Josiah Dodge: 2 Years Old

I've had most of this post written for months, but I just took this rocking chair picture.  

We love this boy!

Josiah Dodge turned two years old on March 11!  I made him a "Little Blue Truck" cake since since that's his favorite book.  He can recite the second half of every single line in the book.

We gave Josiah a trike for his birthday, though Emma likes to ride it just as much as he does!  He loves having a "bike" like his siblings. 

And, since books are his very favorite, I also bought him this beautiful old book from the 50's called "The Boats on the River" at the homeschool convention as a gift.

I've never done one of my birthday interviews on one of my children at 2 years old, but Emma and I did one with Josiah since he is always talking/discussing/narrating/asking questions.  
1.  What is your favorite color?  blue

2.  What is your favorite toy?  to have a bath

3.  What is your favorite fruit?  --

4.  What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  hot dogs

5.  What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? oranges 

6.  What is your favorite thing to eat for supper?  --

7.  What is your favorite thing to drink?  chocolate milk

8.  What is your favorite snack?  eat

9.  What is your favorite show?  Donald Duck

10.  What are your favorite clothes to wear?  dump trucks (dump truck shirt) 

11. What is your favorite animal?  --

12.  What is your favorite song? "always" (He sings "Al-ways" using sol-mi pitches from the song "The Lord is My Shepherd, I'll Walk with Him Always"--he often walks up to make and asks, "Sing 'Always'?")

13.  What is your favorite book?  In the Jungle (This is what he calls "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" as there's a lion on the front cover.)

14. What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy?  do his office

15.  What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy?  eat (probably because I am always cooking/baking/feeding snacks and meals!) 

16.  What is your favorite thing to do outside? dump trucks 

17.  What is your favorite holiday?  --

18.  What is your favorite thing to take to bed with you each night? --

19.  Where is your favorite place to go?  downtown (Everytime we drive on 35W, my kids yell, "There's downtown!") 

20.  What do you want to be when you grow up? --

I want to remember everything about Josiah at this busy, delightful stage. Josiah wears size 4 diapers, size 2T bottoms and size 3T shirts.  His head is big and it's hard to get 2T tops over his head!  He's in a size 8 shoe.  At his second birthday, Josiah weighed 26 pounds, 4 ounces (28th percentile) and was 34 1/2 inches tall (62nd percentile).  He still nurses for a few minutes at bedtime.  Josiah falls asleep around 8:30 or 9 each night and sleeps until 7:38 or 8.  He is so proud to share bunk beds with Isaac!  He naps each afternoon around 2 to 2 1/2 hours.  

He nearly always sleeps on his back with his arms up toward his head.  Josiah is very particular about everything.  For example, the patterned pillow on his bed must always be exactly straight against the slats before he will lay down on it.  He doesn't like anything being out of place--he will put anyone's shoes, books, toys away if they're out.  But, what bothers him the most is toys floating in the pool.  Josiah cries if there are any toys floating in the pool (at swimming lessons or my parents) until someone puts them back in the basket at the side of the pool.  At swimming lessons today, he cleaned up all the pool toys on the deck and then started crying about one toy floating in the middle of the pool.

Josiah loves to sit in Dave's truck when he comes home from work. 

We are always surprised at how many words Josiah knows, and the kids have made a game out of it by asking him to repeat difficult words and phrases. A few weeks ago, Josiah told me something was "challenging."  He also said, "I saw a raccoon in the zoo, but not in the forest!"  As we walked out of swimming lessons, he noticed a helicopter and said, "See that tiny helicopter flying in the sky?"

When Dave reads the Bible after supper each night, Josiah parrots different words from the passage (last night, it was "Bilhah" and "Dothan").  I think he picks up on so many words from listening to Isaac's homeschooling during the day.  One day, when I was teaching math, he kept saying, "vertical, horizontal!"  Another day while I was teaching math, I asked Isaac, "What's 5 1/2 plus 1 1/2?" but Josiah responded first and said, "45!"  We all laughed so hard.  Josiah can count to 19 and we often hear him humming pieces of the Classical Conversations timeline song.  (At lunch today, he was singing "Byzantine Empire.")  Josiah can sing "Jesus Loves Me" in entirety.  

He loves asking us, "You know what?"  

When we answer, "What?" he says, "I love you!"  It absolutely melts your heart. 

I'm ending with this photo because it shows Josiah's big, happy smile!  He loves his family, and we all love him so much!

June 2017

When we arrived home from Steamboat, we jumped into a lot of summer fun!

The kids had their last Sunday in their Sunday School classes from this past school year.  Each class had a little something special to celebrate a great year!  Emma came home with lots of bright balloons!

One of my greatest joys this year has been watching Isaac become a stronger reader!  One of my very favorite parts of life right now is snuggling on the couch with my kids and reading myself to the kids or listen to Isaac read to us all!  And, I love when Isaac reads to his siblings.

Josiah is continuing his practice swimming lessons.  Isaac and Emma are always on hand to cheer and coach him!

We have been enjoying our Heritage pools a ton!

We bought this new rolling cooler to take to the pool, and Josiah loves to pull it!

