Josiah's Christmas Portraits

I couldn't resist and ended up buying way more pictures than we need, so they'll be plenty to share. But until they come in, you can see the portraits here. Some of the poses are the same, but with different effects or borders. He's so handsome! He did so good, during the picture-taking, and afterwards when it took me hours to decide what I wanted. He he.

Back to School

Today Joey finally went back to preschool after being out sick for 2 weeks. The preschool was actually closed most of last week due to flooding and bridges being out, so he only actually missed 2 days of preschool.
Today was make-up picture day, and he was already in the mood to pose before we left for school.

He did fine at school, except when he was playing hard outside and had a coughing fit, which caused him to throw up. They had to change his clothes. Luckily, that happened after picture time. He had pictures made a few weeks ago too, but we didn't like any of those. The photographer didn't seem to wait for him to smile and didn't put all of him in the picture. It just didn't look very professional (but she was charging profession prices!), so hopefully this time, the pictures will look better. We should see the proofs next week. Tomorrow we're going to the Grand Illumination parade. Lots of lights!

Green Daddy part 2?

A fun package arrived today from Aunt Angie in Iraq! Joey got an orange monkey like Green Daddy! (She also sent the new baby a purple one in case it's a girl).

Joey said, "Now Green Daddy has a friend! I love this orange one!"

I asked if I could take a picture of him with his monkeys and he wouldn't let me stop. He kept saying, "I want you to take more pictures." That is very unlike him, so I didn't argue. I couldn't get him to give the pictures some variety. He didn't want to move or change positions much.

I asked him what he was going to name the orange monkey. He asked me what the shirt said and I told him it said Ramadi, Iraq, where Angie is. He said, "I will name it Ramadi." He's so brilliant! What a cutie.

Then he proceeded to make me keep taking pictures.

The green box is where he keeps all his "pets" that he loves to play with.

He did finally move to the bed for some pictures.

He apparently was already conversing with Ramadi because he told me that Ramadi loves astronauts (and Green Daddy loves bubbles.) And that Ramadi LOVES when I take his pictures.

Ramadi wanted to play soccer and shared the soccer ball with Green Daddy.

This is the look he gave me when I thought we were done taking pictures, and he thought I should just sit down and keep taking them.

Then he moved to my bed for one more photo shoot.

Daddy came home in the middle of it so he had to show off Ramadi to his daddy.

He always pretends that my bed is a submarine and when you get covered up on my bed, you're inside the submarine. The monkeys were very happy to be in the submarine.

And this was last night, when Joey still wasn't asleep (but was in bed) at 9pm, and he got up begging for a sandwich. So he and his daddy made a sandwich and shared.

He'll go back to preschool tomorrow for the first time since he got sick. Hopefully, it will be easier to get him back on a good sleeping schedule after that. He's all of a sudden scared of any noises in his room and comes to our bed to sleep around midnight every night. It's not fun.

Making a Tent

One night a week or two ago, before we all got so sick, Joey had the idea that he wanted to make a tent. He usually makes me or Earl get under our quilt on our bed with him, and pretend that's a tent. But this time, Earl helped him use his toy bus to make a tent by layering sheets on top of it. He had so much fun in there with his daddy and even the dogs and his toys. He wasn't ready to leave it when it was bed time and begged to sleep in there. I never thought he'd stay, so I let him make a bed in there and watch a little TV, thinking he'd be ready to get out of there in a few minutes.

I took these pictures before he fell asleep. He loved it.

He fell asleep and stayed there until the middle of the night when he woke up and needed a drink. After that, he laid back in his bed, instead of the tent.

I haven't taken many pictures lately. There really hasn't been anything to take pictures of. We've all been sick lately and are just now getting over it. Joey isn't sleeping through the night yet without massive coughing fits, so none of us is getting enough rest or else we'd probably have recovered a little faster.

Joey's favorite thing to say lately is "actually." He'll use it in any sentence: "I actually picked you some flowers, Mommy." (He loves picking flowers from the backyard for me and making piles around the house.)

Today, I'm 15 weeks along in the pregnancy. We're really looking forward to next month when we find out if we're having a boy or girl. Joey still thinks its a girl, but he gave me a name for in case it's a boy: Jokely. He came up with that all by himself. He's hilarious. He really makes up all kinds of words now. He'll build something out of his blocks and call it the Tower of Hisel (that was tonight), or draw a animal with his markers and say it's a pixel hile (well, maybe not that exact word, but his are so bizarre. I can never remember them.)

And we're so thrilled that Earl's nephew Brian and his wife Hollie have had their precious baby Nicolas. Congrats guys! Can't wait to hold him!