Double Rainbow, What Does It Even Mean?

If you get that reference you are nerdy and I love you. 

Last post I covered Joshua's accomplishments at 11 months old and of course he's a completely new person at 14 months.

When people ask how old he is I say "1" and they look at me like "Um no I meant in months". Don't make me be one of those moms! So for all you moms who need his exact age he is 14 months today.

Anyway I'm pretty sure right after I posted in December that he learned to walk the next day.

Joshua has fantastic balance for his age and can even run. (I mean it's not a jog or anything, but he can move fast, especially if the fridge is open) 

Guys he learned to walk 3 months ago and now he can basically run. 

Is that not crazy?

I wish I could name all of his little accomplishments which mean the world to me, but it being late and me feeling sentimental, I think I will focus on the cute things he does.

He loves to be tickled and play hide and go seek.

He tries to blow on his food before he eats it, because that is what mommy does.

Sometimes he puts his food on the lid of his sippy cup and then eats it off of there when he goes for a drink. We think he is trying to us it like a spoon?

Every morning the first time he says "All done" he actually just wants a drink and will keep eating until his cereal is done.

He loves spicy food, which I find odd for being a year old, but hey who am I to stop him from eating sweet and spicy chicken?

He likes to carry things around like the recycling bin, trash cans or his stepping stool. The other day the recycling bin was in the bathroom and the bathroom trashcan was behind my bedroom door.

Since it has started to warm up here in Utah, Joshua loves going to the park and I more or less have to drag him away from the park. (Well once I put him in the stroller and start walking he is fine)

(This is him being taken away from eating dirty snow and going home)

He loves going down the slide on his tummy, and not even the baby slide, he likes the BIG slide.

I always wonder if he knows how much Garett and I love him.
The joy he brings to us is incredible.

About a year ago I posted my feelings of Joshua in our lives after only 8 weeks and how much our love has grown....these cute little things are just tiny examples of why our little munchkin is so great.

We have a fun habit of brushing our teeth together every morning.

Good habits start young right?

Did I mention he likes climbing?

He climbs all over everything, so much so that we have rearranged his room recently.

It was partially due to an old poopy diaper in the crib....but also due to him being close to climbing out of his crib.

Recently we have gotten to see lots of cousins.

Joshua isn't sure what to make of Julie yet, but he seems okay with her.

Miriam was much more of a challenge for Joshua though. She liked to play with all his toys and took a bath in his tub and he wasn't too happy about it at first.

But eventually they got along pretty well. 

I have a feeling they will be driving each other crazy for years to come.

P.S. They are 7ish weeks apart and I think that's rather cool.

I think Miriam wore him out, especially how hyper she gets when she takes a bath.

That girl might love baths more than life itself....I am not even kidding.

After they left Joshua was bummed, but we tried to make up for it a month later by going to Rexburg.

Joshua loved our friends apartments because there were endless amounts of things to touch and pull off, move, etc.

We had a blast staying up playing League of Legends with our friends and having a marvelous time.

We even stayed up late like we were teenagers! Oh to stay up until the wee hours of the morning and then be able to sleep until noon the next day....

All the same we had fun and our angel of a friend Bryton made us this sweet charm before we left!

I am still ogling it and feeling spoiled!

How we miss our dear friends and hope one day they we can all live relatively close to one another.
Though the dream will always be to be neighbors.

Now to conclude this post with a handful of pictures of Joshua for I am his mom and therefore I must take a ridiculously large number of photos of him.

I wish I could explain my love for him. People always say the reason they don't want children is because they smell and cry all the time, but let me tell you, there are a million more wonderful reasons to have children and these pictures show just a few.

This is from yesterday. Joshua was teething and not feeling well and he just hung out with me on the couch and even let me cuddle him. Days like yesterday make my heart melt.

How can I not look at that face and want to give that little boy the world?

Did I mention we have a few games?

One is when we sit up against the wall, Joshua comes up behind us and makes us move then sits down on the floor behind us.

The other is that he likes to lay on our faces....

I will leave you with this photo that sums up my entire world.

I fully believe I am the luckiest lady in the world and I would not trade these boys for anything.

Being a mom really is the greatest. Yeah there are hard times, but there are far more wonderful, fun, silly and all around grand moments. I call Joshua my little angel, because he is a gift from God.

I can't imagine my life without him. It truly is incredible how much a little person, that has only been on this earth just over a year, can change your world and heart forever.

Thank you for all those who have been apart of our lives and adding to our joy in this grand adventure of life. We love you all and hope to be better at keeping you updated on our meanderings.

