Big Boy Glasses, Part 2

You'll be happy to know that I've had a few weeks to finally get most of the DRAH-MAH! out of my system, and Thank you, God! -- I have discovered that my Josh "McQueen" may be able to escape the confines of the crib, but after about a week and a half without naps, I have finally convinced him that he needs to stay behind the brown rail and crash...now, we had to get through Christmas without downtime (wherein he bolted around like a hummingbird on crack because he was too shot to settle down), but our routine is actually back in motion, with the added benefit that he's now napping almost 2 1/2 hours straight. We are still trying to get him to conk at a decent bedtime, but to be honest, it's so much easier to deal with the fussing in the afternoon than at the end of the day when we've got nothing left...so we're still playing bedtime as when he wears out, he's out...he's been out generally between 9-9:30. The only really good news about Josh's final escape attempts is that we finally got into gear and worked on rearranging Josh's room...it's now Josh's room, instead of a storage room that happened to have a crib and a changing table in it...As for our room, weh-ll, it's much "cozier" than it was, but Jon's happier and Josh now has full run and reign over the living room, the hallway, and his own room now, and that's helping to burn off all of that energy ( in theory). Of course, the running joke is that we now have two baby gates up "permanently" (one to the bathroom and one to the dining room) and we keep forgetting the dang things are up when we go wandering in the middle of the night. In order to keep the gates effective with Josh's height, we have to keep them up about hip/groin level... high enough that Josh can get his hands under the gate, but without enough space that Josh can get his head under -- I figure kids are like mice, anywhere their heads can go, the rest of them will follow. They definitely make our night rounds just that much more interesting...and I can't tell you how many times we've attempted to completely kill ourselves in our attempts to navigate (or, let's be honest -- NOT navigate) those cantankerous gates.



The first Christmas that Josh may remember was a hoot...Jon's family did their usual Christmas eve exchange, then Josh crashed and a certain pair of elves were up putting together Josh's "Big Christmas present"...a "small" climber platform with a slide...I swear, his jaw dropped and dragged a rut in the carpet when he came in the next morning...and it's probably the best investment a pair of elves could have made, even though we had to sacrifice half of the living room to accommodate the big plastic beastie. All of that energy has to go somewhere, and if he's climbing walls, they may as well be walls that are designed for him to climb. We opened more presents and then hit the neighbor's up again, and Josh divided his time between running Tim's Christmas train and playing basketball on the collapsible hoop Santa had left there. One of my favorite things about Tim's tree set up is that everything is hooked up to a switch right by his chair, and Josh would go up to Tim's tree and look at it hopefully before saying with all of the two-year-old earnestness in the world, "Please, Tree." The lights would come on like magic, and Josh would grin and laugh delightedly

every time.

Josh's Big Present & Josh's Face When He Saw It

After the first Christmas dinner there, we piled into the car to go see the other half of the family...(maybe 2/3rds would be more appropriate, considering how big my side of the group is). Again, the then un-nappableJoshling was running hot and crazed for a bit...At one point, he was trying to look at the shiny centerpieces on the dining room table, and accidentally flopped belly-first on top of the tablecloth...an action that very nearly sent a pepper-shaker ornament careening into the back of Mom's head (to this day she doesn't know how close she was to being brained by a spice), and Jon and I were fairly ragged by the time he finally settled down.


I was also sporting a heck of a bruise under my right eye -- and didn't I see the hackles go up when the female contingent saw that, even though I made a point to tell them what actually happened. It was a good thing I did, because it was like watching the Matriarchs in an elephant or buffalo herd circling and preparing to charge a predator. Do you remember my telling you about Josh giving Jon a black eye? Well, the very next day, in the throes of a massive tantrum, Josh threw his head back just as I leaned forward...I swear he actually bruised the bone. You couldn't really see Jon's ouch unless you knew where to look for it because his natural skin tone is kind of ruddy, but I have weird, pale skin...and it takes a really concentrated knock for me to actually bruise...it's only JUST going away now. Jon initially wanted to be ornery about the bruise and just run with it, but I firmly explained that this group really wouldn't see any humor in the situation...and I'd seen too many Wild Kingdoms where the silly coyote got its head kicked in by the protective mama buffalo.


Speaking of the Animal Kingdom:
Hank, The Roast Beast was utterly fabulous...If I have not mentioned Hank before, he is the half of cow that lives in Mom and Dad's freezer for the sole purpose of being our sustenance on Christmas Day. His full name is Hunk O' Hank and his name is passed on to a different generation each year. While Jon swears a holiday isn't a holiday without Aunt Helen's home-made chicken noodles, I will stand by that glorious critter and it's constant companion, the jar of Amish Horseradish. I confess that I would happily eat an entire jar of Amish Horseradish every day for the rest of my life...clears your sinuses at eighty paces, and wakes you up for three weeks after, but Hoh! is that stuff wunnerful. There was enough hunks of Hank for each of us to have a steak about an inch thick, and Jon and I traded off so that we could each have a little eating time. Josh was ecstatic, he quickly dismissed his high chair, and chose to sit in a big chair, where he tried to chirp in to the table conversation and entertained one and all.


I was liking this Christmas quite a bit for the most part. I had begun the day with my Christmas Morning "Mimosa" -- which, unless I'm down at Mom's in the morning on Christmas Morning, tends to be strictly sparkling grape juice and orange juice. Even though the day wasn't a completely smooth event, I ended the day just feeling really tired and really good and really happy to see everyone...and I was even happier to just be where I was, snuggling up to my incredibly handsome, good sport hubband...with a zonked toddler in the backseat.

* * * * *

I'd love to tell you that we were wild and crazy folk New Year's, but it would be a lie...Josh had been up the night before (and so, of course, was I)...so I was actually out and snoring by about ten...poor Jon came in to pat my shoulder and give me a kiss at midnight...I think I may have drooled on him in response.



Josh is getting better at wearing his glasses...and we're also teaching him to hand them off to one of us when he isn't wearing them -- a lesson we learned when the harmonica came up missing two days after we gave it to him for his birthday(I think I'm more sad about it than he is, although he loved it and took it everywhere)...and a lesson we relearned while Josh was getting used to his "trial-Big-Boy-Glasses"...He'd have them on when I walked out of the room, but I'd have to rip the place apart trying to find them when I returned a few minutes later. He looks pretty good in them...perhaps he looks a little mature for a two-year old, and his eyes do seem a little bigger behind the lenses, but they aren't cartoon-character huge...and I confess that was really one of my initial concerns.



His vocabulary is still mostly chirrups...but he seems to be picking up a slew of new words every day...and new games. With a bit of prompting, he can count to thirty-one, and as I have placed my "What to Expect in the Toddler Years" book "someplace safe", I can only hope that he's appropriately on track. His favorite game now is one he picked up from Mom's dust bunny dog. He loves that ridiculous animal, and tries to mimic her behavior all of the time...when Mom explained that licking noses was Truffles version of kissing, well, of course Josh popped up and licked Mom on the nose. He is taking it to excess, however, and has decided that his father and I need licked on the knees, on the belly, on the elbows....and trying to fend off this all-muscle grinning boy-puppy is a joke in itself. He just laughs and stretches that tongue out further. He will not be blocked by pillows or blankets or any distraction...by golly, there are noses to lick, and he will lick them.


Uh, Oh...I know that look...I'm going to be slimed! HellllllllP!!