Wise Words from Joshua

Joshua has finally said his first official word. Now that I’m a parent, I realize it’s a little difficult to determine what constitutes as a word versus simple babbling. And if he simple repeats a word, does that count? So, I came up with criteria as to what would constitute as the first official word: He would need to say it on his own initiative and use it in an appropriate setting. For example, looking at a tree and saying, “Daddy” wasn’t going to cut it.

After what seems like months of babbling “Da-Da” and “Ma Ma” with a number of other sounds, I was ready. When asked what a lion (or honestly, what any animal sounds like) and he will roar. He can repeat “uh-oh” and shakes his head “no” when you tell him “no, no.” He constantly chatters in his own little language and will even raise his hand in the air to get your attention when he’s talking to you. (This makes me think he will be a preacher or a rapper some day, or maybe a rapping preacher?)

Several weeks ago, Kurt and I headed out to shop for some accessories to decorate our living room. We went to our local Bassett furniture store because we have a gift card. Now Bassett isn’t the fanciest store in town, but it certainly isn’t Wal-mart. They have an area set out with complimentary coffee, lemonade and cookies. Being the cheap people we are, we always take advantage of their hospitality. After hanging out in the stroller for a while, Joshua was ready to do some walking around on his own. Kurt decided to hang out with him for a little while in the kid’s area while I went to get a cup of coffee. We then ventured around the store a little more and talked about our options. After making some decisions, Kurt stated he was going to put Joshua back in the stroller so we could head back to one of the rooms.

I’m not really sure what happened next. Either I stepped forward while bringing my hand down or Kurt stepped back while reaching down for Joshua. All I know is that my left hand, the one with the diamond ring, made contact with Kurt’s forehead. Hard. Kurt lifted Joshua up while moaning in agony. I tried to suppress my laughter, but I didn’t do a very good job. Kurt, in a very frustrated tone, asked what I was doing, as if he thought I did in intentionally. At that moment I was using all my energy trying not to laugh, knowing it would only make my dear hubby angrier. That’s when Joshua decided it was a good moment to try and steal my coffee. He pulled the cup over, spilling the full cup down the front of my cream sweater and all over the floor of Bassett. By this point I was really laughing and Kurt was not happy. Joshua surveyed the scene; coffee on mommy and the floor, and a mad daddy and proclaimed, “uh oh!” Uh-oh was right little buddy.

Ice storm hits Austin, Terrorizes Texans

Falling behind on blogging has become a trend...I'm sure most of you know by now that Austin got hit by an ice storm recently. But did you know that cold weather animals also attacked? Here, Joshua and I are trying to outrun a vicious polar bear.

Austin in winter weather is pretty humorous. Everything shuts down and they warn people to stay off the roads. News reporters gets worked up and have you thinking a natural disaster to the scale of Katrina is about to hit. Sunday night they were predicting terrible road conditions, loss of power, and stranded people for the next day. The tricky part of the storm was that it was going to be off and on all day, making it difficult to pinpoint safe times to drive. I, believing my trusted news anchors, begged Kurt not to go to work. I wondered what I would do if he got stranded at the office and we lost power and Joshua and I had to fend for ourselves. So, like a good husband, Kurt stayed home. He was the only one in his office that wasn't there. oops. By the end of Monday afternoon we began to realize the apocalypse was not coming and the media folks were overdoing it a bit for the ratings. They predicated even worse weather for Tuesday, leading into Wednesday. Kurt went on into work Tuesday. The schools were closed, business were closing, and his office closed too. Would you East Coasters believe this-even Walmart closed. Walmart never closes! While the bridges were a little icy, Kurt didn't have any problems driving in with the Xterra.
Tuesday Joshua and I ventured outside. It had started snowing, but by the time I wrestled him into his snowsuit it wasn't snowing anymore. He enjoyed walking around and crunching the grass, but definitely needed a hand to keep his balance. But of course I needed to take a picture of the cute boy in his snowsuit, which would leave him on his own. I tried to convince him to stand on his own, but he would cooperate. So of course, he fell down. That didn't bother him so much, but in order to push himself back up he had to put his hands in the cold, icy stuff (he won't keep his mittens on). This made him very upset and he started crying, so I brought him inside and here he is.

What can I say? He's a Texan.


By Wednesday night, I was getting stir crazy. Since Kurt was driving the Xterra I was stuck indoors (the Mazda is a manual and I didn't think this was the time to learn how to drive it). That night, Kurt scraped the Mazda's windshield. Given the fact it had been gathering all the precipitation over three days, it took a while... I stayed inside sipping hot cocoa, thanking the Lord that I didn't have to scrap a thing.

