Growing Up

In addition to losing the baby fat, Joseph is showing some major signs of growing up. Some recent milestones include:

(1) The ability to retrieve objects that he has hidden. Today Joseph was playing with Todd's blue-tooth (trying to stick it on his own ear and saying, "Hello?"). After a few minutes, I noticed that Joseph no longer had the blue-tooth and said to him, "Joseph, can you go get Daddy's blue-tooth?" Joseph quickly scurried off to wherever he had hidden it and brought it to me. Not only was this very cute to know that he was responding to my request, but it is also an essential skill, since Joseph frequently places things in unusual places (Lightning McQueen has been missing for weeks).

(2) A new love for art. Joseph loves coloring now, and is usually pretty good at keeping the coloring on the paper as long as we are closely supervising him, and has also generally stopped trying to eat crayons. He likes us to draw simple pictures and then he identifies what we've drawn (which says a LOT about Joseph's intelligence, and very little about me and Todd's drawing skills). Then he colors them. My favorite, though, is when he scribbles and then points to his own work and insists, "Tzat?", like I am supposed to know what he's drawn. Finally today I told him he'd drawn water (since it was blue), and he said, "Hot! Bubbles!"

(3) A rapidly-expanding repertoire of tricks. It used to take us a really long time to teach Joseph tricks. For example, it took us from Thanksgiving until just before Christmas to teach him "ho, ho, ho" for Santa (which he now says about most old men). But now he is mastering new tricks, like pretending that he is an airplane, or pounding his chest and saying something that sounds like "strong man," in record time. And playing the piano.


(4) Make believe that goes beyond just putting things to bed. As described in previous posts, Joseph spends a lot of time putting toys and other people to bed. It was sort of the only thing he did for a while. But now, his toys have all sorts of other behaviors: talking to each other, kissing each other, getting dressed, and eating, among other things.

(5) He's practically potty-trained. Ok, that is a total lie, but we did put a little toilet for him in his bathroom just so that he can get used to sitting on it. And he does like to sit on it, then get up and get some toilet paper, and "wipe" himself (usually fully-clothed) off. He also likes to help us out during diaper changes. So, at this rate, I'm sure he'll be potty trained in no time.

Meanwhile, he can now climb out of the tub, which is problematic.



(6) Sometimes he cooperates in getting dressed. Today, he actually put his arms in his pajama sleeves for Todd. Amazing.

(7) He seems to describe memories for us. For example, yesterday Todd took Joseph to the golf store, and when he got home, he kept saying "golf club" to me. I think he was describing where he had been and what he'd seen. Incidentally, when I got him from his nap this afternoon, he was also repeating "golf club, golf club, golf club" to me. Todd is very pleased.

(8) Operation of the DVD player. Much to our chagrin, Joseph knows how to eject disks from the DVD player, which he does frequently when he wants to watch Nemo and we don't immediately put it on. I think he knows we'll usually put it on for him if it will stop him from messing with the electronic equipment, and if he hasn't already watched it, oh, three times that day (just kidding. Once is usually our limit).

(9) He's much better using utensils. Still, we usually stick with hands.