Josiah at One

This year has gone by really quickly for us but has undoubtedly been the longest year of Josiah's life :).

It does seem like yesterday that we welcomed Josiah John into our lives but he's experienced quite a bit in 12 months. Since last September, Josiah's taken two long (but fun) family car trips to Texas and back, he's camped in a tent and a cabin, stuck his toes in the Atlantic Ocean and "swam" in rivers, lakes, and pools, flown to Phoenix, and figured out how to roll over, sit up, pull-up, drink from a bottle, crawl, wave, clap, rock on his horse, get our attention, express his dislike, laugh out loud, and smile smile smile. He's gained 12 pounds and grown a lot taller, has 8 teeth and great head of white-blond hair, just long enough to be shaggy around his ears and curl a (very) little in the back. He's a really sweet and very friendly baby with the most open and happy smile for everyone he meets. For each child, and with each child, the family context and parental attention changes some, and we have been blessed that Josiah is pretty independent and easy going, but demanding enough to get our attention and hold his own with his siblings. It's been fun, especially in recent months, to see his unique personality develop.

Josiah doesn't really like:

• sleeping - he's gotten better and makes it through most nights without our assitance, but never without a couple almost awake fusses. He's gotten to be a good, regular, two-nap-a- day kid, though.


• being alone - he's never real happy about being left in a room to play on his own - though he does play pretty well on his own if he can see you nearby (sadly, he is rarely left alone by his brother and sister...)


• too much attention from his siblings - Asher especially, but also Serena, often get carried away in their affection and "playing" with Josiah. Countless times a day I'll hear an angry squawk and not even need to investigate before I say, "Asher, leave your brother alone!" Having said this... he does love his big brother and sister - see the next list


• fruit - with the exception of bananas all the time and a few other fruits on occasion, unlike his brother and sister, he prefers his carbs


• the tiger mask - cries in real fear when Asher approaches wearing it (this does not keep Asher from doing so)


• swimming - we thought he did at first, but that pretty much wore off over the summer


• climbing the stairs - he can and does do it, but fusses the whole time

Josiah loves:

• human interaction - he really loves to be talked to, smiled at, played with and rewards you (or any random stranger) with a huge grin


• bouncing on the trampoline (sitting down) and rocking on the horse


• chewing on crayons


• pulling tissues out of the box


• balloons on strings


• the motorized/talking Lightening McQueen car


• tomato sauces- on pizza, pasta, etc


• his pacifiers - a must-have for sleeping that we're going to start limiting to the bed


• music - he really seems to enjoy it, claps along, bounces some


• crawling -all my kids do, they're in no hurry to walk anywhere

Some unique Josiah things:

• twirls/waves his hands when he wants something or is excited about something- sometimes very insistently


• has started "hugging" by laying his head briefly against your shoulder when you pick him up


• rubs his eyes often and pretty vigorously, particularly when he's sleepy


• prone to respitory crud, seems to get a cold easily


• doesn't laugh out loud a ton, but will really get going if you tickle his thighs or his chest


• is a great growler - What does a lion say? Raugghh What does a tiger say? Raugghh What does a cow say? Raugghh (we're still working on this)


• Waits until the right beat to clap on "If you're happy and you know it"


• says/ has said dada and mama and maybe nana and definitely "dis" (this), but not really consistently or often and in respones to prompting but not with evidence of meaning for him - he doesn't talk a whole bunch, which isn't surprising given the two older chatterboxes around all the time (although Serena swears he said "funky" the other day


• Josiah still has "crazy toes" - they're really long and flexible, often, when relaxed, he'll be "pointing" with his big toe


• he's a pretty busy guy with a mischievous glint in his eye. I'll admit I'm a little bit nervous about the "trouble" year 2 could bring :)

All in all, long year or short, we feel blessed to have Josiah in our family and look forward to watching him grow and change.

Oh yeah! One last thing...

For anybody reading out there who hasn't heard, read on facebook, or seen me in the last few weeks:

We're having a baby in December!

