It’s been entirely too long since my last post! But when most every day is an exercise in just getting through, I find the idea of myself sitting alone and typing my out thoughts hysterical.
Our Thanksgiving trip to Tucson: Leaving 50 degrees of wetness and arriving in sunny 80 degrees of splendid was very needed. We packed dresses that Josie would not otherwise get to wear (too big for last summer but will be too small next one). We had a big house all to ourselves — and my mom, of course, who we went there to visit. The house has an open floor plan, so we could actually put Josie down in one room and prepare food in another. She did not scream because she could see us. It makes me want to knock down some of our house’s walls.
In Tucson; photo by our dear friend Bert Lippel
While there we saw my uncle, my dad’s brother, who is fighting cancer pretty hard. It was so important to me that he and Josie meet now. We also visited my dad’s grave on the third anniversary of his death. That was a throat lumper. We saw old friends, who met Josie for the first time, and we attended the bar mitzvah of my oldest friend’s son. We packed a lot in, including big dinners and lots of play time. So much sun and dry and warm. Alas.
Quite a lot has happened over the last month, but I am not going to try to write about it all. Instead I’ll list some adorable and funny new things Josie has started to do. Josie likes to walk, but only while holding on to my fingers or with me holding under her arms. I got her a Radio Flyer wagon to walk behind, but she is not having it (so far). She does enjoy going for rides in it, however. Josie likes to talk, and by talk I mean babble with some prominent sounds: Globble globble globble, blagel blagel blagel, mamama, and die die die (which I try not to take personally). A lot of tongue is involved, and if you talk back in kind she will smile and nod like, “Uh huh, you feel me.” Josie likes to teethe. We keep running her to the doctor to have her ears checked, and the most recent trip revealed gums with not one but a few molars pushing through simultaneously. Ouch! When this hurts, it hurts the poor girl a lot. So, it’s no surprise that Josie likes to chew… everything. The Melissa & Doug toys that are so awesome because they’re wood instead of plastic? Well, many have paper pictures on the wood that Josie will chew off and eat. Since discovering this, we have semi-retired a few puzzle boards; so unfortunate. Josie likes to stand up and move here and there, constantly. The only thing is, like the walking, she wants me to make these movements happen to her, and she really doesn’t like it (understatement) when I don’t. Since I know she can scoot on her butt (we see her do it back and forth in the tub every night), I tell her I’m not moving her this time and if she wants to get somewhere she can scoot her tush. It gets very loud after that. Josie also likes to poop almost every night in the tub. We have to be glad because it means she won’t be pooping and waking up overnight (the girl cannot sleep if there’s poop in her diaper), but it also means one of us is going fishing while the other does jammies.
For your Moment of FoG (Funny or Gross), more bathtub fun:
Josie has always enjoyed finding tiny holes and putting her finger in them. Sometimes she becomes obsessed and does this for much longer than I thought a baby’s attention span could be held. You know the small hole below the faucet that catches bath overflow? So, it would be one thing if she simply liked to stick her finger in this tub hole, but Josie got in the habit of scooting over to the faucet (no matter how many times we dragged her back to the far end of the tub), sticking her pointer finger in, wiping it around inside, and putting this finger in her mouth. Obsessively. For way too long we just gagged and tried in vain to distract her with bath toys, until we realized we could just cover the hole (her baths don’t get too high, and no one else really gets the luxury of a bath these days). A little duct tape magic, and the problem (the specific problem, not the larger issue) is solved!
Basted 