By Thursday at noon, things began to get back into order. As for the Polar Bears, they didn't really attack. Last Tuesday Kurt had a meeting in Tyler, Texas so Joshua and I went along for the ride. We thought it might be a good time to test Joshua's road trip adaptability. All in all he did great. He had two basic dispositions for the ride:

Joshua and I checked out Tyler's Rose Garden and Rose Festival Museum. (I'll save that for another entry though.) By the time we got lunch, Kurt was finished with his meeting. We then all headed to the Brookshire Wildlife Museum for some wild fun. It was actually pretty impressive for a free museum. I guess the Brookshire's have a lot of money? They owned the local grocery chain there in Tyler. We made lots of new friends (see pics below) and had fun together. Besides lots of stuffed animals, the museum has an old time general store. It is set up just like back in the day. While I feel like I have seen examples of these before, this was by far the most well done.

This was the wildest animal we saw that day...

Don't you have anything else to do?

Recently I was asked about You Tube and the fact that our videos were public. I didn't think much of making our videos public. So I went to the site to check out some things and found that you can see how many people have viewed your videos. Would you believe that Joshua doing the Hokie Pokie as been viewed over 1,000 times! I think people have found it because it gets linked with other Hokie and Viginia Tech stuff. One Haircut video was viewed over 200 times and the other over 300 times. Isn't funny that people don't have more to do than watch random videos on YouTube? Then again, Kurt and I love watching random videos on You Tube. Here are two favorites we have come across.

Bush Bloopers. No matter what your political views, this is funny.



Get your groove on to this one.


I have gone back and changed the settings on our videos to Private. I can still post them on the blog, but I don't know if I want thousands or even hundreds of people watching our videos!

Sliding fun

Santa brought Joshua a slide for Christmas. He has already figured out how to climb up on it himself. Here he is having fun with it. (I really need to remember not to talk when I'm videoing!)

Merry Christmas!

Hope you are having a great Christmas! Can you believe this is what we woke up to in Austin Texas? I never would have thought we'd have a White Christmas here, but it was beautiful. We spent most of the morning sledding down the little bank behind our house. Joshua didn't seem to quite know what to think of it all, but he had fun.

okay, really it was cold here, but not enough for snow. I know, I was disappointed too. But we have had a great day, despite no snow. Merry Christmas!

Nothing but Monkey Business

I'm a little behind on the updates, but Joshua turned one a few weeks ago! Mom Mom Zeb came to visit so she was there to celebrate with us. We invited some of his friends over for some "Monkey Fun." I thought for sure that having the party at 3 PM would be perfect for his schedule, but he started acting tired just before his guests arrived. Joshua took the monkey theme seriously; I was standing next to the food and drinks and he reached out and grabbed a pitcher of lemonade, pulling it down onto us. It drenched both of as well as soaking all the napkins and splashing onto the plates. As soon as I headed back to change him his friends started to arrive!

He seemed to enjoy playing with his friends. And of course, his cupcake. We had a monkey cake and some cupcakes too. I have to be honest with Joshua and his cupcake...he crammed so much in that at one point he actually gagged. That can't be a good sign!

After pounding his cupcake Joshua had a little meltdown and left the party for a nap. (It's my party and I'll cry if I want too!)

The party ended on a bit of a sour note when one of his friends hit her head on the corner of the wall. She had to go to the ER, but is doing great now. We were sad that it happened, but are thankful that she is okay.

We invited his friends to bring canned goods to be donated to the local food bank in lieu of gifts. It was cute watching him play with the goods later that night!

Happy Birthday to Joshua and thank you to God for carrying us through the first year! Thanks also for Mom Mom making the trip out to be with us. Joshua loves is Mom Mom!!

The First Haircut

Joshua got his first haircut a week and a half ago. It was lots of fun and he looks like a big boy now! The experience can be broken down into two categories: pre-sucker and post sucker. Here are the pics:

The before shots...
He was not really into the clippers, here he is trying to avoid them.
After he kept freaking out, the stylist got him a sucker...we hesitated to give it to him at first but then figured he'd be fine with it. He could not get enough of that thing.
We made the mistake of trying to take the sucker away for an "after" shot-he threw a fit. So here he is with his big boy haircut, red eyes, and his sucker!

ROAR!

Lion Roar

Here's a video of Joshua in his Lion's costume. We tried to teach him to roar for two months...he finally got it-two days after Halloween! This video was taken at our Friday night group with International Students. Thanks Teh-Sheng for the video!!

