All Things Supercinski

I’ve been indulging in peanut butter for the first time in almost 16 months. Some of you may know what that means–Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups! It also means that the boy has weaned. I’m a little sad as I feel like he is growing up so fast, but I am also so thankful that it has been such an easy transition for him. I didn’t have to push it at all, there were no tears on his part, and no drama. He decided it was time, so we’re done.

In case you are confused about the peanut butter: Thomas has a peanut allergy (and pine nuts), so in order to decrease Josiah’s risks of developing the same allergies, he can’t be exposed to peanuts or pine nuts in his diet until he is three years old, including via breastmilk.

For any of you (who will remain nameless) that insinuated that I would be nursing him until he was 17, you can rest assured that he will not be in high school and still nursing. And for anyone else who is appalled that we were still nursing 10 days shy of 16 months, the AAP recommends nursing until at least 12 months, and the World Health Organization recommends until 24 months. (Yes, yes, I know that it is very important in the developing world where adequate nutrition is sometimes not available, but still…) And for our other readers who are shocked that I am discussing nursing on our blog, it isn’t the first time.

You might recall a post a while ago about making blog reading easier. Google Reader provides an easy way to keep up-to-date with all the blogs you read, in a fraction of the time it takes to manually visit and read sites. All you need is a google (gmail) account, the addresses of the blogs you want to read, and you’re set!

Here’s how it works:
1) Go to http://www.google.com/reader
2) Log in with your gmail account, or register as a new user
3) Once you are in the reader, click on “add subscription”. Type in or copy the blog address you like to read. If (hint, hint) it is this one, you would type, “http://www.supercinski.net”. That’s it.
4) Do this for all the blogs you want, and you can chose to categorize them (like “friends”, “faith and practice”, “homemaking”, or “culture”, whatever) by clicking on “Settings” in the top left.
5) When you feel like checking all your blogs later, go to the Google Reader page in step one, log in and all new posts will be bolded. If you want to read comments, you’ll have to click on the post to go to it, but if you just want to read the post, you can stay in that window. Just scrolling through the post will mark it as read so it won’t show up in bold (unread) later.

It’s that easy. If you have any questions, you can ask me, and I’ll try to answer. For even speedier reading, learn to use the keyboard shortcuts detailed here.

My husband is amazing. He makes me laugh like no one else (besides myself), can kill a fly with just a pair of underwear (not the pair he was wearing), and loves me and Josiah like crazy. This sweet husband of mine planned one of the sweetest dates last week. I don’t think he’s planned a date so thoroughly since our first one!

Right before our “babysitter” (or our friend who sat in the living room while Josiah slept) got here, Thomas announced that he was leaving and would be calling me shortly to tell me where to go. I was surprised and a little disappointed. I really just wanted to go out, get desserts at a nice restaurant and hang out together. I was wrong for being disappointed! Shortly after our sitter arrived, the phone rang. It was Thomas instructing me where to find my first clue. It said:

“3 minus 1 equals 2. They teach that the first year at Stanford U.”

Any guesses as to where that meant? Our old duplex when we first were married was on Stanford Circle. Off I went. There were clues leading me all over town to places that are meaningful to us. Our favorite hang out places pre-Josiah, places from before we were married, the location of our first DTR (define the relationship) talk. He did a great job with the clues and kept me on my toes! Lastly, I met him at Cafe Eccel, the restaurant we ate at the night he proposed, and we enjoyed wonderful desserts and time together.

It was one of the most fun dates we’ve had in a while, and I’m so thankful for a husband who made me feel so special and loved by planning such a great date. I love you Sweet-T!

The boy and I spent a delightful afternoon in the backyard yesterday. After his snack, I stripped him down to a swim diaper, slathered him in sunscreen and we headed out for some fun.

First, he played in the sand.

And then he spotted the kiddie pool, which he affectionately referred to as, “Big Bath.” He enjoyed much splashing and playing with sand toys.

Then we spent some time hopping from sand box to Big Bath and back before the porch and backyard beckoned him away. You may be wondering, “Why is that little boy playing in a hot pink tub?” Well, friends, we here at All Things Supercinski love to save a buck or two, and when we saw this pink pool sitting on the curb for trash pickup (holding rainwater), we decided it would work for us. The sand toys were another “dumpster dive” that our neighbors carelessly discarded last week.

