What's funnier, a penguin or a sheep?

The day before Thanksgiving, I realized that Joseph needed a new parlor trick to entertain the masses at the annual family gathering.

In keeping with the spirit of the season I spent most of Wednesday morning teaching Joseph that turkeys say "Gobble, Gobble."

Because "Gobble, Gobble" is so fun to say, he instantly took to the noise and began repeating me and identifying that sound with turkeys. Throughout the day, he'd just start saying "Gobble, Gobble" whenever it crossed his mind and he felt like saying it.

Unfortunately, I don't have any good videos of him saying "Gobble, Gobble"--but I do have witnesses, because at Thanksgiving dinner he found a turkey decoration, pulled it off the table and ran around holding it up while saying "Gobble, Gobble" over and over again.

However, I do have a couple great videos of Joseph with some of his other (non-turkey) animal noises.

Non-turkey Animal Noise #1

Earlier this month, Erin taught Joseph that ducks say "quack, quack." Much like "gobble, gobble" Joseph quickly took to making duck noises by saying "kwok, kwok."

According to Joseph, the following say “Kwok, Kwok”: Ducks, Pigeons, Big Bird, birds in the Costco parking lot, and Penguins.

Here is Joseph at Sea World after pointing and quacking through the ENTIRE penguin exhibit:

Non-turkey Animal Noise #2

We thought we had successfully taught Joseph that sheep say "Baa! Baa!" We soon realized that he thought we were saying "Ha! Ha!" so in our house sheep laugh:

Economic Struggles

Today I saw a guy standing on a corner waving a sign for a Mervyn's going-out-of-business sale--literally a sign of the economic problems going on around us. The thing was, the guy with the sign looked just like the Edge.

So then I start thinking, "Wow, if U2 has to go out and get new jobs, things must really be bad."

All this time I thought the economic downturn was caused by greedy investors, shady lenders, and people spending beyond their means, but really it was all of their kids downloading pirated music that pushed things off the edge (the Edge-ha!).

Anyway, if Bono can get people to think about helping Africa, I hope that the thought of The Edge waiving a sign for a going-under business could motivate people to donate to local foodbanks (or any other organization that helps those in need).

Foodbanks are a great way to help out your neighbor. This year, with unemployment rising and people losing their homes, demand on foodbanks is higher than normal. Not only are more people turning to foodbanks this year, but many people feel they can't help out as much as they usually do, so supply is down too.

Some foodbanks are projected to run out of food during the Thanksgiving/Christmas/holiday season.

You don't even need to get up to help out (not wanting to get up is my usual reason for not helping people). For example, the San Diego Foodbank has a great online game where you can fill your virtual shopping cart with food for those in need (direct link to virtual foodbank).

So instead of cycling through the rest of the blogs, please take a second and click over to the the San Diego Foodbank, or look up your own local foodbank, and give a struggling person a reason to be thankful.

Who knows, maybe this holiday season you can feel that warmth that comes from knowing that the Edge is eating your can of green beans.

On the filming of Joseph

When Joseph was very small, a friend of mine pointed out that Joseph is a lot like Hobbes, the tiger from the comic Calvin & Hobbes who turns from a playful tiger into a lifeless stuffed animal as soon as grown-ups came around. You see, Joseph can be as animated as can be, but as soon as we try to film him he would freeze up.

For you science nerds, this clearly demonstrates that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle also occurs beyond the sub-atomic level (you can tell that you are science nerd if you snorted a little bit when you read that last line).

Here's my favorite episode from last Christmas, where Joseph was enjoying his new newly-opened exersaucer.


Here's what happened when I tried to film Joseph to show his grandparents how much he LOVED his new Exersaucer:

Joseph even did this when he was just 3 months old. Here, he fights the urge to giggle each time he notices the camera:

Recently, I tried to film Joseph making animal noises. Now that he's older, he doesn't always freeze up anymore.

Before I pulled out the camera, he was responding to every cue.

And now that I think about it, he and Calvin seem to have the same haircut now.

Chasing Birds

This video is from a month ago, but I have neglected my role as co-blogger, so I'm only posting this now.

Joseph demonstrates his love of nature and his lack of aim:

I bet that if Audubon's parents had ever gotten into blogging, they would have had a video just like this of little J.J.

Climber

Joseph took advantage of our move to get into some mischief.



He has since learned to climb onto the kitchen chairs, from which he can get onto the table.

