Hanging Out With Rusty and Marisa

We made a trip to Hickory, NC for an interview. Since Josiah and I had some free time, we were able to get together with Aunt Marisa and Uncle Rusty, who both drove about an hour to come visit with us. They are my dad's younger sister and older brother. This was Uncle Rusty's first chance to meet Josiah and only his second time seeing Risa, so we had a big day!

The pictures loaded out of order, but this was Josiah's favorite part of the hotel. His own personal "choo-choo." I think he could have played on this all day long.

Uncle Rusty took these awesome pictures at Fuddruckers. Here is Aunt Risa, Josiah and me.

Excuse my vanity, but Mama doesn't get too many pictures on this blog.

Aunt Risa and me

He got some adorable shots of Josiah. Josiah thought Uncle Rusty was hysterical, as most people do. He's very entertaining and kept me laughing a lot as a kid.

"Smile"

Pretty shot with his great aunt and uncle

Sugar #1

Sugar #2

Double Sugar Attack!

Brother and sister reunited

Giving Marisa a fist bump. She got him some fun toys and a book and CD too. We'll post pics of that soon! Thanks, Aunt Risa!

Fist bump for Mama

Just Like Dad

Trip to the Zoo

Our Mom and Tots group went to the zoo yesterday morning. I braved the trip with Josiah and Alexis and they both did great. The rest of our groups is Megan and Will, Kim and Sydney and Savannah, Anna Leigh and Wyatt, and Melanie and Jack.


Wyatt and Josiah checking out the giraffes I think.

At the rhino exhibit.

"Whoa. These things are so big!"

A photo shoot for the animals

Our first train ride. This was, of course, his favorite part of the zoo. When we were talking about the zoo earlier, he just kept asking for the choo-choo.

Sleepy Alexis. She enjoyed her first train ride.

This is our second train ride at the front of the train. Josiah and Wyatt had fun together imitating each other. Do you see Alexis awake for this one? She didn't enjoy this ride so much. We were really close to the conductor's whistle and she was terrified every time it went off. Poor thing.

Toddler 24 Hours

Josiah has shown some distinct toddler/Terrible Two symptoms in the last 24 hours. Granted, he's been a little under-the-weather and tired, but still...

• He learned the word "mine" last night. Dun dun dun.
• He had several kicking temper tantrums and two time-outs.
• He's been full-out running outside.
  
• He used the big-boy swing at the park! I thought I'd let him try, but figured he wouldn't like it. He fell off twice, and after both times signed for "more" swing. He held on for a long time and didn't want to stop. The 9-year-old beside him kept jumping off, and he looked like he wanted to give that a try too!
  

This isn't in the last 24 hours, but I wanted to remember it. He started this habit when playing around other children, especially more passive children, of snatching toys. Of course, I corrected him and told him he needed to ask if he could play with a toy or wait until the child was done playing with it. After that I would see him still snatching the toys, but when he did it he would always do his sing-song "thank you!" At least he's polite about his selfishness. (Don't worry. I'm working on correcting that too.)

Lawnmower Shadow

We went outside to watch Daddy mow the grass. The last few times Josiah has been scared of the mower, but this time he was fascinated.

He pushed his push toy to the grass to be like Daddy.

Then he checked out Daddy's mower to see how it worked.

Then he tried his little lawnmower, but he has to carry it because it doesn't actually roll on grass very well.

Movin' to the front yard

"Just like Daddy"

Getting a little help

Taking the walkway route. That way he gets to follow Daddy's path, but not deal with the grass.

He also took some time to help Mama water the flowers.

A hard day of work!

All Dressed Up...

With somewhere to go. Saturday Jonathan and I went to the Internal Medicine End-of-Year Dinner. It was fun to have a reason to get dressed up. Thanks to Steve and Daria for watching Josiah for us!

Bubble Bath

Josiah has gotten to enjoy bubble baths for the last few days and has loved it. We hardly needed to put the toys in the tub because he likes it so much. Does the smell of Mr. Bubble bring anyone else back to their childhood? Try it sometime.

Smile!

So luxurious. In the picture below, I told him to make a bubble beard on his chin.

Swirling bubbles

Botanical Gardens Outing

The Birmingham Botanical Gardens seems like special occasion kind of place, but I don't see why. Maybe because everyone goes there to take portraits. It was sunshiney the other day, so I decided to go there just because.

We went to the Japanese section and saw the geese and huge goldfish and turtles. This was exciting for Jo-Mo because he can say "goldfish" and learned to say "geese" (which sounds like "please", which sounds like "cheese").

A family that was there at the same time brought saltines to feed the animals and let Josiah have one to participate with too. He doesn't get the whole sharing thing much anyways, nevertheless sharing with an animal. So he stuffed the cracker in his mouth and looked at me like I was crazy throwing pieces to the fish.

This was his favorite part, throwing gravel over his head. If he'd been throwing it on other people, I would have corrected him.

I don't know how he sits on his haunches like that, but he does it all the time.

Airplane!

I know it's a little close-up of the nose hairs, but his smile is so cute.

Post-airplane siting. He always follows airplane with "whoosh shhh" flying noises.

At the fountain, getting wet after the visit!

Free Food!

I've started couponing recently and thus check lots of money-saving websites. This is one of the deals posted:
Move fast to get a free KFC grilled chicken meal. The coupon is only posted until tomorrow (May 6). I pressed my back button, and it printed 4 times for me. I sometimes have trouble with printing these coupons on a MAC, but it printed with Firefox. It's only good until May 19, but not on Mother's Day. Enjoy!

Also, if you stop by Arby's tomorrow and say "I'm parched. FruiTea me," then you get a free FruiTea.

Six Flags

We had a great time this past weekend with the Moseleys and Pikes (and Lori representing the Fishers) at Six Flags. I couldn't individually post all the pictures, but I included some important ones separately in case people couldn't see the slideshow.

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Meeting cousin Caleb for the first time! "Babay! Babay!"

I think he likes him!

Jonathan and his nephew

The whole crew at Six Flags. We had some rain, so we didn't get to do all the rides we would have liked, but it was still very fun.

Josiah enjoyed all the rides for his age, especially the semi-trucks, cars and trains (surprise, surprise). The Moseley Grandparents took him around most of the time, so Jonathan and I could do the thrill rides. He also really liked playing "tag" in the lobby with Brooke, Taylor and Courtney's little girl, who is 3. She was really sweet to him.