“Winne the pooh? Or winnie the poop? ” Yes our daughter’s first potty joke. Seriously why do they name the bear that?

Me, after being asked to remove a doll’s clothing immediately after putting the too-small clothes on: “Are you trying to drive me insane”
Josie: “yes”

Step 1: Make room for another bed.

Josie still sleeps next to us on her mattress, but with another one coming we need to add more bed space and more separate options to help everyone get more sleep. We’ve rearranged our second ‘bed’room to now have room for an actual bed by removing Jordi’s work-at-home desk, putting more shelves in our closet, moving Jordi’s off-season clothes to the basement, putting Jordi’s clothes into our closet, and putting Josie and new baby clothes into what was Jordi’s dresser. Ezzy was very sad to see the dresser, pictured below, leave.

Step 2: Baby diapers

With Josie we used a cloth diaper service for her first year and then washed our own. This time around, we’ve got the hang of the laundry and it will be much cheaper to do it ourselves. I also took some quilting pieces and an old fleece nightgown that flattered no one and made a big pile of cloth wipes (some are on top of the dresser in the picture above). For those interested in the details, we just picked up some organic infant sized prefolds for the new one. We’ve already got the covers since we had that with the service and we’ve got Josie wearing mostly BumGenius 3.0’s right now and those will fit the baby once it gets bigger too and Josie hopefully stops needing them. Plus I’ve got Josie’s old Thirsties AIO size mediums too. The next diapers we’ll need to buy will actually be Josie’s, but I’m crossing my fingers she’ll finish figuring out the toilet before she gains much more weight.

Step 3: Food

I do most of the cooking in the house and while we wouldn’t starve in the first weeks post-baby thanks to takeout and Jordi’s couple of good meals, we’d probably spend a lot more money eating out once the baby comes. So a few weeks ago we bought a chest freezer and I’ve been cooking on the weekends (and once or twice during the week) to start packing it for post-baby easy eating. So far it’s got chili, waffles, chocolate waffles, black bean soup, brown rice, lasagna roll ups, BBQ/sloppy joes, oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough, a few things from costco and meals that some of my mom friends we’re so kind to give to me at my baby shower. This weekend I plan to make lentil soup, black beans, more lasagna roll-ups. Making soup in August has been odd, but we’ll appreciate it come November.

The box the freezer came in has been in our living room for the last three weeks. Josie and the cats have been having a blast with it. I’m sick of looking at it. It’s got one more week before the trashman comes for it. This picture was early on, now it has been well covered in marker, stickers, crayons and the cats have made some ‘improvements’ to the roof like a skylight and textured ceiling.

Step 4: Random house fixes and babyproofing

Now that Josie will likely be able to get a few more steps ahead of me at home and be a bit less supervised while I’m dealing with #2, we’ve stepped up some babyproofing of the big heavy things she has never shown any interested in climbing. We’ve strapped the huge bookcases to the wall and will do the dresser this weekend too. We’ve also been doing other small fixes like cleaning in high places I can’t reach, hammering the nails back into our front porch as they eek their way out in the summer, and tomorrow we need to put a vent cover on our bathroom fan vent to prevent the birds that nest in it each spring from moving back in next year.

All in all if the baby came today we’d be ok, the clothes are washed and the diapers are ready. The kid might not have a name though for a while if it’s a boy, we’re uninspired currently. If you’ve got good ideas, let us know.

Afterwords, Josie woke up from her nap and we drove over to start to party! Everyone had a good time dancing, the little girls at the wedding mostly kicked it off. Josie was in the middle of the pack with a little girl who was almost 3 and a 1 year old also mixing it up. Chad and Angie had a lovely first dance.

Josie and Sammy also had a nice dance. Josie holds on tight. Josie got to try on Sammy’s hat and they showed each other their dance moves.

Oops, things got a little out of control

They had a traditional ‘who’s been married the longest’ dance. Jordi and I held out in good form for a while but my parents held out for second place!

And finally, got Abby in one nice picture.

Josie really liked to pull other people around the pool on the boogie board. Eventually even I got a ride.

Josie got to be fast friends with Phoebe who took advantage of the available petting. The other cats, not permitted downstairs by Phoebe during the day, were not as interested in us.

We also made good use of a neighbors fire pit and made smores one night at the end of the driveway. Todd used a big axe to split the wood and everything. They were yummy, although somehow the chocolate and graham crackers seemed gratuitous, the marshmallows were good enough on their own.

All in all Abby did a good job avoiding my camera as she had a date night when we made smores, rarely joined us in the pool, and then left early for camp before we left town for the final goodbye.

I got some photos of Abby from the wedding… those next post!

