Josie has been doing some art these days. She likes crayons, although I have to keep them out of her mouth with some quick maneuvers. Someone is really obsessed with the crayons. Two guesses, but it’s the not the one who plays with the crayons in her chair.

We’ve been having fun with stickers too. I fear the markers, we don’t do that yet.

A few weeks ago my aunt and her family came to visit us. We had a very nice weekend all together. One fun thing we did was go to the MIT Museum and they had a nifty exhibit of a light photo. What they did was give us some little mini key chain lights in different colors, shut us in a completely dark room, and exposed the camera for about 10 seconds while we moved around. Josie was relatively amused by the place. I had the yellow, tried to write Josie and draw a cat. Josie had the pink light, I was holding her. I think it’s a fun family portrait!

Later that day we also went to a cupcake shop in harvard square called Sweet. They weren’t cheap but they were tasty and quite gorgeous.

Josie has been wowing us with her new words every day! My favorites that have come out lately are ‘please, thank you, and sorry’. She also likes to ham it up for the camera, see the photo below as proof.

One funny thing she said (well ok funny to me) happened a few days ago. She was doing her normal yelling ‘mama’ across the house. I said ‘yes Josie’. She paused, and then said ‘other mama’. She wanted daddy apparently.

Josie has continued on her nurturing streak. Here she is carrying around her ‘baby’ in the carrier that I use to carry her around!

Last week Josie turned 15 months old! This week we took her to the doc for her usual shots and checkup. She is now 31.5 inches tall, an inch and a quarter since three months ago, still around 84th percentile for height. She weighs 21 lbs 2 oz which puts her at 24th percentile for weight, gaining just over 2 lbs since three months ago. So she continues to stay tall and thin.

18 month clothes are starting to get tight so hopefully she’ll size up right with the change of the season!

She’s got at least 25 words now including ‘uh oh’ as the newest one. She likes to walk around pointing things out like buses, babies, motorcycles and bikes. She also likes the phrase ‘it’s hot’, used appropriately most of the time. She needs lots of outdoor run around time these days or her behavior deteriorates so rainy days are tough.

Just this week Josie seems to have started to understand the idea that her baby Cabbage Patch Doll is a representation for a real baby. This also came along with her saying the word baby and signing it appropriately. Watch her ‘take care’ of her baby. After the video she threw the baby on the floor — she didn’t learn it from me.

Last week the 2 year old I babysit came over and showed Josie how to jump off of things. Mostly the exercise mat which is pretty high for Josie, she pretty much fell down every time. Instead she made this new game with the drawer from her toy chest. This video was taken after she’d already been doing it for about five minutes, so she had done a great job tiring herself out.

I made some home-made pasta with pesto today without pine nuts. Turns out Josie likes it. Seems to follow her general trend of liking anything I put lots of cheese and garlic into!

She is a great eater at home and whenever I’m making the food. She doesn’t do quite so well at restaurants unless we order extremely plain food, so we always bring an avocado as backup. Not sure what’s up with that.

Josie really seems to like sunscreen. Really really likes it. If she can get her hands on it, she brings it to us and rubs her body to tell us to put it on her. Even if we already put it on. One of these mornings she took it a little far perhaps, she took one look at her greek yogurt, the thick white stuff, and smeared it into her legs. Ick

Here’s just a funny photo of Josie and Jane, a two year old I’ve been babysitting some occasional days. Josie thinks Jane is fantastic — so fantastic she even went to shake Jane awake from her nap before I intervened.

Clearing out the backlog again, I’ve got some fantastic and fun photos from Josie’s birthday party (um almost two months ago). Our friend Sharona took the black and white ones.