Nothing exciting...

There hasn't been much to report in the land of Joshua these past few days. He is increasingly interested in the Christmas tree and the lights on our staircase. He wants to touch and unplug things which makes me nuts. But we (over and over and over and over again) redirect his attention to something else. Such is the life of parents of a toddler I suppose.

Joshua is unbelievably enamored with Daddy in the past few days, which Jason is loving! All he wants to do in the evenings is play with his daddy. They laugh and hide from each other and have a great time. It's really fun to watch. Something tells me that this is foreshadowing of all the times they're going to go off and do "boy things" where there are no girls allowed...not even mommy.

His words are taking off, though not with any regularity. He is making great efforts at repeating what he hears. The ones I can make out are still "mama", "duck", "pap" and "hot". He's trying really hard to say "book", but it's coming out like jibberish still. In the past few days he has, on occasion, said "ho-ho-ho" when I ask him what Santa says. I will note that he does not like to be on display, so if we're with others and I ask him to do something to show off one of his tricks or say any new words, he'll just give you a blank stare as though he has no idea what I mean. He still says a lot of things that sound like "bagel" or "diggle" and I have no idea where he's going with that. I just nod my head so he'll keep practicing. Eventually that's going to turn into something that we can understand--- at least I hope so. Or else he'll go to Kindergarten saying "diggle" for everything.

A cool new trick in Joshua's ability to communicate his wants to us, even though the words are scarce. If he wants you to do something with him, he'll grab on to your hand and literally pull you wherever he wants to go. Yesterday, as soon as I got into the door, he gave me a kiss then grabbed my hand and pulled me to the stairs. He wanted to go upstairs to play with his truck in his room. He did the same thing to Jason. It's adorable...and much easier than the grunting and grand gesturing that we started with. Once we get a few more words going, we're going to be in business!

We have discovered two more teeth- top molars- that have appeared in the past week or so. That might explain our late night meetings over the past few weeks. There were no other teething symptoms with those, though, so they snuck in on us.

Speaking of late night meetings, we had quite the rocking session last night. Joshua awoke at 11:42 (I remember because I swear I had JUST closed my eyes). I gave him until after midnight to put himself back to sleep, but instead of getting settled, he got more and more angry, so I figured this wasn't going to get better without some attention. When I peeked around the corner into his room, he was standing in the crib with Bear tucked between his shoulder and neck looking very irritated that it had taken me 20 minutes to respond. The look was so expressive that I would not have been shocked to have heard him say, "Mama, what the heck took you so long? What happened to our "I cry" and "you come running" system?" And people wonder why the cry it out method would not work with this child. Case in point. Anyway, after a diaper change and a bottle he was still wide awake. And so, I rocked and rocked and rocked until the clock struck 2 and Joshua was finally asleep again. I got to thinking that they should really put some kind of a pedometer contraption on rocking chairs because I'd love the see the miles or hours that we've clocked in that glider rocker. Goodness--- it would be impressive.

It's funny what all goes through your head at that hour. But there's an essay brewing in my mind about a whole train of thought I got onto while rocking and staring at our little prince. I got to thinking about my expectations of parenthood and what reality has turned out to be. It may be comical, so if it turns out well I'll share.

More to come. New pictures soon...but for now, enjoy Joshua and Santa.