One Year Ago

Last year on April 29 we lounged around at home in the morning and burned off some energy at Wheaton Regional Park in the afternoon. It's funny to remember how small David was - and how short we buzzed Joshua's hair - and how David was always chewing on something - and Joshua's first carousel ride. These boys are such a blessing to our family and such loving brothers to one another. Happy one-month-short-of-a-half-birthday, Joshua and David!

JQuOD

Overheard this morning:

Chris: "I'm taking a jet plane to Tennessee today, Joshua."
Joshua: "Do they play tennis there?"

Big Boy Bed

A week and a half ago, Joshua received a twin bed. We never saw him so excited in his entire life as he was the day he got his "big boy bed!" He ran around screaming and shouting and laughing, jumping and shrieking with excitement, for about 3 hours. Nonstop. He was almost equally excited about his new sheets. He pointed out all the different types of balls to David and thought the word "whack" (representing baseball) sounded hilarious. Here he is on top of the world:


Thankfully, all has gone well with the transition. And David's thankful to be done with the pack'n'play!


We haven't posted any new pictures for a while, so here are a few more.

Fountain Fun at the Rio:

Fun at Costco:


Joshua and David love to go to Costco because they always hope to get some yummy samples. This particular day we practically ate lunch there. Most of the time only a few of the samples are things we even want to try, but yesterday we tried almost all of them! The biggest hit? Cheesecake. Good thing about the only time we eat cheesecake is the rare occasion it's a sample at Costco! Otherwise we would all be about as large as Happy Hippo at the National Zoo.

JQuOD

You know it's time to sweep when your two-year old walks into the kitchen in his socks, sits down to inspect the bottom of his foot, and remarks with a touch of annoyance, "What am I stepping on?!"

JQuOD

Today we began our warm weather excursions to Montgomery Couty Airpark. Joshua and David loved it, but Joshua was a little unsure of the proper terminology for aviation operations. His running commentary sounded like this:

"Can we see another one landing off?"
"Maybe we'll see another one landing off!"
"Is that one landing off?"
"Ooh, there goes one landing off!"

David's Reading!

Not really.

But we did think one of his latest leaps of learning was worth sharing. I think it was on Tuesday that David went over to the couch and started flipping through this library book (Oops! by David Shannon) all by himself. He looked at this page



and for the first time said "Uh-oh!" We all were amazed and had a great time saying "uh-oh!" all day long.


Then the next day David went over to the bookshelf, found this book (Corduroy's Busy Street by Don Freeman), and said "Uh-oh!"

Then we were really impressed.

Hoops

In keeping with March Madness, I had been hoping to get some good photos of the boys shooting some hoops with Daddy in their matching bball outfits. We gave it a shot (ha ha) this past Saturday morning, but it was blindingly bright and quite windy on the court. The boys chased after the ball everywhere and were hardly close enough together to get in the same picture! But we take what we get. These aren't the best pictures, but they convey the experience: cold, gusty, bright, energetic, blurry...in a word, exhilarating!

Of course David had to taste the muddy ball. Maybe he was trying to wash it off?!

Splashing in the puddle is much more fun than basketball!

More Words!

Yesterday David showed lots of excitement about trains and even said "boose" (caboose) and "tains" (trains) quite clearly! Today I asked him if he could say "Jesus" and "Bible" and he did, almost perfectly! His diction is much clearer than Joshua's was at this age, and he usually makes a good attempt to repeat something we ask him to say. Must be the benefit of having Mr. Chatterbox as your big bro! Or maybe he has more developed mouth muscles since he has always been such an oral baby? Joshua is all about words right now, and they both love books, so I am hopeful that our boys might not mind playing some Scrabble with us later in life. In contrast to Eliza Doolittle, "words, words, words, [we're not] sick of words!"

JQuOD

"Do you know what tiger poop comes from tigers!" I don't know where he comes up with these things, but I'll take it as a good sign that he's contemplating the excretory process. Now if tigers could poop in the potty...

JQuOD

Early this afternoon Joshua came out of nowhere with this amazing statement: "This summer I'm going to have a new baby in my belly." Hmm...was that a hint? He doesn't know about April Fool's Day yet, but that would have been a good one!