And here’s a shameless post of the garden, growing up a storm. We’ve been harvesting green beans, zucchini and squash, and we have tomatoes and carrots that should be ready before too long.

Josiah learned a new word this week: “Ow.” He has officially entered the realm of little boy-dom, full of scrapes and bruises. Most of his result from walks around our street, which makes a nice circle, just a little too long for a boy of Josiah’s age, but Momma can carry him the last house or two. Sometimes, his feet just get ahead of him, he sees a truck up ahead, or he is too busy trying to sneak a leaf in his mouth without anyone seeing, and he just falls down. These occurrences have become much fewer in recent weeks, but they still happen on occasion.

Such as Sunday. Josiah and I stayed home from church on Sunday as we suspected he was coming down with a dreadful childhood illness. A playmate broke out with it the day after we had played with her, so in order to protect all the tots in his class, he stayed home (still no signs of it, only one more day to go!) So we went for a walk, he fell, much drama ensued.

Now he can say, “ow,” and he says it often. For three days he had to wear pants at all times because if he saw his scraped knee (that he had just been crawling on), he started whimpering, the tears started falling, and he started saying, “oww, owwwww,” while pointing at his eye (his way of signing “hurt”.) Now, he’s over the tears, but he thinks about his owie all the time and points it out to us and anyone else who might pay attention.

Today he got a new owie–even with his knees covered by pants. Thankfully, it’s out of his line of vision, so hopefully the drama will be at a minimum.

(He didn’t say ow for this video, he was too busy with his truck and spotting his drink.)

Sorry for the delay–the boy refused to cooperate in getting some things on video I wanted for this post. It’s been a fun month with Josiah. He’s communicating so much and loves to play. The warmer weather has meant we play less at the park (unless it at the park near Daddy’s office since it is so shaded), but we’ve hit the splashpads several times lately. Josiah’s days consist of a lot of walking/running around the house picking up things and carrying them somewhere, dropping them, and finding something else to pick up and carry. This means Momma has lots to clean up, but he’s busy!

Now that it is full blown spring/summer, one of Josiah’s favorite activities is watching people mow. He even says, “mow”, it’s so cute. Here he is watching the neighbor’s lawn service crew.

Besides us, Josiah’s favorite person in the world is Dean. Dean’s mother and I walk together in the mornings and the boys often get a chance to play together in the afternoons. Dean loves cars, trucks, diggers and tractors as much as Josiah does, so they get along well. They also share the same love of dancing. One day, Dean decided he wanted to give Josiah a hug goodbye, however, Dean is much bigger than Josiah, so there were disastrous results. Josiah thinks about Dean often during the day and lets me know by shrieking, “Deeeeeee”.

Lastly, here are some videos of Josiah’s latest skills. The first is him telling us his animal sounds. He knows several more, but refuses it is nearly impossible to get him do show anything for the camera. The next video is body parts, again, he knows more, but he is just too busy to do them all at once unless he is strapped down to his carseat (and in the first video, the piece of food stuck to his finger is obviously unbearable).

I’m so thankful this month for a sweet boy who showers us with hugs and kisses and loves to let us know what he is thinking. He signs a lot (thank you is the latest craze)–the nursery workers were asking for translations when we picked him up yesterday. He is also eating much better–even trying new things! He’s still mostly a vegetarian as he refuses meat, but he is eating new vegetables and trying new things more and more.

We joined some friends yesterday at a playdate at one of Bryan-College Station’s three splashpads. Don’t know what a splashpad is? It’s basically a paved area with water spraying out of fun things for kids to run around in and get wet. At first, Josiah wasn’t too keen on the idea and actually ran away from it. Finally, he cautiously tested it out.

Then he got more interested.

Soon he looked like this:

He became quite the daredevil, and found he also enjoyed sitting on the water. (I like that in this picture, his friend’s shadow looks like a giant coming to get him, but she’s his size.)

Afterward, we headed to our neighborhood park for the annual Spring Picnic. The catered food was delicious, the cotton candy sweet, and the neighbors out in force.

There was even a fire engine at the park giving away fire hats for the young ‘uns. Josiah loves his and it is the only hat he will leave on his head for any length of time. If you’ve been around him long, you know his complex love for hats, yet hatred of wearing them himself.