He/She is due on Christmas Eve, to be exact. And I'll even save you the trouble of doing some math - Josiah will be 15 months old, Asher will be 3 3/4, and Serena will be 5 1/2.
The timing's a bit of a surprise (I was having my babies in even numbered years), but with the 3 wonderful, beloved children we are enjoying so much, how can we feel anything but blessed?(even when we occasionally also feel overwhelmed, crazy, unsure...)
We won't find out again whether it's a boy or girl until s/he's born - so there's that surprise to look forward to!

Serena's Big Week

Serena had a big week this week! She started Kindergarten at Southside Elementary School. She goes every day, all day (8:00 - 2:40), which is taking some getting used to. She seems to enjoy it while she's there, but in the morning's she'd kind of rather stay home and play. She has an excellent, teacher, Mrs. Taylor, and already knew a number of kids in her class from church and preschool. She makes us proud and it's so fun to hear about the things she does and learns at school - she's not real forthcoming, but gradually the stories come out :).

Serena also began ballet lessons this week. After agonizing over the choice between ballet, soccer, and piano, she chose ballet (which i kind of guessed she'd choose all along). She goes to class on Monday nights and had a good first class. At the end she told me, "The dancing was fun, but the music was boring." It will be fun to see whether she comes to enjoy dance as much as I did, or finds her niche somewhere else. In the meantime, she sure is beautiful in her dance clothes.

Of course, all the adjusting has made a big week for us parents as well - we've got to get up and moving earlier each morning (which we kind of like) and remember to pick her up every day too! Plus, the establishment of a schedule for Serena means that her things are truly beginning to take priority over our things/schedule/plans. Gone are the days of toting our kids along to whatever we have going on. Asher's having to get used to not having is number one playmate around as well, and he's done pretty well adjusting (he doesn't ask if it's time to pick her up more than 4-5 times per day). I've enjoyed getting to have a little more one-on-one time with him. And Josiah... well, he's smiley as always and mostly just gets toted around still.

a GREAT Summer

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention (briefly and belatedly) what great summer we had. It started off at the beginning of June with Joshua's ordination, which occasioned visits from both sets of grandparents (parents) and our good friend Josh Hubert. We also baptized Josiah the same weekend!

June was mostly filled with summer stuff - swimming, playing in the yard, riding bikes, playgrounds, and popsicles. Joshua began working full time and I backed off to working half-time, and both of us have enjoyed the different pace. Both Serena and Asher got to participate in Vacation Bible School (as did mom and dad!). And Serena had a fun "mermaid" swim party for her 5th birthday. (On a side note, yes, it's hard to believe we've been blessed by our sweet Serena for FIVE years!) Joshua also spent 10 days in Peru with the church mission team. I was flying solo with the kids on July 4th, but we had a great time at a small-town parade and festival, a wave pool, and wonderful fireworks show.

And for almost all of July (2 1/2 weeks) we were on vacation to Texas and Arkansas. We drove over 2600 miles for back-to-back family reunions! First, my family met up in central Texas (lake LBJ) for a week. Mom and Dad, our 5, Elisa, Stephen, Ava, Corbin, and Sienna, and Paul and Veronica and Dillon, and my grandparents (the "great" grandparents) all gathered for a WONDERFUL time. It was as crazy at times (as you might imagine it would be with 17 people, 7 of whom are 5 years ols and younger), but mostly it was pretty relaxing and good to be together. The only low point of the week was at the very beginning, when Josiah had to ahve emergency hernia surgery at the children's hosptial in Austin, but he received great care and sailed right through! Altogether, the whole episode lasted about 30 hours.

The second week of our vacation was spent in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas with Joshua's family - his parents, the five of us, Jodi, Ruben, Tomas, Isaac and Alison, Jacob, Jonah and Lydia (and 4 members of Lydia's family for part of the time). Yep - that's another week with 15 people. Again, we had a great time - relaxing, eating, playing games, eating, swimming in the river, and eating. We feel so blessed by our families and the opportunity we had to spend some time with them this summer. The distance and rarity make it so special - and the kids really enjoyed the time with their cousins.