Our new place has stairs on the inside. He's known for quite some time how to get up them, but not down (he just tries to walk right down them ... aaaah!). So we were a bit worried, especially since he opens doors so we couldn't just shut him out and we didn't have a stair gate yet. It didn't take him too long to learn the slide method, though.

Reading

These pictures are from Joseph's recent reading-chair phase. He would make us put him in the rocking chair and pile all of his books on top of him.



He's kind of more into cars than books right now. I don't really blame him, since he was always reading the books upside-down and getting confused.

Old Friends

My good friend Nicole and her husband were in town last weekend. Nicole and I have been friends since the third grade. I had just moved into the area and met her at a slumber party. I thought she seemed like she'd be a good friend but I was really, really shy and didn't dare call her. So my mom called pretending to be me and invited her over.

Looking back on this, I don't know if Nicole or whoever else answered the phone really believed my mom was a nine-year-old girl. Sort of like when I forged a letter to my fourth-grade teacher pretending to be my mom asking him to seat me by a friend (incidentally, Nicole). But unlike the note, which didn't work, the phone call did work. Nicole came over and we played chutes and ladders, rocked on a part of a pasasan chair, and ate cookies. We were friends ever since.

We haven't lived in the same state since we graduated from high school, but everytime I see her we just pick right back up and I love talking with her. We had dinner one night and another night we met them at their hotel, the Hotel Del Coronado, which is right on a beautiful beach.

We didn't expect to swim since it was five p.m. on a November evening, but Joseph had other ideas once he saw the water. So we stripped him down and let him splash.

Warning: this contains a lot of pictures. I was too lazy to cut down.

Frolicking -- and freezing? If he was, he didn't show it.

























Family:

Belated Halloween

Some final pictures from Halloween ...

My mom sent Joseph a really cute Halloween bear. We forced him to play with it so we could take some pictures to show her. Really, though, he likes it a lot.





I got to take Joseph to story-time on Halloween and he wore his costume. I was shocked at how many people lack a basic knowledge of dinosaur identification. Joseph was a triceratops. This name comes from the three (tri) horns (cera) on his head (top). Ok, I just made that up. But I'm sure it's something like that. Anyway, people invariably thought he was a: stegosaurus, tyrannosaurus, dragon, and even a turkey (!). Few were savvy to the triceratops. Weird.

Anyway, Joseph goes to story-time a lot with Todd but I'm usually at work ... but I went in late that day so I could take him. The highlight was getting to see him play in the bubbles -- he loves the bubbles ... Then it was time to get some DVDs.

Veteran's Day

Part of my early courtship with Todd involved a lovely hike in Cascade Springs where we discussed our mutual love for World War I literature. Another part involved a lunch on a BYU lawn where we discussed our mutual love for Dante's Divine Comedy. These two events sealed the deal.

Anyway, I haven't read any War literature for a while but I heard a really fascinating story just now on NPR about an English fellow who has been using his blog to post letters his grandfather wrote while in the War. There is also an American woman who is doing the same. I heard some of the excerpts on the radio and here are the links to the blogs, which I think are so fascinating:

Harry Lamin: http://wwar1.blogspot.com/

Paul Hills: http://www.theworld.org/?q=aggregator/sources/70

There are also some online resources about the piece today at: http://www.theworld.org/

My Super Hot Hubby

Todd often comments that mommy blogs always mention their SUPER HOT HUSBANDS. He mocks these, but I know that secretly he wants me to post about my SUPER HOT HUSBAND.

So here are some things my SUPER HOT HUSBAND has done in the last couple of weeks:

(1) Single-handedly packed and moved all of our belongings. (Unpacking is a work in progress.)

(2) Fixed our dishwasher with nothing but his own two hands, a flashlight, and a dowell.

(3) Made delicious home-made chili and cornbread.

(4) Did something with our internet but I'm not sure what but it involved lots of wires and apparently was good.

(5) Did many loads of laundry, dishes, vacuumed, cleaned, etc.

(6) Taught Joseph how to give kisses (I still haven't seen this).

(7) Did all of the grocery shopping.

(8) Looked very handsome.

ISN'T HE SUPER HOT?

Translations

Tsat = what's that
Coo = cool
claw = clock
yum = yum
oh uh = what we say when we drop something, or when his paci is on the floor and he wants it
no = no
saw = what we say when we touch babies ("soft")
caw = car