My other blog world

I have a little secret: ParentsConnect. I've told many of you about it, but figured it was finally time to put a link on here. My friend Erin is a HostParent for the site, which is from MTV/Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group, so she's gotten me hooked. It's still in it's Beta form, so they are working out some technical kinks, but it's been fun. There are discussion boards on every topic related to parenting and life that you can think of. Members can also set up blogs; you can check mine out here*. It differs from this one because it's my deep (and mostly not-so-deep) thoughts on parenting and life. Sadly, I don't get many comments, so boost my self-esteem by visiting and leaving a comment! I highly recommend you check out the site; even if online communities aren't your thing-check it out at least once, I bet you'll get hooked too!

*The link are to a specific blog entry, if you click on the top of the page, the tab blog, you will see the rest of the blog entries.

11 months and counting

Joshua turned 11 months yesterday. He is seeming more and more like a big boy these days. He "works" very hard at different tasks throughout the day. These tasks include pulling books off the bookcase or pantry shelf and organizing the tupperware. He also enjoys moving objects from one end of the room to another. He is pulling up a lot these days and starting to take a few cruising steps while holding on to something. He continues to be a delight. We love his laughter and even his tears.




This picture is pretty funny...he crawled under the chair and then started crying because he couldn't figure out how to get out. So I did what any sweet, loving, caring mother would do-run get the camera!

Waiting for Daddy!

Joshua knows he is sure to get a laugh from Mommy when he smashes his face up against the mesh on his packnplay.

Joshua's Trail of Tears...

It's hard to believe in a short month we will be celebrating his first birthday! We've started talking to him about his first piece of birthday cake, so he's getting pretty excited.

I think they got it right.

You are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Except I don't know what angsty means and I can't find it in the dictionary. Tell me what kind of coffee you are...

Ahh, Austin

Tonight we were walking on Congress (downtown Austin) when we came upon a man wearing nothing but a fannypack. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. I guess he's trying to bring the ol' fannypack back into style. He's definitely living up to "Keeping Austin Weird." Tonight we are thankful Joshua isn't old enough to ask questions.

East Coast/West Coast Vacation V.3:Santa Barbara

One of the main reasons I have wanted to go to California for years is to go to Santa Barbara. Growing up, my dad always shared stories of my Great Grandfather's house here. Dad, Jeff, Kurt and I took a day trip down to dig up some of our roots. Joshua stayed back to lounge at the pool with his cousins.

My great-grandfather, Ray L Skofield, purchased the area known as Rattlesnake Canyon in Santa Barbara. It is now a park and the trails have been maintained and are used frequently. He began building quite a home there but the stock market crash of 1929 halted the construction and sadly, he never did complete it. It must have mostly been completed as the design and layout is much the same with some small additions. The property is amazing with a view of the ocean on one side, rattlesnake canyon on another, and continuing hillside behind. The steep hills all around have development popping up, but it's still very green compared to the hills of Austin. In 1947 my uncle Hobart sold the property to the Holy Cross order of the Episcopalian Church. Today it remains a monastery and retreat house known as Mount Calvary. Brother Lawrence Arms was kind enough to show us around. He told us he was friends with Uncle Hobart so it was fun to hear some new stories about the family and the property. I felt a little sorry that we were trouping around talking among people trying to "retreat" but no one seemed to mind. On our tour we walked past an office and a man was sitting there with traditional monk garb on-I was so surprised and delighted that I was seeing a real monk. Then I realized later in our tour that it was just a hooded brown sweatshirt. Bummer.

Next on our tour de roots was Skofield Park. My great grandfather was a founding member of the Rancheros Vistadores, an elite riding group. The Rancheros began their rides in Skofield Park, then Ray L's land. In the 50's, Uncle Hobart sold the parcel of land to the Rancheros. Once housing began developing in the area, the Ranchero's moved their starting point for their annual ride and donated the land to the city of Santa Barbara; thus yielding Skofield Park. There is a flag pole their dedicated to Ray L. which was fun to see. We had a picnic lunch there and listened to more stories. We looked at the original houses where the family lived that are still remaining today on the road to the park. Dad reminisced about his summers there as a boy. Then we took a little hike up the trail at Rattlesnake Canyon. Fortunately we did not see any rattlesnakes. My dad and grandmother used to ride the trail on horses during their summer visits. The small part we hiked was beautiful. It was nice to be on a real hiking trail rather than the "walking" trails that are found in Central Texas.
We loaded up in the car and drove around a little more. We headed further up hillside past the mission. Talk about winding roads and steep inclines. And the pictures on the news of all the California mudslides kept running through my mind. Thankfully, we finally started heading back down the mountain and into civilization again.

It was a quick trip, but a great day. I thought about what could have been if only the family had held onto the house and the land. But it's great to know that so many people make use of the land and the retreat house. I'm sure not many who visit know the history, but I'm proud of my family for leaving a legacy of memories. For themselves and for the generations of families that will enjoy it in the future. I feel fortunate to have been able to go there with my Dad to narrate. And my brother to pick on. An my husband to hold my hand. Hopefully someday we can take Joshua there and hike up the canyon.
Thanks goes to my brother for the pictures-the settings must have been messed up on my camera that day as all my pictures are tiny.

