Josie has learned to play peek-a-boo herself! She actually first demonstrated the skill while in the car on the way to Pennsylvania. She previously would pull the blanket down from herself or you to ‘find’ you, but now she pulls the blanket up herself to hide.

Today she also played a fun game of ‘find the daddy’ or as I apparently incorrectly called it according to the daddy, hide and seek. Since she can walk she can follow your voice and come find you, which is great because separation anxiety is kicking in big time! She’s doing the typical shy kid pose of literally grabbing your pants and hanging on. Here’s just a cute video of her from a month ago laughing and walking. Somehow I swear George always gets himself in the background of the videos.

As promised by previous posts, we took Josie out sledding when it snowed before. We bought two sleds as we weren’t sure which one would work best while holding her, and so we could have races. Josie seemed to enjoy herself but was a little shy about it. She basically just becomes a passive ball of goo whenever we put her in her snowsuit. First video is of a race which Jordi won for speed, Josie and I won for distance and accuracy. Neither one of my parents were as brave as the baby as refused to go down the mini-hill.

Actually one of my favorite embarrassing stories (for Jordi) I like to tell is the first time he went sledding. We were at CMU and went down the hill together. We were headed directly at a tree and I was in front so I threw one arm out to the side to get us to turn. Jordi sensed us turning and panicked and put his opposite arm out to straighten us out! Then I of course wasn’t going to collide with the tree if I could help it and had to throw all four of my limbs overboard to just stop us. So Jordi, sledding, and steering seem to have been an issue from day one.

What did I say yesterday about Josie having two teeth? because today she has three. Top right one came in overnight, what a fun fun night we had!

I caught a rare glimpse of this odd creature that is occasionally crawling like a crab now. I just happened to have the camera on to see Josie do this funny trick to get herself onto the rug so she could stand up easier.

Josie has learned to wave bye-bye! Sometimes one handed, sometimes two handed, but often at the right time. Most recently she was so excited to see Ginny, one of my parent’s cats (and sister to Fred and George) that she waved at her. Ginny took the greeting unfortunately instead as a threat and went and hid.

This new talent works well with the fact that she can just get up and leave now. The photo below is awful, but it’s the only one you can see teeth in! Or tooth in. She has two teeth, both on the bottom center but you can only really see one.

Josie and her tooth (and hands)

One of our favorite restaurants since we came to Cambridge post-CMU has been Border Cafe. While I like to eat a lot of different foods, I often find one thing per restaurant that I just love to get again and again. At the Border Cafe my favorite was the corn and black bean empanada. Now this dish really wasn’t an empanada, it was more what Americans would call a chimichanga, it was a deep fried burrito covered in red pepper sauce. It was delicious and was the same for the last 8 years that we’ve been going there.

Now for some reason they’ve changed the dish to make it more like real empanadas, four little pouches of flakey pastry. Problem is that they just aren’t as good, it’s too much dough, not enough beans and cheese and veggies. It’s just ruined for me, and it’s not that they don’t have good chips, salsa, quesadillas, and fajitas still, but they just removed my favorite food.

And, I have asked previously for the recipe and they refused it. Now I can’t even enjoy it at the restaurant! So Border Cafe is dead to me.

It’s been a very busy few weeks chasing after Josie because on her 8 month birthday she decided she was going to get up and walk. The previous Friday she had learned how to get to her feet from her belly and so she put it all together and now walks about. It has taken a while to get a video as she loves to fall down immediately when I take out the camera for some reason, and she doesn’t give me any time online anymore as she just gets up and leaves when she wants to. For instance she got up and left my lap in the middle of my rendition of “the noble duke of york” this morning.

Our babyproofing efforts have gone into super high gear to finish up things as they become problems. For instance now Jordi’s guitars are hanging on the wall up very high and the TV cabinet has a new latch. George and Josie repeatedly test out all the babyproofing for us to make sure it holds. I think they will be working together in the future to foil us. (Note: the stuff on the floor in the video is snow in case you were worried!)

Now that Josie has mastered the pincher grasp (grab small things between two fingers) she likes to pick up every little piece of anything like rug, catfur, etc, off of the floor of the house. And put it in her mouth. Argh…

With the new round of gifts comes a new round of toy confusion. Ezzy loves to just put herself in the middle of the pile of toys and see which ones look like fun. The top ball of her stacking tower is much coveted by all!

It’s hard to get shoveling done with a baby because now we can only have one person working at once really. The other needs to be watching or playing with the baby because it’s just too cold outside. Although, the following can work for about ten minutes.

Jen and Josie shoveling