Future artist or barista?

Coming soon (hopefully tonight) I will get the photos and videos posted from our weekend rendez-vous in Chicago with the "Three Austins", but in the meantime, here are a couple of photos I hadn't posted yet from last week. Check out our clever girl finding a new place to keep her crayons...

She's hilarious. Really, every day it is something new. I'll post an update of her recent milestones, because she blows our mind everyday. Quick story - she's talking up a storm now and we can't believe what words just pop out that we didn't even realize she knew - like yesterday on my afternoon coffee run. No joke - I wheeled her in for my daily fix and she looked up and said "Starbucks" clear as a bell. We all had a good laugh about that one.

Here's a cute photo of Josie on her Magnadoodle. She loves writing, drawing, and coloring. And I love the way that she focuses so intently on what she's doing, as this photo shows.

19 months, really?

Well, I'll admit...I didn't even put together that Josie hit the 19th month mark until I just saw on "Three Austins" that Lyla is now five months! Among other things...YIKES...we totally never scheduled her 18 month appt. Oh goodness, must go call the doc. And of course go wish Josie a "Happy 19 Months"!

ROAR!!!

Well, it was a $10 gamble...Either Josie would totally freak out and flee, costing me ten bucks in ten seconds OR she would get into the new DINOSAURS UNEARTHED exhibit at the Museum Center and we'd have a memorable afternoon. Fortunately it was the latter. I'm posting all three videos that I shot because I think they'll give you the best overview of our afternoon. She had a blast and made quite a lot of friends with the other people in exhibit. I actually had NO idea that the darn things would be this huge and quite frankly, this scary, but Josie took it all in and had a blast. There are a couple of great moments in these videos where you can see she overcomes her fears. I love my fearless little girl. Enjoy!

My monkeys

Our little monkey has officially mastered the monkey bars...

I wonder where she gets it? The park is even more fun now that she actively plays on all of the equipment.

I was floored when she wanted to go down this tube-slide. She's just such a big girl!

Here she is running up to total strangers after shooting out the bottom yelling "slide, slide"...

Can you tell she's having fun?
One last shot before heading home for dinner after a perfect day in the city...

Bye-Bye "Brrr"...

On a daily basis, Josie wants to look out of our front windows over-looking the city. Whenever you say "outside" she instantly says "Brrrr". Poor thing; I think she had forgotten what warm weather was like. Thankfully we got our first taste of Spring on Saturday with 70-plus temps. We had an awesome weekend! (Much needed after a major hit that came on Thursday with a 50% reduction in my work hours - yikes!) Anyway, here are some photos from this season's first trip to the zoo. We couldn't believe the difference between the last time we were there in the fall and this time. What used to be mostly pushing Josie around in her stroller has definitely turned into chasing her around from exhibit to exhibit while she points at, names, and blows kisses at all the animals. Enjoy!

My two favorite people in the whole world...Josie getting as close as she could to the bongos...Josie refusing to turn her head for even a second to pose for a photo because she was obsessed with going "Mahhhh, Mahhhh" at the "sheeps". Incidentally, this was just moments before I realized she was also chewing on the feed-covered fence. Yuck!A weary Josie ready to be carried on her dad's shoulders....Josie cracking herself up in the backseat on the way home. For no reason and totally unprovoked, she just started shouting "Happy Birthday" over and over again. My birthday was over a month ago, and we were just amazed and laughing hysterically at the fact that his resurfaced out of nowhere.

Our little dance machine

Over the weekend we went to Kalie's dance competition (daughter of our looong time family friends). It was a blast! And, it was crazy to see Kalie all grown-up, since I remember when she was just Josie's age. Here are some photos and videos from what Josie called the "Dance Party".

BEFORE....
DURING.....

AFTER....

Videos!

I remembered to take my camera with video to the Children's Museum last week, so I can share our big girl on the slide with all of you.

Here's another one of Josie cracking us up wearing Louie's shoes. (Sidebar: Cat, pretty funny that Ronan was partying in your Uggs recently and now Josie is sporting her dad's kicks.)

Here are some photos that Grandma shot yesterday. She came down to Cincy to fill in for Carissa who is spending her week in Cancun (poor thing). Josie had a blast with my mom, as you can see from these photos of her hamming it up for the camera.

That last one is the end of a wink. ;)

COMING SOON>>> VIDEO OF JOSIE BREAKIN' IT DOWN AT KALIE'S DANCE COMPETITION OVER THE WEEKEND. Trust me; it's worth the wait...

On a final note, thank you so much to everyone for the outpouring of support for Three Schneiders & Three Austins over the last week or so. These tough times have been made much easier with all the love from our friends and family.

I promise to get some of the recent silly videos of Josie posted very soon. In the meantime, I've updated her Shutterfly collection with the January and February albums. Enjoy! www.josiemarie.shutterfly.com

It's not all bad...