The travel days as a family were good - really. We spent a lot of time in the car, but also stopped to play and picnic and, of course, swim in the hotel pools. The kids were champion travelers. They read books, played games, watched movies, played with toys, colored, and ate snacks all the way across 10 different states. And the minivan with 160,000 miles on it deserves a big thank you for a perfect trip! All of this has just encouraged us to do it again sometime....

We had just 2 weeks in August once we got back before school started, so we swam as much as possible, spent time with friends, and enjoyed some good lazy days. Serena and Asher have a wonderful time playing together, this summer had made Serena an incredible swimmer (and Asher much more comfortable in the water), and Josiah's gotten the hang of crawling everywhere and getting into things. So, I guess it's been time well-spent. It's definitely been a lot of fun!

Do you call them fireflies or lightning bugs?

rising up out of the summertime grass
with that tempting, erratic flash,
they drifted like the firecracker haze
in the heavy evening air

up past their bedtime, they hunted,
neon-orange net in hand,
but frustration flickered fast
until mama tupperwared two

to serve as nightlight
on the dresser in the dark

Josiah at 3/4 of a year!

I think it's definitely a sign that I am not keeping up with the blog very well when the last post is a picture of Asher's haircut and he just got another one yesterday! In my meager defense, though, his hair does grow really fast.


I am LONG overdue for an update on our sweet Josiah, though. He's really come into his own personality-wise in the last couple of months. Most notably, he is VERY happy. Smiles almost non-stop, especially if he gets the chance to smile at another person. He makes every older person at church feel like a rock star. They are always telling me, "He gives me the biggest smile every time he sees me!" And he does - every single one of them - and his family, even his crazy sister and brother. He has only recently become a somewhat better sleeper (and by this I mean that he has finally managed to sleep through a few entire nights and take some decent naps), but I can't complain to much up because, if he's awake, he's cheerful.

He's sitting up, of course, and has been crawling for about a month and gets around pretty well. This of course, opens a whole new realm of dangers (see the picture below :)) but there haven't been too many accidents so far. He doesn't do a ton of standing of cruising, but I'm still betting he walks earlier than his sister and brother did (14 and 15 months respectively :)). And he's got 4 teeth he loves to eat with. He's eating pretty much anything we let him eat these days and getting better and better at self-feeding.

Josiah's can be both very quiet and really talkative. He often crawls around silently, exploring things. But with the right toy in his hand, he will jabber and jabber. He loves his big sister (except when she's moving him away from somewhere he wants to be) and the feeling is mutual - Serena is very sweet to her baby brother and often makes him laugh and laugh. He's usually pretty excited to see Asher too, which is a little surprising given that Asher very often ends up being, either intentionally of unintentionally, a little too rough with him. Someday, though, I imagine they're going to be great playmates.
Our Josiah really is a lovely and sweet baby boy and we feel so blessed to enjoy watching him grow.

Haircut!

Before:

After:

As you can tell, it had been quite a while since Asher's last haircut (and his hair grows pretty quickly). We love his hair shaggy, but it's fun to get to see his whole face too :) I'm not really sure I like him looking so grown up, though!

Luckily, he told me today that he's still my "squishy boy."

A Spring Break

Just a few pictures from our WONDERFUL trip to Myrtle Beach. We were so blessed to have our friends Don and Martha O'Dell let us use their beach condo for the week, and to have our friends the Richardsons join us! It was a great week of relaxing inside the condo and on the beach, diggin in the sand (found some perfect shells) swimming in the "hot pool" (Serena officially learned to swim underwater), sharing meals, and playing plenty of boardgames. We also repeated our annual beach photo shoot - here are a few samples:

Asher Update

And just like that - he's more boy than baby. It seems like all of the sudden, Asher's shaken off the last bit of babyness and is now a little boy - in speech, attention, reasoning, and coordination. He turned three a couple weeks ago and we celebrated with a construction-themed party that fit his interest in trucks, "worker men," and dirt :). Someone definitely programmed this little guy to love all things "boy." He loves to throw, kick, bounce, and bump every ball he can get his hands on, will climb anything he can just for the pleasure of jumping off, and proudly demonstrates how fast he can run to anyone who will watch.