And Emma always finds her food in the cooler and then heads to the top of this little hill to spread out her blanket and eat!  She says she wants to warm up in the sun.  :)

One particular night, Josiah was just so sad going to sleep.  I saw this on the monitor!  It made me think of all the things that I thought were important in a husband (and many of them were and still are), but how watching David as a dad makes me love him even deeper than I imagined than when we were married 14 years ago!

celebrating 14 years!

We had just started Whole 30, so we went to Bonefish and had grilled fish and steamed vegetables!  It was still a great night, even without the butter, bread, and dessert we love!  :)

Father's Day!  

We had a lot of fun grilling and swimming at my parent's!

Isaac, Emma, and Josiah overturned some of their chairs and were playing "army!"  Isaac decided that Emma should be the army nurse, so he found her a "nurse apron" to wear.  

Another morning, they were playing airplane pilots.  Isaac has seen some old videos where aviators wore scarves.  Playing soldiers and pilots makes me wonder why we have so many toys, ha!

Anna and Jon stopped for a quick visit!

We kept Addie and Amelia overnight while their parents were on vacation.  The girls loved having a sleepover in Emma's room!

It makes me laugh how Emma crosses her legs like this in her middle seat.

Josiah loves pickles and their juice!  He would easily keep drinking if we didn't stop him!  This really makes me wonder about cravings during pregnancy, because I craved dill pickles and coleslaw constantly and now Josiah loves both!  (He cried the other night when we wouldn't let him drink more pickle juice.)

Emma loves helping in the kitchen!

Emma and Josiah have only come to one of Isaac's swim meets this season--they are just so hot and long!  But, they really enjoyed their ice cream at the meet!

I had several things to shop for on my list, so one day I grabbed Happy Meals for the kids, loaded them into the double stroller, and power shopped!  I got so much done and they thought it was fun, too!  (This is probably because they have only been to the mall a handful of times!) They are great shopping partners; I was looking for a dress for Nate and Ashley's wedding, and Emma told me every single dress was "beautiful"!  Josiah would ask, "You going to buy that one?"  :)

Our trip to Steamboat--June 2017

We started off June with a trip to Steamboat!  In March, I was looking at tickets online and found such a great deal to DIA!  We got four tickets round trip for $180!  Dave stayed home to work, but the kids were such good travelers that I'd do it again!

They were so excited--and, therefore, so loud--at the airport!  They watched the planes moving through the window and were all talking at once! I got lots of smiles from other passengers. 

 

It always makes me laugh how my kids love to read the airplane diagrams and disaster pamphlets on the plane.  Emma and Isaac sat by each other for most of the flight, and Josiah and I were across the aisle.  Emma made friends with the lady who sat behind her and colored a few pictures of her.

Papa and Nana picked us up at DIA.  I love coming up the escalator at DIA and looking for your family who's there to meet you!  Each of the kids had such huge smiles and were just ecstatic to see Papa and Nana!  We ate supper at Chick Fil A and then drove back to Steamboat.  We didn't get in til after 11pm and everyone was tired!  But, we all woke up excited the next day to be in beautiful Steamboat!

We walked down by the river and also visited the Hot Springs pool a few times.

Josiah said the water was "freezing cold," but it didn't keep him from playing!

They played hard all day and were so tired at night!

On Sunday afternoon, Papa took Isaac & Emma on a ride in "the car without a roof" (as Emma says). My father-in-law's neighbor came over after we had returned to Texas and told him that the happiest sounds she'd heard all summer was when she heard the kids screaming and laughing in the driveway as they took off!  They loved it!  (Look at their smiles!)

We also visited Fish Creek Falls on Sunday afternoon, and it was just beautiful!

I took Emma and Isaac on a nature scavenger hunt one afternoon while Josiah napped.  I'd always known there some trails behind my in-law's house, but I'd never explored them.  They were beautiful!   Isaac, Emma, and I spent nearly two hours looking for everything on our list.

Emma crawled down a little hill to find a purple flower, and Isaac was such a gentleman to help her back up the hill.

Emma picked so many dandelions!  I've never seen such yellow or such big dandelions--they were really pretty!  She finally had so many that we practiced being a flower girl and tossing them as we walked down the trail.

Emma found a ladybug!

Success!  They finished their scavenger hunt!

On our last full day in Colorado, we drove north and had dinner in Clark.  The restaurant had this huge sand pit, playhouse, and ride-on tractor that Josiah loved!  (He didn't mind that it didn't have any batteries.)

Then, we drove to Hahn's Peak!  In all my years of visiting Steamboat, I've never been to Hahn's Peak.  It was absolutely breathtaking.  I don't know if I've ever been in such awe of God's creation.  It had just sprinkled, and there were only two people fishing there besides all of us.  It was as if we had the entire lake to ourselves!

We were hiking around Hahn's Peak Lake when the kids found SNOW!  You cannot imagine the shouts and screaming!  They were so happy!

It was such a beautiful evening to end our trip!  

~riding the train at DIA to head home to Daddy~

We can't wait for our next trip to Colorado!