At the Heart of it All: 2012

For "Baby Sistah"

After celebrating Josh's big brother weekend we wanted to give him a special project to work on for baby sister. He's loved helping in getting her room set up (i.e. playing with all the old and new baby toys) and is very interested in talking about her at night when we lay down for snuggles so he seems to get the concept that she is a person who is coming to live with us as much as any two year old can.

Since we're due at Christmas time, we've really been focusing on the fact that Josh was such a good boy this year that Santa is bringing him an extra special present - a baby sister. Our propaganda seems to be working because if you ask him what he wants from santa three times out of five, he'll reply - "a baby sistah". Of course the other two times, he'll say he wants a new Christmas tree since we saw Santa at the Christmas tree farm so we're trying to be realistic with our expectations.

To hopefully help with his feeling of importance as the big brother who also has something to give baby sister we took him to Build-a-bear to make her a lovey that is filled with "Joshy love".

Since it will be Christmas time, we named the bear Holly and I'm sure baby sister will enjoy snuggling with her and her heart full of "Joshy love" soon. When you ask Josh what he will say when he sees baby sister for the first time his response always is "Baby sistah so cute and so happy".

If she takes after Josh at all we know these will both be true

Fall 2012

Last year because it was so dry we didn't have very pretty leaves on our wooded lot, but this year we had lots and lots of pretty leaves.

Luckily Scott had a special helper who likes to rake

And "big black kitty" to help supervise

Big brother weekend.

For my last non-call weekend before baby sister is born, we decided to celebrate with what we called "Joshy weekend". While we are expecting more than a few ups and downs as Josh makes the adjustment to not being the only center of our universe, we think overall he'll adapt pretty well given how flexible he's been in the past. I'm sure being a family of four is going to be amazing for all of us, but we have loved our time as just the three of us and wanted to make sure Josh felt a fraction of the joy he's brought to our lives over the last two years. So we planned a whole weekend of the stuff we knew he would like best.

We headed off to Indianapolis and stopped on the way there at an apple orchard with a petting zoo.

Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel room attached to one of those indoor water parks. While the room was certainly overpriced, his excitement over the "fancy wah-wah park" more than made up for it. He was still too small for all the slides but he got his fill running around the splash area and riding the lazy river.

The next day we went to see if the Children's museum of Indianapolis is worth all the hype. Evidently it's the world's largest children's museum and is constantly rated as one of the best in the country. While the toddler play area was under renovation and was definitely not as good as the one in Cincy, the rest of the museum was pretty impressive. Josh loved the hot wheels exhibit and probably would have spent most of the rest of the day pretending to serve coffee in the Egyptian village they had arranged. We explored the place from top to bottom and Josh had a great time.

Whether any of it "takes" or not, we spent a good portion of the weekend hyping up how Josh is going to be such a great big brother. To help him focus on what that means we fixated on three qualities - Being sweet to baby sister which he is quick to tell you means no hitting, no kicking, no biting, Listening to what mama and daddy say and being patient which he understands to mean you take turns. To celebrate Joshy becoming a big brother we got him his first train set and it's definitely a hit. Mama and Daddy appreciate it now and probably more so in the months to come that he loves to play with it all by himself.

I'm not sure he'll remember much about the weekend, but for Scott and I it was great to be able to focus on him what makes him happy. While we are super excited for our new arrival, we want Josh to know that he is what made us parents and that together we are a family.

Go Blue!

In September we had the opportunity to take Josh to Ann Arbor for his first game in the "Big House" to watch Michigan play Air Force.

First we had to get decked out in some new gear since everything else was too small. Josh said he was ready to be a wolverine.

While the kettle corn was probably the thing he enjoyed most, his recent love for baseball translated pretty well to football. Once we got off the "hit ball, run bases" to "throw ball and tackle" he seemed to get into the game.

By the time the game was over, he was able to participate in the Michigan fight song and could "Hail, Michigan" with the victor's valiant like the rest of the stadium.

While Aunt Lori, may have wished the game had worked out differently, all in all a great time was had.

Hit Ball, Run Bases

Through his friend Michelle, Josh discovered the wonder that is T-ball. After seeing how much joy he had playing with her set, we had to get him his own. He grasped the concept of hitting the ball off the tee and "running" the bases pretty quickly.

Soon that's how he wanted to spend all his time outside and if allowed would be outside to "hit ball, run bases" for at least 2-3 hours a day. With all that practice, he went from just barely knocking the ball off the tee like in the video above, to whacking the ball a good one to two hundred feet without even hitting the tee. I took this video about three weeks after the first one.

While his hitting is fun to watch, what Scott and I love most is his "field stance". He'll spread his legs so wide in an attempt to squat down to catch the ball, that he has pretty much no balance left and will fall over if he tries to reach for the ball.

We reinforced his baseball love by taking him to a few Dragons and Red's games over the course of the summer and each time we were amazed by how much of the game he actually wanted to watch. The last Reds game we went to, he sat with rapt attention through at least seven innings and now he will tell you if you are "safe" or "out" and will talk about foul balls and home runs.

Since this is my blog and I can brag if I want to, we are constantly amazed by how far he continues to hit the ball and his overall dedication to "practicing". Given how much he enjoys it, we keep encouraging it and who knows maybe we'll have a major league home run hitter on our hands.

A day (or two) at the beach

For our family vacation this summer, we met Chris, Emily, Sam and Nate on Captiva Island in Florida for a week of surf, sun and fun. We had found out the week before that in December we'd be having a baby girl and while we were super excited about "Baby Sistah" we were happy to celebrate our last trip as a family of three. We had so much fun showing Josh all the fun things there were to do at the beach.

We built sandcastles