals ice cream remedy!

The rest of our week was pretty busy but we did manage to get to the library to pick out some I books. Our favorites included Isabel's Car Wash and a couple of I Spy look-and-find books.

Interesting week, to say the least! Who said parenting was for the weak of heart (or stomach)?

Letter of the Week - J

This week, we learned about the letter J.
Memory Verse: Jesus said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12)

Words: Jesus, Josiah, Jenna, Jessie, jelly, jam, jammies, juice

Books: Lots!  See the widget at the end of this blog post!

This was our favorite Letter of the Week so far. We have lots of J things and people in our lives, so this was a fun one, and despite being very busy, we were able to fit in lots of J activities. On Monday, Isabel spent part of the morning at Jenna's, and the girls decorated their letter J's with jellybeans (a big thanks to Jenna for this idea as I was wracking my brain and not coming up with anything to decorate the letter with this week!) Isabel also worked on a jigsaw puzzle that she really liked there. She has been liking puzzles a lot lately, and shocking me with how good at them she is when left alone to work on them!

Isabel was lucky enough to be able to make Jell-O jigglers twice this week. We made them on Wednesday night, and she made them again on Thursday night with Kyla who came over to babysit. I wanted to do J's and jets, but couldn't find an airplane cookie cutter so we settled for just J's.

We had a great time going to the library this week and choosing J books, then reading them throughout the week. Isabel especially liked "Jump, Frog, Jump" because she got to "read" every third page in the book which said "Jump, frog, jump!" She also liked "shouting" NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPING ON THE BED! on the last page of that book. Below are our favorites from this week.

And our last J activity of the week was to make a J poster on Saturday night. I know it is too big of a commitment for me to help her make a poster every week, but this is one that we really wanted to make because we have lots of J people in our lives that we are very thankful for:

• Josiah: he is my son and Isabel's baby brother. His wrinkly-nosed smile lights up the rooms in our home many times a day. Our family would not be complete without him!
• Jessie: she is my sister (in-law) and Isabel's auntie.  Though the miles separate us it is clear that the kids are continually on her mind and she is as dear to us as if she were right next door.
• Jenna: she is my dear friend, our children's nanny, and Josiah's godmother.  She has poured hours of love into both Isabel and Josiah over the years, and she inspires me to be a better parent who takes a more creative, active role in my children's learning.
• Jack: he is our next-door neighbor and friend. He is a tender-hearted boy who is often willing to play with our kids in the yard or on the trampoline (one of Isabel's favorite activities).

We had a blast making the poster and Isabel wrote almost all the words (I would tell her each letter to write and she would write it). I am hopeful that the more of these we do, the more she will want to practice writing her letters. Once again, yay for Letter of the Week!