Hokie, Hokie, Hokie High

WOW, I am now super blog savvy because I figured out how to put a video on here. To debut our video spot, here is Elmo, dressed as the Hokie Bird, teaching Joshua the Hokie Pokie. We were working on getting ready for football season.

East Coast/West Coast Vacation v.2: California or Bust

After our trip to Delaware, we headed to the LA area. (We decided to combine the trips because it was cheaper to fly three legs than to take two separate trips). We flew two days before the latest terrorist plot was revealed, so traveling was normal. Joshua handled the long flight like a champ, especially considering he didn't have his own seat. While Southwest has a pretty good snackpack, they need to get some movies! We stayed with my stepsister Robin, her hubby Scott, their beautiful girls and cute doggies.
Joshua got to meet his California cousins Amanda, Sarah Beth, and Hannah. He was surround by the girls most of the trip! We relaxed at the house, hung out at the pool and ate. A lot.














The next day we went to Newport Beach. It took Joshua all of 10 seconds before putting sand in his mouth. He didn't want to try that again!

"Mommy, please save me from the crashing waves!"

When we arrived at the beach, we noticed a tent and camera crew. After being there a few minutes a man walked around saying they were filming a spot for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and they needed a crowd for the shot. Our five minutes of fame had come within days of being in the OC. As we approached the scene I noticed two exersaucers sitting in the sand. I knew immediately this was going to be Joshua's big break, he would be seen and thousands of people would be throwing money at us to cast him in their films. His education, and that of any future siblings would be paid for. There might even be a little left over money for a day at Lake Austin Spa and a Volvo Station wagon. Kurt might finally get a new pair of socks. I quickly approached someone who appeared to be in charge and offered them the use of my sweet baby boy. He turned me down. He was nice about it, I guess. Said something about throwing babies around in the skit. So we found a spot in the crowd. The gist of it was that one of Jay's sidekicks recently had a baby. So he and another guy competed in a race to set up all the gear that comes with a baby for a day at the beach. We were so zonked that we didn't stay up to watch it, except Robin. She said we had a lot of air time and Joshua was very visible. But we still haven't gotten any calls about casting our precious baby. If you are reading this and you saw it, you have to leave a comment and tell me!

After we left the beach, we went to the airport to pick up Mimi, Papa, and Uncle Jeffrey. What fun! They got to fly on crazy flying day as the news of the terrorist plot broke that morning. I just couldn't imagine Mimi actually giving over her cosmetic bag to be checked! (Okay, we were all secretly hoping it would be lost so we could go for makeovers when she bought new makeup in Cal).

Joshua got his first ride in a bike trailer, courtesy of Amanda. It was pretty cute to see his little head in there. We all stood on the sidewalk to watch him go around and around.

Volume 3 coming soon....

East Coast/West Coast Vacation v.1: Delaware

For the first part of our trip, we snuck into Delaware for a long weekend. We had to be sly because Kurt's mom didn't know we were coming. Kurt's middle brother and his family were coming in from Colorado, so it seemed like a great time to throw her retirement party. The party was also a surprise and we actually pulled it off. It was lots of fun to see everyone. We got to see some of Kurt's extended family and good family friends. Some of her co-workers came to help celebrate as well.
Joshua got some quality Mom Mom time!










Joshua had never met is Colorado relatives, Uncle Ken, Aunt Margaret and cousin Wyatt.



Cousin Wyatt showed him the skill of sucking down some serious juice by using two sippy cups. That boy's got skill...










We stayed with Kurt's sister Kim and brother-in-law Ken. Peter and Lee always keep us entertained with their laps around the house. Joshua thought it was so funny when Peter would purposely fall in front of him. They both laughed and laughed about that.




We always love spending time in Kurt's oldest brother George and sister-in-law Stephanie's pool. Joshua is a little young for the traditional chicken fighting, but maybe next year?

Our last day there the whole crew headed down to Killens Pond State Park for the day. They have a waterpark there for kids of all ages. Pretty impressive for the state park, especially for the $2 entrance fee. (We won't talk about the bathrooms though.) They had a kiddie pool with slides for little guys and a bigger pool with two adult slides.

Special thanks to Uncle George for helping Kurt with Joshua. He had a pool party-foul because he pooped his swimmy diaper. Talk about a mess. Kurt and George had to take him to the shower and hose him down. Hey, at least it wasn't in the pool!

Fun was had by all and Joshua was definitely tuckered out.