More fun around the house

You've heard it before, but I'll say it again. Josie keeps us smiling. Here are a few things to illustrate that. For example, what's not to love about the new hair style that Carissa created? I had no idea that J's hair was long enough for little piggy tails, but was even more surprised that she tolerated getting them in as well as she did. (Another bit of evidence that Carissa has a gift. For a very long time, she was the only one who could trim Josie's nails. And to this day she is the only one who can say, "lay down Josie" and have Josie just go to sleep on her shoulder.) Check out these little piggies. Something about it makes her look like such a big girl (wait - she is such a big girl):
And, I had to share a couple of funny moments. This one, in particular, cracks me up. I guess it also impresses me because for a long time, Josephine just played with shoes. But, something clicked yesterday and she thought "Oh, these go on feet...Let me try."

This went on for quite awhile, so I had to get a video. I actually had a longer one where she successfully gets the flipflop on one foot & then proudly and with sheer determination, goes for the second, but it's too large to upload. You get the idea with this one...
Here's another one to make you smile. Persistence is definitely Josie's strong suit. I am not exaggerating when I say she did this about 100 times. I finally decided to film it. But, as you can see at the end, she was getting so winded that I had to force her to take a break. We'll call this video "The (little) bear went over the mountain (again and again and again)."

I'll end with two little bits of fun news:

1) Louie & I wanted to get Josie a "Radio Flyer" wagon for her first birthday and actually ended up finding a totally old school "Town and Country"- completely wooden with the rubber wheels and all from this 90 year old woman who listed it on Craigslist for $50! (She was so cute! She told us that she had no idea how to use the internet or a digital camera, but that she asked God to teach her how to use them & he showed her the way. I love that Josie's "little red wagon" comes with such a sweet story - other than we went down to Walmart and bought one).

2) Louie & I decided to "play hooky" yesterday and go to the 12:30 Red's game. It was a beautiful day, we saw a couple of home runs & Dunn hit a Grand Slam. The Reds won by a mile, and the funniest thing was that Louie & I were on the jumbotron "kiss cam." SOO funny! When we got home, some people from our building called and said they were so excited because they never had seen anyone they knew on the big screen. Thank goodness Louie's office knew where he was, because he definitely would've been busted! You can see the photo they took of us as we entered at this link: Reds FanFoto.

A weekend with friends

On Friday night, we got to spend another perfect evening with the Schmiit-Harrison family. After singing the praises of city living in a recent post, let me add the suburbs definitely have something to add to the summer - like front porch swings, slip-and-slides in the backyard, a shaded walk to the market to pick up some eggs, bike riding, stopping to play fetch with a neighborhood dog, chicken on the grill, homemade pesto from the herb garden (with a borrowed food processor from the kindly senior citizen next door who sells plants and flowers from his yard), and so forth. Here are Skylar, Josie & I on the swing. And here is Josie being entertained by Sky. Josie adores her! :) She was also quite impressed by Blane's stunts on the couch.
Thanks so much to Carrie & Bob for a delicious summertime meal. Josie loved the strawberries and chicken. But, her favorite of all was her first ear of corn. (Thanks to Ciara as well for recommending this as a potential favorite.) Could she be any happier?
She was having so much fun with it that I thought a video was definitely in order. Enjoy!