The biggest difference have been her language skills, even though its hard to quantify not being a child development specialist myself. She’s been using some complicated sentences in my opinion such as “I want you to open this side, but not the other”. She has dropped her old habit of saying ‘my’s’ for me, my I, etc. She mostly uses the right word and she has started correcting herself when she is using past vs. present tense. She can say her entire name now too and now understands the major question words (what, where, when why, how) that used to elude her. Everything that happened in the past though continues to have happened ‘yesterday’ despite it being actually yesterday or three months ago. Her memory is seriously that good that she will remember things that haven’t come up in months. It’s very helpful when asking her where she put things (like puzzle pieces she now thinks are funny to hide).

Physically she’s running lots. I’m trying to get her walking more and more, but my tolerance for the heat this summer has thwarted that idea a bit as I don’t want to walk anywhere or be out in the heat any longer than I have to! She loves to jump up and down to the ‘up and down’ song from Yo Gabba Gabba.

Her favorite toys right now are her puzzles (24 piece ones most popular) and human-analogs to pretend with. She has amazing focus on the puzzles and once she’s done them a time or two with us she can do them alone.

She loves to play with other kids and is amazingly social (except when doing puzzles). Today at the mall a girl of maybe 6 or 7 came up to her and said ‘hi hi!’ and waved at her before walking away saying how cute Josie was. Josie was a little shocked but then immediately chased after the girl and grabbed her hand and walked half the mall holding her hand. Jordi and I walking behind in amusement. She was not pleased when we separated ways.

She’s a big fan of older girls but plays well for her age with kids her own age. She will most always use her words (loudly) with statements like ‘It’s my turn now!’ when someone grabs or ‘I want it!’. She told Bronwyn the other day ‘Don’t push me!’ after being shoved. I’m so proud of my assertive girl, it’s hard to find that balance and not be aggressive or a doormat and I think she’s getting the idea. Unfortunately other kids (and Josie) don’t always exactly listen to their friends, I often end up repeating what they said to point it out to her.

Numbers and letters have been especially fascinating to her lately and so we’ve been trying to point them out more. She can count to ten reliably and then after that a few start getting lost, but she counts in increasing order, just missing a few or 8 numbers in a row. I’ve been reading probably an hour and a half to her throughout the day, she’s an avid listener and it’s nice for me to get some time sitting.

In her art, she enjoys markers a lot now. This week we got the first demonstration of her understanding the idea of coloring books when she colored one color in the general vicinity of each part of the picture/characters.

Physically she’s been growing like a weed although I don’t have exact stats. She’s put on at least 2 lbs in the last two months, might be almost 30 lbs now.

• Size/weight: size  3T, ~29 lbs and ~36″ tall standing
• Favorite food: cheese, pasta – fairly wide variety, willing to try most things
• Favorite toy: puzzles, water
• Favorite books: Elephant and Piggie books, Amelia Bedelia, Madeline
• Favorite activity: Going outside and playing with other kids, sand play, reading, jumping and reading
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8:30; 1:30pm ~2hr naps; gets up ~6am
• New skill: complicated sentences
• Teeth: 16. 8 on the top and 8 on bottom, still waiting for those molars
• Vocalizations: Almost entirely conversational with strangers understanding her commonly

With the pool in our backyard we only made it to the beach a couple of times for a full beach day, but we took a couple of evenings for dinner or after to go play on the beach in the cool night air. It was a great time for flying kites and for going to the ‘resident only’ beach that we hadn’t bothered to get passes to. These photos are from South Cape Beach, which wasn’t a favorite as it had a lot of sea-weed at the time, but the guards implied that it was an infrequent event.

This is the photo I got after asking Josie to finally take her fingers out of her mouth (she’s been teething a lot on those two year molars, out out damn teeth!)

Josie loved to be bounced around and dipped into the water, to the detriment of her grandparents backs.

Flying the kite, we need to get one that won’t cause rug burn on Josie’s hands for next year if we were to just give it to her. This one the wind would have taken away and spun in her hands.

Now I’m just having fun with my camera and trying to be artsy.

Yum, nothing beats an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. This may actually be the first one we just handed to her and let her eat. The back porch was an easy cleanup spot and we all enjoyed a cone after our morning swim. She could use some work on her technique, it was melting faster than she could eat it. Ethan and Zach did not have the same problem, theirs were gone lickety split.

Josie somewhat liked the water, but also liked to torture us by walking around the outside of the pool while we were in it and refusing to get it. This pool also had a really steep dropoff past the 8 ft wide shallow end. She got more familiar with it as time went by but her favorite activities remained throwing the beach ball animals into the pool and washing the lizard inflatable with a sponge. She also liked the outdoor shower where we’d hose her down afterwords with some warm water.

One day our friends and neighbors Christina and her two boys came down to visit us from home and spent the morning in the pool with us. Ethan (age 4.5) had a blast, Zach was a bit more cautious but got into it by the end.

Jordi somehow didn’t hear the ‘no pictures while I’m wearing a swimsuit rule’ and did take a few. I think they are determined to make only two kinds of maternity swim suits, ugly, and uglier. I went with ugly, although some people seem to like it, it just gets the job done so I can enjoy some time in the pool. I can still wear my regular tankini but it’s getting less comfortable now at 30 weeks along.