Got a few photos of Josie that I just really liked today, for her expressions.

They play nicely, side by side. Celia chewing on Josie’s wooden ipod, Josie playing with her magnatiles.

Then Celia makes a lunge for the toys Josie has. Josie tries to block her, despite the fact that she literally has 100 of those blocks. She wants THAT one. Hear a loud ‘CELIA!’

Then Celia cries, having been thwarted.

See Josie move further away to play, but not really far enough.

Last year for mothers day, I asked Jordi to make this blog into a book. As you may have noticed this blog is pretty much a baby book keeping track of our family activities and milestones, while also updating our friends and family in pain-staking detail. Jordi spent the past year working on it at nights and on train rides during his commute and formatted it into a pdf for blurb.com to print and bind into this fantastic book. It’s over 300 pages and only includes the first two years of Josie’s life. So I should have a nice encyclopedia set by the time we’re done.

Here’s a quick glimpse into some typical playtime in our house. Parents trying to ‘rest’ during playtime. Josie trying to give everyone shots. Celia making funny noises.

Celia has learned how to stand up from the ground. One day later than Josie did. Josie did this on her 8 month birthday, Celia’s was yesterday, but she had a short month (February) in her first 8 months of life and Josie didn’t. So you know… it’s about the same. My kids are crazy. I managed to get it on video though because she had just tried and fallen once so I pulled out the ipod!

That some little girls don’t like umbrellas? Girls wearing old dresses don’t like them. Josie

Celia is progressing on a daily basis now with her walking. If I walk away from her when she wants me, she will let go and start going after me now. Depending on how well rested she is, she can often make it over to me. Or more often I see that she’s walking and I gush over how she’s walking and bend down to pick her up.

This video is a few days old, so she’s even more steady now.

Well Celia has decided to let go and walk more. She can now also turn herself around while walking, so she is no longer restricted to the options of sit or go when you stand her up to walk. She has gone about 4 ft maximum walking now, but she can’t get herself off the floor to standing yet without something to pull on.

Josie has started to sort things. By color, by shape. She had never seemed to notice before. Makes an over-organized mom proud.

Celia’s 5th tooth came in overnight. I miss sleep.

We’ve had a rough couple of days here. Wednesday morning Josie went to her first dentist appointment ever. Our insurance is doing weird things and decided they weren’t covering her, so we’re trying to work out the payment stuff while they’re trying to get us in for cleaning. Josie has been preparing well for this day, lots of book reading and play acting. She was happy to look at the tools and would sit on the chair in my lap. She sat with her mouth open the entire time. Every time someone new came in, she opened her mouth. If anyone looked at her, she opened her mouth. Without being asked. I could physically feel and hear her taking many deep breaths to calm herself down throughout the whole thing. So even though it was clearly tough, she did great. The most painful part being where they took me in the back room and told me to pay the bill because of the insurance mess-up.

Later that afternoon Josie completely fell apart for no apparent reason. She seemed a little hot to me, but that often happens because she just runs warm. She got home and continued to be a total stress ball, didn’t want to do anything but be held, I figured maybe it was steam from the dentist appointment blowing off. She decided to go into her room and get her blanket right before dinner, and before I knew it, she was asleep. She slept for an hour and woke up crying. Wouldn’t eat any dinner so we put her back to bed and she woke up a lot at night crying until she could finally tell Jordi that her ears hurt. The poor girl just kept asking him to ‘solve the problem’. Some motrin solved it for a while and in the morning we called the doc and got an appointment to confirm her double ear infection.

She spent the morning hanging onto me and then napping on me when Celia took her nap. She woke up from her nap and immediately called for me, which was pretty funny considering I was underneath her. We got her medicine and the day went better.

This morning I continued with her antibiotic. I had a podiatrist appointment for my messed up foot and I took the girls and my mom who also had an appointment for her messed up foot. Celia was napping in the car with my mom so I took Josie in with me, and went into the lobby. Looked at the chart to see where the office was, turned back to Josie and a big pile of pink food on the ground. Then she threw up, again, and again, and again.

I managed not to toss my own cookies thankfully too as I am prone to do. I cleaned her up a little and rushed up to the office upstairs, told the bank on the first floor about the mess and cleaned Josie up in the bathroom. Josie got to wear Celia’s shirt because I didn’t have any tops for her. Somehow she fit right into the 12 month onesie, guess they have the same chest size pretty much. It was probably car sickness from the long ride combined with her ears being blocked. Thankfully she seemed better and she did great at the doctors office watching me get an X-ray and such. Turns out I have a bone spur on my heal and will be getting orthodics.

Right now, Josie’s sleeping. She did fine the rest of the day. After the appointments we went to my old childhood bakery, Rosenfelds and bought 3 dozen bagels (to be enjoyed over time from my large freezer) and some challah and babka. I highly recommend it all, I’ve enjoying eating far too much of all of the stuff today.