Josie Update

Well, I know it's been awhile since the last Josie update. Things have been busy with the latest addition to the family (see http://www.threeaustins.blogspot.com/ for more photos), some big projects at work, and with the decision to put our condo on the market and start looking for a new place to live. (We totally underestimated how much work it is to get a place ready to sell and to find somewhere new.)

But, amid the sea of chaos around here, Josie cracking us up has been the only constant. The new thing this week is "helping" around the house. I'm not kidding. This was totally unprovoked and if you would've asked me before this happen if she'd ever seen me unload laundry, I would've said no. But, apparently she picked this up somewhere.

She literally walked into the laundry room, opened the dryer door, and started pulling her clothes out and putting them into the laundry basket. I watched her do this for about 10 minutes and took three separate videos, but all three of them are too big for the blog so you'll just have to use your imagination. When you're envisioning the whole scenario, be sure to take into account that she also paused to try to dress herself and got really excited about finding socks (probably because of their close relationship with shoes).

The next day, she decided to help Louie load the dishwasher. She loves opening and closing the dishwasher door, so we've learned quickly to keep the knives in the back.

So in addition to doing laundry and dishes, she has also begun making her own homemade applesauce, which we find in piles throughout the house.

Step One: Take the biggest bite of apple humanly possible. Then repeat (but don't swallow the first bite). The repeat (still remembering not to swallow). Then repeat. Once your cheeks are stuffed like chipmunks, move on to Step Two.

Step Two: Walk up to your mom, say "AHHHH" and show her all the crushed up apple chunks in your mouth.
Step Three & Four are unclear, but somehow involve removing the homemade applesauce and smearing it on the furniture.

In other exciting news, we bumped into Sarah Palin the other day on the way to the parking garage. She was in town for a speech and was spending the night at the Westin that backs up to our condo. Here are Josie and I posing in front of the McCain/Palin tour bus, looking a bit skeptical about the whole "Straight Talk Express" thing.

We decided to stick around to see her. Turns out she's more pretty (but just as unqualified) in person.

In other news, we had another wedding this week. Our friends Natalie & Dennis got married and we were there to celebrate the big day which was 14 years in the making! It was a gorgeous evening on the river in Milford. Here are Josie and I being silly. Oddly, out of all the photos I've ever seen of Josie, I think she looks the most like me in this one. One last, "that silly Josie" photo for you before I tackle my overflowing inbox. We were desperately in need of new laundry hampers, but we were fooled by ebay and ended up with two hampers that were much smaller than we anticipated. But, leave it to Josie to turn lemons into lemonade. Here she is watching Thomas the Tank Engine at about 6am on Sunday morning.
Here are some updates on Josie developmentally (now that she is 14 months old)!

• She can now sign about twenty words in the proper context (new ones include cheese, horse, flower, car, frog, and giraffe).
• She now says "hi" at appropriate times (and whenever she sees another baby or child).
• She blows kisses.
• She purposefully gives hugs and kisses (my new favorite - nothing sweeter than when she comes bouncing across the room with her lips puckered and arms open for a big hug).
• When asked, she will tell you what all the following animals say: dog, cat, cow, sheep, horse, monkey.

Oh, and in BIG news - Josie is officially weaned. This is unbelievably bittersweet. Today marks one week since her last mama's milk. I'm very proud that we made it to 14 months and that she led the weaning process, which happened very gradually and at her own pace. Not that any of you all care about the last time Josie breastfed, but this blog serves as our family record as well, so I want to just say that our last time was really special. It was our favorite kind of nursing - during a nap. She was all curled up with me in her tie-dyed onesie and we both drifted off to sleep together one afternoon. I'm glad I had no idea at the time that it would be our last one, because I know I would've laid there crying about how fast she had grown up. But, it was time and we were both ready. Another milestone crossed for little Josephine...

Josie has a new cousin!!!

HOORAY - BABY AUSTIN HAS ARRIVED!!!