(Is it too late to start a New Year resolution in March?)

-Love you all,

Megan 

Tis the Season to Forget Everything

If I told you how many times I have been to Walmart recently, I would be ashamed. I have been nonstop busy for the last month, with Christmas presents and starting to become a little crafty. (i.e. attempting to make nice Christmas presents, I hope you like yours Catherine! Also there might be a small hole in the wrapping paper....try not to peek...) and an almost 1 year old, my life is chaos. I am finally starting to enter the phase of "Wow this is why moms are always tired".

Speaking of which, Joshua is 11 months old! He is basically ONE and that is insane!

I am not really good of doing the month to month posts of what my child has learned to do, so I will try to cover the last 3 months right now.

Joshua crawls super fast so my day is mainly spent chasing him around and making sure he doesn't kill himself because he gets into EVERYTHING! Make up, the computer, pulling up the vent out of the floor, the trash, the cords, pulling things off of end tables, opens drawers and pulling everything out, the trash, pulling the toilet paper off the roll, the water bowl and did I mention the trash?

Just recently I was trying to finish my breakfast half asleep (this is surprisingly not normal) and I look over to see he is covered and trash, and not the just paper and easy things to get off. I mean crumbs and other sticky things galore. So he got his bath a bit early.

He LOVES baths! To the point that I just let him crawl around in the tub for 30 minutes until the water is half cold and he seems like he wants out.

Just the other day he figured out how to turn on the shower though. I should preface that with the fact that I let some water trickle out of the end of the spout at the end of his bath so he will look up and I can rinse his hair.

It seemed ingenious until he figured out he can turn the water to freezing and turn on the shower...now I just have to be more careful and it's more of a game/battle.

Oh and the stubbornness! He now is starting to throw fits when we tell him not to touch things. (Boy oh boy....but luckily this is pretty rare)

He tries to climb on everything. He frequently uses me as a stepping stool. He has been climbing up the stairs for a long time, but recently he learned to climb down the stairs and how to get off the bed/couch (mostly) safely. He's fast and strangely careful about it.

He can basically walk. He took 7 steps the other day. He is constantly trying, but I think he likes to try when he thinks no one is looking. It's rather funny.

Also pretty recent is hugs! This started probably 3 days ago but I think he is starting to give hugs and I am loving it!!!!!!!!

This is probably my favorite of his new habits. I miss how he used to snuggle me, so hugs are one step in the right direction. (Though I have come to terms that snuggling may not come back again until he is officially a toddler and probably only when he is sick, but hey I can dream right?)

Along the line of awesome things, is that he eats solid meals now all the time. He still nurses a little bit, mainly before naps and bed. He has cereal for breakfast, and then eats whatever I eat for lunch and dinner. He loves stuffing and bananas and most things. (He HATED baby food, like truly hated it, so that made 6-8 months kind of complicated for me). I had it all planned out in my head that I would start introducing baby food at 6 months and slowly over the next several months transition him to real food, but he threw that idea out the window.

He eats tons though, he can eat a whole can of chicken noodle soup, seriously this kid is insane. It baffles me that he is such a petite baby for how much he eats.

Sadly no teeth that I can see, but I am not good at checking...but I am not too worried. Joshua has proven to me time and time again that he will only do things when he is good a ready. An example is crawling. He could have easily been crawling at 6 months, like he was ready, but he didn't care to learn. He finally decided basically over night to learn to crawl about a month later. When he decides to learn something, he learns fast but no one is going to rush him.

So I honestly expect to wake up one day and he will just be walking perfectly everywhere because that is Joshua.

He sleeps 10pm-8am and I am actually mostly okay with that, but he takes 2 solid 2 hour naps a day and is on a really nice schedule so I can't complain.

Why I feel so busy is because I can only get things done during the 1st nap time. The 2nd nap time is mainly getting things cleaned up before Garett gets home.

We did get to see Garett's family for Thanksgiving this year. It is always great to see them since they are rather far away.

We are also planning on being there for Christmas. We were supposed to go last year but because Joshua was on his way, traveling was out of the question.

Garett is working tons and tons and we were doing pretty well at saving up money, but Christmas slowed that down a bit as it always seems to do.

He also just finished applying to grad school for Microbiology which means we will be biting our nails until sometime early next year when we figure out where on earth we are going to be moving to. We've applied to schools all around the country so we could end up anywhere.

I think that covers most of everything that has happened recently. I would blog more, but like I said, my window of productivity is pretty small.