Brave Boy

April Showers Bring May Flowers

On the Hunt

Josiah participated in several Easter egg hunts this year. He's not the most ambitous egg hunter, but I can't figure out a way to make him competitive without encouraging greed, so I'm OK with it. He's content with what he has; why discourage it?

He did one hunt at preschool, and then we did one for him and our neighbor Mattie in our backyard.

Micah seriously loved playing with plastic eggs.

Our church had an outdoor service and held an egg hunt afterward.

Micah sporting Pop's hat.

Being adorable.

Josiah sporting one of his Easter basket gifts: cool new shades.

Micah got his first sippie cups in his basket. He knew right what to do with it!

Dyeing Easter Eggs

A few days before Easter Josiah tried his hand at dyeing some eggs. He was very decisive about what colors he wanted.

I was a little nervous about having all this colorful dye around the house, but he did really well.

Here he's using some color "snaps" that Mimi gave him last year.

So proud!

It brought back lots of great memories for me of dyeing eggs with my Grandma Sara at Easter.

Easter Cousin Pictures

The weekend before Easter, I took the boys up to visit the Moseleys. I did a pitiful job of taking pictures, even though part of the purpose of trip was to get some professional pictures of all the boy cousins in the cute Easter outfits Mimi got them.

Josiah and Micah hanging with Granddaddy after the shoot. The pictures came out really cute; I was amazed at how the photographer got all of them to look at the camera.

We also got to surprise Anna for lunch and see her get ready for her prom. Because all of her girlfriends were spending the night at the Moseleys, we went and spent the night with my cousin Holly and her family. What a sweet opportunity! Josiah had a blast with his cousins Parker Grayce and Braden. Again, no pictures. I stink.

Jacob had a good time bouncing on his Aunt Lollie.

Again, blurry, but the boys had fun playing with Anna and Tiffany on Saturday. Turns out we were about two miles from where the tornadoes hit. Little scary.

Micah's "9-Month" Stats

Here are Micah's stats from his 9-month well visit, which took place when he was over 10 months old.

20 lbs. 6 oz. (45 percentile)
28.5 inches (50 percentile)
Head: 46.3 cm (75 percentile)

For those of you keeping track of such things, he actually decreased in weight, which of course is not good. We think it is probably due to his increased activity with crawling and my mastitis. The doctor was encouraged that his height increased; he is growing. We'll definitely keep an eye on it. Micah was using the examining table as a crawling treadmill, so he was showcasing how much he likes to exercise lately.

Oh, and the doctor also found a double ear infection and prescribed breathing treatments again. Poor kid. I had a feeling the infection hadn't resolved since the last one he had two weeks ago. He seems to be on the upswing now, so hopefully this round of antibiotics will kick it.

Our Little Egg-head

Micah at 10 Months

Micah is 10 months old today. Time flies! These pictures were a little bit harder to capture...

because somebody doesn't like sitting still anymore!

Gotta go!

Clearly the biggest change since last month is movement: crawling and pulling up. He's also communicating a bit more. He's signing correctly for milk, and he added Mama to his babbles! He says it any time he's discontent, so he could be requesting me, but I'm not completely convinced.

Getting Braver

I mentioned in a previous post about how I thought Josiah was on the cusp of some big changes. In the past few weeks, I've been wondering what happened to my timid boy!

This was one of the first big ones. Getting up the "Piston Cup" at our mall playground.

And the little one is just cute.

Here are some other brave things he's done lately:

• Jumped on a trampoline. He wasn't doing back flips or anything, but he was enjoying himself.
• Going to the big slide on the playground multiple times without having to be coerced.
• This isn't a physical thing, but I wrote out some bubble letters on his board the other day and asked him to try tracing them. He didn't whine or refuse, and he did really well.
  
• Tried on roller skates.
• Climbed the climbing wall on a friend's play set
  
  These are all things that most children his age consider old news, but it's a big deal for him. Sort of a breakthrough. I don't know if it's just confidence with age, or if during most of the instances, there was someone other than myself encouraging him to try it. Jonathan suggested that Josiah may be like his father in that he doesn't want to do something if someone tells him to do it.
  

On the Move

He's officially crawling! It happened about a week ago, when Mommy was too sick on the couch to respond to his needs. I guess he just figured he'd get it himself. We've entered a new phase: he is no longer content with sitting still!

Crawdads Open House

Our local minor league baseball team, the Hickory Crawdads, had a fun open house last Saturday. You could run the bases, play games, do a craft, throw baseballs, get your face painted, eat free popcorn and then they capped it with an Easter egg hunt! Josiah ran the bases 5-6 times and touched each base. No ref could call him out on a technicality!

The Morgan family was enjoying the festivities as well. This is the egg hunt, which they did very diplomatically. Kids picked up empty eggs, and then redeemed them for candy at the end. Each kid got the same amount of candy no matter how many eggs they had. It was nice for our younger kids.

The loot. Sorry for the sideways post.

Meeting Candy Crawdad, one of the mascots.

They also had cheap food. I was bringing our hot dogs and fries to the condiment stand and Micah reached down and snatched one for himself. Again, I would have shrieked in horror if I'd ever given Josiah a fry at 9 months old. In fact about a week before this, I'd mentally scolded a mother for doing the same. I always get payback when I scoff at other people's parenting.

Princess Birthday Party

I have lots of fun blogs to catch up on, and the boys have been doing some crazy new things lately. A bout with mastitis knocked me off my feet for several days, so hopefully I can catch up soon. While I was unable to move from the couch, Jonathan took Josiah to our friend Audrey's 3rd Birthday Party - a princess party!

Look at this knockout cake that my friend Lee made. Wowza! Amazing!

I think Josiah liked it.

Just a little bit.

All of these pictures I swiped from Lee, and she caught some cute ones of Josiah laughing at the presents being opened.

By the way, funny story about us picking out the present for this party. We were roaming through Target, and I was picking out odds and ends and creating this adorable little basket of goodies for the birthday girl. I'd ask Josiah if he thought she's like it. "Yes!" he'd say.

Then he saw a princess keyboard, and said "Audrey will like this!" It was about the same price as what I picked out. I kept asking, "Do you think Audrey wants that keyboard or this whole package of gifts Mommy picked out?" The keyboard, of course. So I swallowed my pride, put aside my gift and encouraged my son's thoughtfulness.

Lee (Audrey's mom) later said that the keyboard was the "biggest run away hit."
I tip my hat to my child. Well done.

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