On Sunday at 7:28am, Baby GIRL Austin came into the world!

LYLA ANNE AUSTIN
8 lbs. 5 oz.
20 inches

I have never been so proud of my little sister who putting everything she had into birthing her daughter. (Although my favorite moment of Amanda's labor was Lyla's birth, a close second was watching Amanda do her "fantasy football" picks between contractions.)

I'm sure Amanda & Michael's blog will be updated soon with more details but suffice it to say that they are VERY happy to now be home with a happy, healthy, and BEAUTIFUL baby girl. Stay tuned to www.threeaustins.blogspot.com

You can see the beautiful photos taken at the hospital by visiting:
www.bellababyphotography.com
-click on "website"
-click on "client"
-enter password "0556austin"
-get ready to "ooh and ahh"

New England Nuptials

On Thursday, we headed to Rhode Island for a wedding! Lou's best friend Jeremy (who has always been known to us as "Chow" and will be known to you as "Chow" for the remainder of this post) got married to Ashley - one of the sweetest, most generous and kind, and not to mention beautiful girls we've ever met. They were SO kind to open their home to us so we didn't have to get a hotel (can you imagine have a houseful of people leading up to your wedding day) and they were unbelievable hosts. Seriously, we cannot thank them enough for everything - starting with four big beautiful lobsters for dinner when we arrived. (Did I mention Chow is a chef? So we were basically at our own private Bed & Breakfast!) Anyway, here is Josie meeting her dinner, which was unbelievably delicious and totally fun to eat. (And our little foodie officially enjoys lobster.) On Friday morning, we headed to the beach so that Josie could dip her little toes into the Atlantic like she did in the Pacific all those months ago in Cali.

Moments like these - hanging out on the beach in the morning with a light breeze and big sunshine totally make me question why on earth we live in Cincinnati. It was gorgeous and peaceful and perfect.

And, Chow even caught this big bluefish on his second cast out into the water.
Josie was very impressed. I know she would've eaten him, too but since Chow had a wedding and all, he didn't have time for smoking a bluefish, so we tossed it back and watched it swim away instead.

I love Chow. And, Louie does too. He's such a great guy and was also the best man in Lou's wedding. (And, to further prove my point that he's going to be a great husband - he actually called and left me a "Happy Mother's Day" message on my first mother's day. Too sweet!)
Here are some more beach photos, because you can't have enough beach photos. And here is a quick video of our little "Danger Dog" who - like I say in this video - totally "lives on the edge". She is not afraid of anything! And, just seconds after this video ended, she slipped out of Lou's grip and ran straight for the waves. (Hawaii is going to be very interesting indeed.)

Have you ever seen a more beautiful place for a swingset?
Here she is getting a big kiss and a big face full of New England sunshine!
And a swing ride with Mama because I couldn't resist a swingset with an ocean view either. :)
On to the wedding! :)
The rehearsal and dinner were on Friday. Josie spent the entire rehearsal running around the church, across the aisles and climbing the pews. Needless to say, I was a little nervous for the actual wedding after this little performance at the rehearsal. She actually did very well during the real thing, which I'll get to next. (Oh - and BTW - I'm obsessed with stripes, as evidenced by Josie's outfit pictured here.)
The wedding was at this perfect litttle white chapel on the top of a big green hill above the water. As we were pulling up to it, I said to Louie "I hope it's a little white New England church I'm picturing in my head." And it totally was!
The ceremony was so beautiful. Chow's dad performed the service (and became an officiant just for this event) and they wrote their own vows. It was so touching and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Josie was perfect. Although, as I took the camera out to snap this one photo, I heard giggling in the row behind me and then looked over to find Josie helping herself to a banana - peel and all! Totally yucky, but worth the laugh in the end.
After the wedding, we headed to a beachhouse for photos. We tried and tried to get a good photo taken of us all dolled-up in our wedding best, but Josie had other plans, mostly revolving around getting her tights dirty (that a girl) and climbing stairs.

