I saw this on the web and I thought it was cute, so I’m stealing it. Here’s the interview with Josie, with my comments in the parentheses. Warning, a lot of these just don’t make sense to me either:

• My favorite food is: pasta
• My favorite sport to play is: magazines
• My favorite (TV) show is: Hairspray or as Josie called it “the one that goes ‘i’m a big girl now” (we saw it on the cruise)
• The coolest person on earth is: Me
• The thing I do most awesomely is: baseball (too bad she didn’t answer this for the sports question)
• If I could change my name, it would be: Sophia
• If I could go anywhere in the world I would go to: Storyland
• My favorite color is: yellow and pink
• My favorite toy is: toy phone (does she even play with it?)
• When I grow up I want to be: Cinderella
• My favorite song is: the storyland song (I have no idea what this is)
• My favorite book is: I don’t know, what’s your favorite book (gee way to turn moms frequent questions back on me)
• Three words that describe me are: cake, pink and flowers (there is a definite cake theme this morning)
• When I was little I used to: use my hands (and now she doesn’t?)
• My favorite season of the year: winter
• The snack I could live on is: ice cream
• One food I really don’t like is: really spicy sauces
• My best friend is: lots of people, Jordan is my best friend
• If I had one wish it would be: cake
• My favorite memory is: the aquarium

We’ve been crazy busy lately. Here’s a fun photo from apple picking. I had hoped to get Celia’s 1 year note up, maybe tomorrow!

Josie likes to climb everything these days.

On the way home today Josie said that she didn’t like the color of my mom’s car, beige. She also didn’t like the color of my dad’s car, dark gray. She thinks our car is ok, it’s a light blue. So I asked her what kind of car she wants. She wants a red one with no roof and a tire on the back. I’m guessing that means a Jeep without the roof, great. We asked her what she’d do when it rains and snows, she said she’d stay home and put the car in the garage.

My mom asked what she’d do if she needed to go to the doctor and it was raining. She said she’d walk. Duh.

Way back in April, before Josie turned 3 the four of us went on a weekday outing to the Big Apple Circus when it came to town. We were in the third row right near the front. Celia was only about 6 months old at this time so she still napped pretty frequently (unlike today, where she napped only once). It was a great show with horses, clowns, stunts, trapeze, contortionists, dogs, and goats.

We all took public transportation downtown to Park Street where I waited with the kids and played while Jordi dropped his stuff off at work. We walked over to government center and quickly found our seats. We learned very quickly what Josie does and does not like. She loves the animals and the tricks. She did not like the clown that pretended to cry. She could sense the insincerity and just kept asking us to make him go away. I’m not a huge clown fan either so I can see where she’s coming from. The contortionists made me cringe, especially when hang all of their weight on the roof of their mouth. The animals were graceful and beautiful. The climbers were amazing, a group of men from Africa that could climb straight up a vertical pole.

Celia refused to face me. Instead she faced out away from me, and fell asleep. Somehow in the middle of all the flashing lights and crazy things going on in front of us. Now I have to get the timing just right to get this kid to fall asleep, ahh the good old days.

After we had lunch at quincy market and I took the girls to the aquarium while Jordi went back to work.

Today we spent almost the entire day outdoors. After breakfast we went to the park, played all morning until lunch. Came back for lunch and then went to the farmers market in the center of town. After putting the food away we again went outside to play and ended up at the park again (from which I called for Thai takeout because I was done). Playing outside today I realized the huge difference between the spring and the end of summer at the park. Josie is now commanding the ‘big girl’ swings whereas in the beginning of the year we were both a bit nervous about them. She can pump and goes way up high in them, holding on, leaning back and being silly. As I pushed Celia in the baby swings I remarked on this to the guy next to me and he said ‘well next she’ll be jumping from them.’ Yikes. I’m glad that’s not here yet.

Josie can also ride her balance bike all over the place now and rode it about half a mile today at the end of the day even when she was already a bit tired (to the park and then most of the way to pick up said Thai takeout).

The other fun thing we did today was play with some ice. Now this project requires some forethought, but very little work and it kept Josie busy for almost an hour and Celia interested for part of the time too. In preparation for the storm this weekend I had filled up a soup pot with water and frozen it to make my freezer into a cooler if we had lost power, the ice would hopefully keep things cool. So I had a gigantic thing of ice and brought it outside. Josie banged on it with sticks, then rocks and other things. It was a great opportunity to discuss relative hardness. Eventually it melted enough to get out of the pot and then the real fun began as we threw rocks at it. Eventually we got a big rock, about the size of a childrens shoe box and that really started smashing it. Josie threw pieces off the porch, I threw them in the air and it was fun to see them go splat. And at the end, no clean up. My kind of game.

These days it may seem like I only photograph Josie a few times and keep posting pictures from those days… but really the issue is that Josie keeps wearing the same two outfits most all the time. Her frog shirt plus peach skort, or her blue dress. They are pretty much her standard outfits for all days unless they are both dirty or she wants to match Celia. The dress and the skort are starting to get small, they seemed so big such a short time ago. Here’s the shirt.

Today we had “hurricane” Irene which was downgraded to a tropical storm. While others we know lost power, we were mostly just subjected to doing lots of preparation and staying indoors while it rained and stormed outside. Our neighbors lost most of their tree, but our big one seems to be still steady thus far. We had to do some things to pass the time. We had waffles for breakfast, standard sweet ones. Josie started off by playing beach dance party at storyland. If one thing’s good, let’s combine it all to make it better!

Then after lunch of homemade pesto cream pasta harvested from my moms garden (the basil that is). Then we made some homemade bath paint. Celia and Josie had fun in the tub with that getting painted and then clean. After lunch we started making some Challah bread for the first time for both me and Josie. Challah is a slow to make bread requiring 3 rises, so it took the rest of the day!

Sadly the bread came out of the oven after Josie went to bed so she hasn’t had any. I’ll have to go try some. We had waffles again for dinner, but savory ones this time with black beans, cheese, scallions and spinach in them. They were delicious!

Josie has been working on her own word skills lately too, the written ones. We have a work book that does colors, numbers and letters that we’ve been steadily working through. Her counting is good, although tougher with the higher numbers. Now she can instantly recognize small groups of 2 or 3 though without putting her finger on and counting them. For letters she loves for me to print out pages of dotted letter font. I found one online and I make home made tracing pages for her to practice her letters because they were the favorite part of the book for her. She’ll do a page while I put Celia down for a nap, win win for us. I enjoy using them to express my own feelings and wishes like ‘Mommy sure hopes everyone takes a nap today’ because she can’t read them anyway, she’s just practicing letters. She also now takes great pride in writing her name on gifts and cards to other people and can identify her own name and Celia’s sometimes. She wrote my parents a letter today containing all of our names (Josie, Celia, Mommy, Daddy, Mio, Ezzy, Kaya, Fred, and George). Along with the writing has come some more recognizable drawing. Normally everything is just a scribble and art is a ‘process’ not a result for Josie. Recently we got this which was very exciting as a head, eyes, hair and arms were definitely identifiable [right hand side]. Her paintings continue to be one big blob of color that she has a lot of fun making.

Oddly Josie has decided to start climbing everything in sight now. She tried the TV today, yikes. She’s getting the hang of the monkey bars at the playground.

This afternoon I suggested to Josie that she might want to ride her bike down the hill, and I meant the cement path which has a nice tilt. She did this instead. I’m glad she didn’t head straight down the first try.