Josie is very proud these days of anything she can help with. One of her favorites is helping Jordi make his lunch in the morning for work. She often helps by reminding him of what goes in it (cheese, spinach, etc) and then taking the spinach they put in the sandwich and putting it on the floor or her tower. Mio likes spinach, and so does George. But of course, so does Daddy.

A few weeks ago my cousin Will came up for the holiday weekend and Josie got to meet him again for the first time since she was 2 months old. Things have certainly changed since then! We celebrated Will’s birthday a little late by all going out to dinner on Valentine’s day, so maybe not the most romantic, but we certainly weren’t in the minority being people dining with a toddler that evening! (ok so we had dinner at 6, that might change the clientele at Not Your Average Joes)

We also bought ourselves a vacuum cleaner for valentine’s day too (as a pre-agreed upon thing). Nothing says loving like a quickly but effectively cleaned house.

J

Looks like even the very youngest of us can’t resist a light-up floor and techno music!

A couple of weekends ago we went to the science museum. I swear this video shows some of the most fun Josie had, although there was a lot of fun to be had. The whole place was a bit over-stimulating, still, we found this funny. She’s starting to do stairs by herself with us standing below her so she doesn’t topple and break anything.

Whenever Josie see’s a zucchini in the grocery store, or in the fridge she immediately proclaims ‘Zucchini pasta!’. It’s her favorite dish. It’s simple, it gets some veggies into her and it’s yummy and garlic filled. Since I seem to keep screwing up 3/4ths of the new things I try to make, I’ve been sticking to the old favorites lately like this. Here’s how it goes in case you want to make Josie her favorite meal! I think I may have picked it up from Rachael Ray, but I really can’t remember at this point.

Zucchini Pasta

serves 6 (or 4 big big servings)

• 1 lb linguinie
• 4 cloves garlic, grated
• 1 large or two small zucchini’s, grated and dried a little with paper towels
• 3 oz parmesan cheese shredded (grated works too but good cheese is really important to this)
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp olive oil

Boil water for pasta and cook according to package. Save 1 cup of the pasta water before draining. In a big (I use non-stick) frying pan, melt butter and olive oil together over medium low heat. Add in zucchini (I add it when I put the pasta in the water for pretty good timing) and garlic. Cook approximately 7 minutes, until cooked and just starting to brown.

Add in the drained pasta and cheese and half a cup of pasta water. Toss to spread everything around to keep cheese clumps from forming. Ideally the cheese will just melt into the sauce. Add more pasta water if the pan is dry, the pasta shouldn’t have a soupy sauce, but shouldn’t be sticking to the pan either. You can cook it off if you add too much. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add generous heaping to your plate and enjoy eating some well hidden vegetables. I’ve also added shredded red peppers in too which adds a slightly different but also yummy flavor and color to the mix.

Most every weekend my dad goes ice skating. His friend Bert usually joins him. I try to join a couple of times a year. Josie watched us do it once a few weeks ago and had a good time. Yesterday we asked if she’d like to try to do it herself, we showed her videos on youtube of other kids skating, talked about how she’d wear a helmet and she was enthusiastic.

We got to the rink, got skates for her (too big unfortunately), and got all the way dressed just in time for the bell to signal time to stop skating for an ice cleaning break. So we waited while that happened, Josie had a snack. In that time they thankfully found the one pair of size 6/7 skates that they have and gave them to us so she had the right size skate on. They let people back onto the ice and off we went. Josie was dragging us in front of people trying to get to the ice!

We brought her out to the middle of the ice and the expected happened, she tried to stand, she fell over. We held her, she struggled to stay on her blades at all. She lay on the ice and we spun her around, she really liked that. She got to go around a few times with grandpa being held. She spent a bunch of time in the team boxes playing with the door to the ice. We skated a bit more in the middle, she still didn’t get much of the hang of it. She said it was time to go, and so we went.

I think she had a pretty good time all things considered. She got closer and closer to being able to stand on her skates on the ice and she definitely learned how to walk on them on the rubber floor by the end of the day quite confidently. I don’t think we’ll try again soon but definitely next year I expect we’ll do it again! After skating we retreated to Panera for some much deserved hot chocolate, soup and sandwiches.

Both Mio and George these days spend a lot of time in the tower until Josie chases them off with a ‘no Mio, no George’. She’s big into scolding the cats, unfortunately she makes up some infractions that aren’t really a problem.

I guess Jordi and I are generally members of the clean plate club because tonight at dinner Josie expressed shock and told us we were ‘not done eating’. Here’s our plates. She was of course done eating.

At this age, the milestones have definitely slowed down or are not as obvious a change as from non-mobile to walking. Today though Josie showed some real progress on her journey to using the potty. She spent the entire day from wakeup to bedtime in underwear. She had one small accident while literally getting out the unfamiliar potty at a friend’s house but otherwise was dry all day, including nap. This including a trip out of the house to playgroup and to a friend’s house! Yah for Josie! We barely even need to remind her anymore, in fact I think she gets ticked that we do ask her.

And I’m getting some milestone’s too, my photos are getting a bit better I think, here’s one from class.

For all those parents of little ones in the cold climate out there reading, I suggest you might take a look over at landsend.com’s outlet these days as they have a number of coats and snowsuits on sale for the 2T/3T set at considerably cheaper than next year’s prices (at least half price, usually more). Selection is of course more limited, but I found stuff that I like for Josie. I usually get lots of free shipping and coupons from them in email too, so if you don’t, I’m happy to pass them along. I also just ordered a hat and mitten for Josie from llbean for next year and beyond, but I don’t see such good jacket deals there (free shipping codes there too).