Josh-ilosophy and Jude-itude

This post has been collecting more and more tid-bits over the last few months. Some of it is pretty old in baby years, but better late than never.

If you didn't already know this, my boys are crazy. Crazy in a very good and cute and funny way. Life is never ever perfect around here, but we find a lot to laugh about between the angry outbursts and the mess-making.

JOSH (4.33 years old) is growing up fast. I suddenly had to buy him all new clothes because he grew out of everything in, like, a week.

At preschool orientation, I saw him get chased down by a girl and kissed on the cheek. Seriously? Already? 

He knows about kisses, and privacy, and loves to say the word "awkward!" at the most inappropriate times. Matt gave me a long passionate kiss in the kitchen one day, and after a few seconds of silence, Josh shouted out "MOOOOVIE!!"  As in "movie kiss". He knows what they look like. Note taken.

Don't ask me who taught him the cheesy second-grade-picture-day pose.

One of my favorite things about Josh is his ability to make songs out of his random thoughts. He'll be sitting at the table playing with Legos, narrating an entire make-believe episode, and quietly start singing whatever words he knows to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. Or he'll be taking his sweet time finishing lunch, and suddenly start laughing at himself because he thought of some funny alternative words to a primary song.

Or, my personal favorite, the stuff he makes up when he's overtired and slap happy on a long, nighttime car ride. His most recent rap went something like this: "Where's those cowwwwwwwws?....I wonder where they aaaaaaaare..." Over and over. And over.

On this same night, we had a rather incoherent conversation about how Josh's pee thinks and plans to jump out into his underwear, and that's why he can't hold it. It was very enlightening.

  

Josh is also very interested in the badness of cigarettes these days. Whenever there's a slightly bad smell anywhere (skunks, gasoline, it's all the same), he complains about the cigarette smell. He had a bad cold for a couple weeks, and after it was gone he kept this little fake cough for a while. His favorite excuse was, "I can't stop coughing because I know I smell a cigarette!" Not sure who's smoking around here, but I suspect Baby Jude.

Brother time on the Kindle.

More epiphany-like outbursts from Josh:

"If you were taking a nap on the road in the parking lot, you would get run over by a car, and then you would DIE!"

"If your head or your belly falls asleep, then you're dead. But not if your arm or your leg falls asleep, because my arm and leg have falled asleep, and I didn't die!" (This was after a conversation about bad places to get shot, i.e. bullets that could kill you because your brain or heart stops working, or "fall asleep".)

Josh: "We don't wear just our underwear outside. Because if you forget to put on pants, if somebody sees your underwear, they'll want to STEAL it!"

Me: "No, they won't steal it. We just don't show our underwear to people because that's the rule."

Josh: "BUT...if someone has really super COOL underwear, like Star Wars underwear or something cool, then someone WILL want to steal it!"

We like puzzles.

He got a magic eight ball (or "magic eight baller" if you ask him) from a kids meal. After testing it to see if it could give correct answers ("Is the TV a triangle?"), he started in on the big ones, like "Does the Earth explode?" and "Are there guns in real life?" I think we need to have a little talk about life.

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JUDE is my little sugar coated stink bomb.

He is in severe independent mode lately. He won't sit in his high chair (only a tall, twirly, precarious bar stool will do), fights against being buckled in his car seat, and wants to ascend and descend every staircase by himself (which takes forrr-evvv-verrr).

They both need hair cuts. I know.

Nothing gives him more pleasure than choosing his own socks in the morning from the top drawer, putting on someone else's shoes, or pouring water back and forth between two cups until the kitchen floor is a minefield of puddles.

He thoroughly enjoys experimenting with his food still. Not experimental eating, mind you. I can't get him to eat anything but his few basic staples. But whoever heard of a chef who didn't taste his own food?? Jude makes sandwiches out of banana slices and ritz crackers; soup out of hot dogs, applesauce and peas; and the rest of his concoctions we'll just call "salad stew", because that's the most flexible food term I can think of.

Jude says a lot of words now, but at the beginning it was always a loud "Yay! Yay! Yay!" and some hand clapping whenever he was excited about something -- usually food, and usually when I successfully understood what he was trying to tell me, like "go outside". So so cute. Along the same lines, when someone takes his toy or tries to get in his way at the faucet, he yells "Hey! Hey hey! Hey hey hey!" until we get the point. Also so cute.

Jude is kind of a work horse. He voluntarily sweeps all the time. If you ever say a word that even resembles "sweep" or "broom", you'll hear a little excited screech and the pitter patter of his feet running to the pantry for the cleaning supplies. 

He also really likes running errands for me, now that he can understand more. He takes pride in throwing away his own dirty diapers (thank you very much), bringing me the wipes, and climbing down to pick up whatever snacks or Legos he drops from the table immediately.

The cutest chore he does, though, is unloading the silverware. He LOVES this. And with the exception of most utensils being placed upside down, and occasionally feeling the urge to slice frozen peas with a plastic knife, he's pretty good at it. Not bad for a 19-month-old.

If he didn't spill so much, I would almost call him helpful sometimes. The slave driver in me is getting ideas...

But then, he's pretty much the best snuggler (maybe tied with Josh), so I can't complain too much. The blood, sweat, and tears turn into hugs, kisses, and squishes at the end of the day, and that's  worth it.