Joshua: 18 months

At 18 months, Josh has 3 true passions: balls, coloring, and brushing his teeth. Each of these little hobbies of his tend to cause some problems. For example, not everything that is round is a "ball" so throwing our neighbors decorative glass ball and shattering it on their lawn was a tough lesson. Another difficult and everyday lesson: you ONLY color on paper--not carpet, tables, or fridges. And while I applaud his passion for spending hours a day brushing his teeth, this has also been problematic in our household. He uses everyone's toothbrushes, and then throws them on the ground for our dog to chew on. He can barely reach the sink even with a stool, so there have been several tumbles. And, well, you'll just have to see the pictures to understand where toothpaste has left us.

Passionate is a good word for Joshy. He's intense. He's usually happy, but if he's not, he's screaming. If he gets an idea in his head, woe to the person who tries to change his mind. Thank goodness he's finally starting to get better at communicating so that he can say things like "help" (sounds like hout), "eat" and "out mama." These simple little words have minimized the screaming. He just wants to do anything the big boys are doing, so if they are doing school work, he's coloring (sounds like cararing). If they are playing basketball, he's trying to dribble like them. If Ben is raking the lawn, then he will drag an adult-sized rake out and "help" out along side of him.

He's not a great independent player inside, mostly because all he wants to do is color or brush his teeth; however, outside he's a champ. He's content for hours and wants to go outside first thing in the morning. Dirt, sand, balls, water, tools...he's definitely all boy.

His language has exploded: mama, daddy, Sath (said for both boys), eat, foop (poop), help, out, doggy, hi, oh wow, doggy, all done, more, Edmund, car, shoe, foot, hand. And when he's not expanding his vocabulary, he's jabbering like we can understand every word he says.

Grossest moment of the month: discovering him stealing half-eaten ice cubes from our puppy and sticking them in own mouth. Disgusting!

We sure love this little boy: passion, fits, sharing toothbrushes and ice cubes with dogs, jabbering, dirt, trouble and all!

 He learned how to put hats (or boxes) on this month

 Go Blazers! 

 He pulled his chair next to Ben and sat down very proud of himself.

 Josh is SO helpful during Ben's work at home phone calls

 

Day #1 of tooth paste on the face

 Day #2 he got a bit more creative

"What mom? You have a problem with this?" Such a rascal!