In between his rowdiness and activity, he keeps up well with his older sister - "reading" books aloud to himself, pretending (happily assuming any role Serena assigns him), and vying for Josiah's attention (sometimes with a little more enthusiasm (force) than we or Josiah would like). Asher has a great sense of humor and loves to make people laugh - and it's pretty hard not to with the glint of mischief in his eyes. He's also becoming quite the negotiator, frequently trying to talk his way into or out of something. Other skills include: pedaling a bike, singing songs, rhyming, playing Uno, dribbling a ball, and telling jokes.

Asher has always been a very lovable little guy - mostly because he's so loving. He's sweet and very sensitive to others' feelings, eager to help. He loves to cuddle, gives great hugs, rushes to kiss you goodbye or welcome you home. He's friendly and cheerful the vast majority of the time.

Asher keeps us laughing and is truly a joy to be around - how blessed we are to have him in our family!

Serena Update

Serena's 4 3/4 years old and impresses us daily. She's everything a big sister should be - both helpful and bossy. She adores her baby brother and is always willing to entertain him, soothe him, and help with him (usually with much better results than she's getting in this picture!).
Serena will go to kindergarten next year and she's definitely ready. She's got incredible fine motor skills, which make her a great colorer as well as letter-writer. She can recognize all her letters and write them as well. She's even begun reading a few sight words and getting the hang of phonics. It's so much fun to watch her master new things.

Serena is confident and independent. She has definite opinions about how she wants things, still enjoys playing alone (although she very often includes Asher in her imaginative play as well), has an impressive memory, and is a pretty deep thinker. Some of the questions she asks and the connnections she makes truly amaze us.

Overall, Serena is growing up into a really neat little girl. She's creative and smart and though she can sometimes be stubborn, she increasingly can reason and compromise well and deals well with disappointment. And, hey! - we've got her doing some chores!

Dinner table lessons

Many a dinnertime in the Poling household when I was growing up involved reading the dictionary or referencing the Encyclopedia Brittanica. We (the whole family - don't try to deny it, Elisa) did this for fun.
My kids are still a little young, and not reading yet, but that doesn't keep our meals from containing a solid educational element. Tonight Serena asked how to make water. This naturally led to a lesson on evaporation, precipitation, etc, complete with hand motions. (Joshua's sole contribution was, "that (my sweeping, circular hand motions) looks like ballet.") Serena was paying attention, at least.
"And that," I summarized, "is called the water cycle."
Asher: "Not a watercycle... a motorcycle."
Turns out he was listening after all.

Getting in Touch with Our Feelings

Serena sweetly expressed her "feelings" to me the other day:

Serena: Do you know how I feel?

Me: How do you feel?

Serena: I feel a dream in my heart that someday I will be a princess.

Me: Wow, that's a nice dream, honey.

Asher didn't want to be left out of the feeling/dream sharing...

Asher: I feel... I feel like a truck is in my tummy.

Hmmm. Usually the little guy's emotional intelligence is pretty high.

2011, ready or not...

Happy New Year already?! Have yet to send out our "Christmas" letter, have had no time to post any photos to this blog or anywhere else, and the new year's "to do" list keeps growing. Funny how hard it is to get a free moment these days.
BUT, we had a great Christmas, filled with all due wonder and joy. Loved having my brother and his wife here to visit with their new baby (pics of "twin cousins" to follow... maybe). We're excited for what 2011 has in store for our family and just hoping for the wisdom to take the time to enjoy it.
Here's a picture of each kid - just to prove they're still alive :)

Serena, 4 1/2 years old

Asher, 2 3/4 years old

Josiah, 3 months old