Rock A Bye Your Bear

Joey enjoying one of his favorite songs by The Wiggles, Rock A Bye Your Bear.  He taught himself the motions after seeing the song only a few times in videos on t.v.  He now asks to watch it, and Elmo's version of the ABC's, on you tube everyday.  He calls this song Na Na-Na Na-Na Shh Shh Shh sung to the tune of the song :o)

Brownies!

Joey's first time baking :o)

Spectacular Sixty

1. Done
2. Down
3. Mama
4. Dada
5. Jake
6. Granpa
7. Papa
8. Linda
9. Sasha
10. Sister
11. Din Din
12. No
13. Yeah
14. Sure
15. Boom
16. Tissue
17. Waffle
18. Spoon
19. Shoe
20. Sock
21. Balloon
22. Ball
23. Bubble
24. Chair
25. I
26. Share
27. Night Night
28. Banana
29. Please
30. Elmo
31. Book
32. Fishies
33. Purple
34. Door
35. Wall
36. Pizza
37. Thank You
38. Apple
39. Up
40. Uh Oh
41. Oh No
42. Choo CHOO
43. Six
44. My
45. Hi
46. I'm
47. Pot
48. Bowl
49. Block
50. Hat
51. Hot
52. Hush
53. Lina
54. Miss Jeana
55. Jean
56. More
57. Sit
58. Eat
59. Normal
60. Two

 Mr. J has now hit sixty words :o).  It gets hard to keep track.  There are a couple other things he says, but they are either inconsistent or not quite clear enough for us to definitely count them yet.  He is so much fun these days. 

Ho Ho Ho Santa's Bringing A Sissy

According to Joey anyway :o)



Baby's First Haircut, Alternately Titled Shagmonster Gets A Trim

We decided it was time for Joey to have his hair cut. Actually, after looking at his before pictures, I can now see it probably should have been done quite some time ago. This hair was a long time coming though .. the boy was basically bald until he was fourteen months old.

 He's still cute but, omigosh, how did I let him go so far without a haircut?

 He was not loving the feeling of the scissors against his skin.

Poor baby. Subjected to such torture :o(.

We tried the magic snooze button :o).

 Notice the one quarter of his head that is tamed while the rest is still shag-mania.

It helped but he still looked kind of sad.

Progress was being made nonetheless.

 We broke a candy cane.

 Suddenly, this haircut thing was not quite so bad at all.

 And here we are with a whole new and much cleaner look.

And clinging to that candy cane for dear life :o)

Oh, Christmas Tree

Our tree has undergone some changes this year.

It has a flashing LED star on the top that alternates between blue and green, for one.

What does this coordinate with, you ask?  Exactly nothing would be the answer.

Joe likes it and I have been won over by his insistence that Joey will like it too.

Gone are the days of a nicely coordinated tree that matches our Christmas decor.

Our red and gold is packed away and resin Sponge Bob, Elmo, Santa and friends have taken up residence

There is Little People Christmas scenery under the tree for our little person.

In the past, I held strong to the idea that the tree in the living room would be "mine."

Joey has his own tree for his room ... that one could be crazy, I reasoned.

Joe said this was silly and now I know he's right.

I'm liking our family tree and can't wait to see what haphazard assortment of ornaments ends up telling our story as the years pass.  Will we have construction paper reindeer hung with yarn?  It will be beautiful.

This ornament is my favorite.  You can guess what it is.

How lucky we are to be able to hang it on our tree.

Next year we will have two.

It's true that having children changes the way you view things, both in big ways and in small.

This boy .. he's oh so tiny and oh so big, all at the same time.

As I try to shape who he becomes and help him grow I realize he is doing the same for me.

Isn't this how it is with children, as we try to grow their souls ... they end up growing ours?