The Sound Of Little Feet

“…Remember when the sound of little feet was the music we danced to week to week…” 

For those of you not familiar with country music, those are some of the lyrics to a particularly sweet country song by Alan Jackson that is one of my favorites.  That is the line Jacob said out loud the other day as Josiah ran through the house stopping every once in awhile to say “I fast!”  He’d look at us and wait for us to agree, then be off again!  Josiah really loves to run and so this is a common occurrence in our house.  He tires us out just to watch him.

After Josiah turned two, I planned to only do his progress and development updates every six months, but he has changed so dramatically in the past three months, that I can’t help but document his cute sweetness so that I can remember it all later.  So here we go:

His speech explodes with new words and phrases on a daily basis and he’s constantly making us laugh.  He points things out continually and makes short sentences that he repeats incessantly until we wise up and understand them fully.  He also understands so much more than we give him credit for and knows more about what is expected of him and how life works every day.  It is so much fun to go through the motions of each day with him (usually).  All of this is completely normal behavior, I know, but the fact that he is old enough for it blows me away.

He is all boy in that he can get filthy in an instant if given the opportunity and he loves planes, trains, and automobiles – pretty much anything with an engine.  But when he’s at Grandma’s he also really loves her play tea set, dress up heels, the baby stroller, and he particularly likes to feed the baby dolls when I’m feeding Elijah.  His favorite cartoon character is definitely Elmo and he still loves books and frequent trips to the library.

Helping Daddy fix his breaks.  He got SO filthy that he needed a bath and left a grease ring around our tub leaving Mommy with some extra cleaning.

He loves to wear my shoes.  Jacob is not sure what to think.  Notice that he is wearing the same outfit as in the above picture…my boy can do heels and mechanics all in one day!

A long time ago he was beginning to sing songs, but then he went through a phase (and is still partly in it) where he didn’t want you to sing anything to him ever.  Now he suddenly LOVES “The Wheels On The Bus” which he is always happy to have you sing with him and on occasion he’ll allow “If You’re Happy And You Know It”.  It is so funny to watch him sing all the verses to “Bus”!  Rarely we will hear him sing “Jesus Loves Me” to himself, but if you bring attention to it he’ll stop.  That is the sweetest thing to me.  I know it is probably silly, but I like to think that is the beginning of his private relationship with Jesus.  Sometimes if he is really tired and I rub his back (another favorite) while I do it, he’ll let me sing other songs to him.

   This was our impromptu trip to the splash park.  He had lots of fun!  We couldn’t get him to take off his shirt and shoes because he likes to be dressed and shoes seem to mean fun and action to him so he loves putting them on.

One thing that is a mixed blessing is that he is painfully shy sometimes.  He interacts great with other kids at his sitter’s house, the church nursery, and in other familiar settings, but sometimes he’d prefer to sit back and watch the other kids play in new places, though this is not always true.  I can’t decide if he’s truly shy or if he’s just overwhelmed by what may seem like chaos to him or if he just likes to observe, but at any rate it keeps him super well behaved!  My mom says not to worry about it because I always hid behind her legs.  She always worried about me, but thinks I turned out ok – I guess that is a matter of opinion.  I’m looking forward to Elijah being old enough to play with so that he can enter theses situations with a familiar sidekick.  It seems that while Josiah looks like Jacob, he acts like me.  Elijah looks like me, but we have yet to see if he acts like Jacob :)

Speaking of Elijah…Josiah is a far better brother than I could have ever hoped for.  He likes to always make sure Elijah has his “banket”, a.k.a burp cloth and often offers his toys.  He loves to hug and kiss him and sometimes even reads to him.  His latest thing is that he likes to straddle him while he walks down him lengthwise which totally makes me nervous.  He has hit him with toys a few times, but it hasn’t seemed vicious and instead just looked like he didn’t know how to play appropriately.  Maybe that is my naivety.  He’s only made him cry once and that was out of surprise.  He usually just ends up bored with him and moves on to the next thing, but Elijah is never bored with Josiah and tends to give him more smiles than anyone else gets.

I had to show a few pictures of Josiah enjoying his indoor tent with Elijah.  Elijah enjoyed it, too.  He really loves to have someone play with him in it…even the cat!  Unfortunately while she loves the tent, she’s not so fond of sharing it with him and leaves every time he joins her.

Josiah is just so precious to us and I love looking at life the way he does.  I even love scouring the roads while I drive to point out all the most interesting vehicles and such.  We try not to spoil him, but we have fun when we give him endless amounts of fun.  We love our little man more each day which seems crazy because at some point that should level off, right?  Maybe in 7-10 years things will move in the opposite direction as he develops into an ornery preteen??? :)