Well, I'll just come right out and say it. Why? Because it bothers me that more people aren't more honest about things that really matter. So, here it goes... the last couple weeks have been awful. Little Lyla Bird has been diagnosed with hip dysplasia - read more about that story and see photos of the little darling on my sister's blog - www.threeaustins.blogspot.com We're are so sad that life has thrown our Three Austins a major curveball, but comforted by the fact that they are equipped to handle it with so much love, poise, honesty, courage, and wisdom.
In other sad news, I had a miscarriage last week. I know this isn't the standard, sit-back-and-smile blog post, but I figure if you're one of our loyal readers that is here for more than the pictures, than you deserve to know. Plus, I think one of the hardest things about having a miscarriage is that it's such a taboo subject in our culture. And, everyone is different of course...but I'm the type of person who handles things better when I can talk about them openly. So, there it is. We were pregnant, it was early on, and things weren't developing properly. Everything happnes for a reason. Everything. And we are confident that Josie will get her brother or sister as soon as the time is right. And perhaps that's a reason I decided to share this with everyone - as a sort of defense mechanism - because we're getting a lot of "It's time for #2" from people and my response from now on is just going to be "Trust me; We're trying."
Well, the last two weeks haven't been all bad. Lucky for the former Johnson girls, our little ones have kept us smiling and have acted as a constant reminder of just how fortunate we already are. Josie has been extra cuddly lately, which makes everything easier. Oh - and my hair is brown...Check out Josie wearing my sunglasses that she helped herself to from the kitchen table...
She has also decided that she hates the highchair, which oddly broke within days of her decision. Here she is sitting at the big table, which is crazy... She is getting a little more used to the idea of sharing, although we're not there yet. Here are the girls taking turns (can you believe it) on Andrew's bus...

And here are two photos from a collection we could call "You know you have a toddler if..."

After she put the animals on the potty, they of course needed a bath... There really are at least a dozen more photos from this series of shots where I followed her around the house silently photographing what she did with these three little animals. What an imagination!

And...she's getting her second set of molars! Already! Accordingly, this is the new official Josie pose...
I'll leave you with a quick video that recreates what happened on the street the other day. We were walking past the newspaper stand and Josie pointed to our President (wow, I'll never get tired of saying that) and said "Obama." So, I thought I'd share that joy with all of you. Enjoy!

An hour in the life...

It started simply enough - I wanted to capture Josephine's sheer determination in trying to master her new puzzle. But, the afternoon's good lighting, Josie's good mood, and my great new portrait lens turned into a full-scale photo shoot. So, here it is - an hour in the life of your Three Schneiders. Enjoy!

A B C D E F G H 9 10

I just had to share this quickly - Josie likes to say the ABCs and count herself to sleep. For the second night in a row and then just now as I put her down for her nap, this is what she's been repeating to herself - A B C D E F G H 9 10. My guess is that when she gets to "H" she hears "8" and of course 9 & 10 come after 8. How funny is that? Too cute.

And.... JOSEPHINE IS NOW 18 MONTHS OLD! Holy cow, she's half way to TWO!

You hear it all the time - kids this age learn through imaginative play. I can't tell you how many of Josie's "leaps" have taken place at the Museum Center. We had some big strides there at the end of last week - first she finally "got it" at the water table - filling, spilling, splashing, pouring,etc. This transferred over into bathtime which is now a much more "productive"activity of spilling bottles with water, emptying them into cups, etc. Here's Josie partying in splash-zone.This was a BIG deal! We've been going to the museum for months now & week after week I break my back lifting Josie to the top of the slide 100 times and cupping the back of her head so she doesn't slam it on her way down. Well, I think she got some courage from Aoife last week, because this week she got daring and wanted to do it all by herself. I stood back and down she went. And, I'm not kidding, she clapped for herself and said "Yay" at the bottom. Here she is before going down for like the 30th time...No exaggeration -she spent a solid half-hour marching up the stairs, positioning herself at the time, going "weeeee" the whole way down, clapping at the bottom, saying "yaaaay", and marching back up the stairs again. She was literally getting out of breath. Check out these action shots. I love how she looks scared to death but just kept doing it.

In other news, she learned how to properly use the shovel to fill the pail with sand in the sandbox as well. I love playing with Josie and watching her grow. It's amazing! She's just growing up so fast. We actually went to our first "school" tour over the weekend as well. We're trying to figure out whether we'll do Waldorf, Montessori, etc. so we went to the Waldorf School Open House. We definitely haven't "drank the kool-aid" yet, but it looks like a great place for at least pre-K. Really, it's just unbelievable that we have to be thinking about schools already, but since we live in the city, it's a lot more complicated. Whew - wish us luck! :)

Here are a couple of other loose ends from the past week:

This one is from my birthday last week. Carissa worked on trying to teach Josie to say "Happy Birthday" all day long, but gave up on the "Birthday" part and substituted "B-day" instead. But, for some reason, Josie thought "B-day" was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. Every time we'd say it, she'd crack up. This is late in the day, so it didn't get quite the same reaction, but you get the idea. Enjoy!

Here are a couple of photos from our niece Morgan's Ice Recital. Josie was very impressed. Here she is clapping and cheering for the girls - She was especially proud of Morgan leading the pack during their big number - And I'll leave you with this quickie of Josie with her cat puppet, because we think it's hilarious. Enjoy!