We'll call this photo "The Reason People Live in Rhode Island"... How beautiful!
On to the reception. The food was incredible!!! Josie, although she enjoyed a few bites of the good stuff, had to get started early on a meal of chicken nuggets and tater tots. This video is here for three reasons. 1) She ate so much chicken over the weekend that she mastered the sign for "chicken"; 2) She dances at the end which I'll say more about in a minute; 3) I don't ever want to forget what happened right before I got the camera out which was really cute and funny. [Chow and Ashley danced to Wilco's "California Stars" for their first dance. Josie was sitting eating and kept stopping to pat her head. I couldn't figure out what on earth she was doing - then I realized what song was on - "I'd like to rest my heavy HEAD tonight on a bed of California Stars..." So, chalk this up as evidence that she totally pays attention to whatever is going on in the background. Too funny.] Of course she stopped doing the head thing as I got the camera out, but here it is anyway.

After she ate her dinner and played for awhile in her high chair while we feasted, she got really fussy so we figured it was sadly about time for us to go home. We decided to start saying our goodbyes since a meltdown was imminent. But, a strange thing happened when we neared the dancefloor. She totally hit a second wind and demanded that I put her down. What happened next was one of my favorite Josie moments so far. During the Jackson 5's "ABC", Josie starting dancing and clapping and giggling and didn't let up for the next hour. She literally stood in the middle of a dance floor of partying adults and teenagers and completely "got down". We didn't have our camera with us, and to be honest, were having so much fun that we didn't want to stop to go get it. But, lots of other people took pictures of her & I'll post those when I get them.

Here is a photo of Louie & Josie dancing just before we left...

And here is Josie passed out in the backseat of the car before we even got out of the parking lot!
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Ewing-Chow and thanks so much for everything!

On one final note, here is Josie when we got home on Sunday night. Her special treat for being such a good girl for the weekend was as many blueberries as she wanted. And I am not kidding - she almost ate one full pound of them!!!!! Her stomach was hard as a rock and she was stained purple from head to toe. Clearly she is enjoying herself. :)
On to Hawaii in a few weeks...

First and foremost - HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOUIE!!!! I'll admit that we didn't get much celebrating in yesterday, but this weekend in Rhode Island (actually we leave in a couple of hours) will undoubtedly bring lots of good times!

Here is Josie enjoying the "Thomas the Tank Engine" card that she hand-picked for her daddy:

And, I'll leave you with this video of our smart little cookie, who is now quite adept at following directions. Thanks to Carissa who has been working on this with her. :)

Oh, in other Josie news:

• She has just gotten her 8th tooth (which means she is now even with four on the top and four on the bottom).


• She has pretty much weaned herself from nursing and is down to just one mama-milk-meal a day (breakfast).


• She now knows the sign language for "help" & uses it frequently and in the proper context.


• She says "uh-oh" and "hi".


• She is positively obsessed with shoes! (Case in point - the fact that I had to literally pry her little fingers off of a pair of pink sparkly Mary Janes that she helped herself to at Children's Place. At one point she had at least 6 pairs of them in her stroller. I took me no less than a half-hour to distract her enough with other diversions sufficient enough for her to give them up.) Hilarious!

We'll be back Sunday night so I'll be sure to check in early next week! :)

Some family time

This past week was stressful - to say the least - so it was nice just to have the weekend to hang out together and take a couple of deep breaths. Louie, Josie & I hung out together all weekend - starting with our regular trip to Findlay Market on Saturday morning. After lunchtime and naptime, we headed out to the Kenwood Mall to put a dent in Josie's fall wardrobe needs. (Oddly enough, you would never know that our country was allegedly poised on brink of economic failure because the mall was packed!) Here's a shot of Josie in her stroller, which I'm including because she looks like such a girl (and not a baby) in the picture. It's also funny because she had her mouth packed with cheddar-bunny crackers like a little squirrel.On Sunday after our weekly grocery store trip (and learning that you shave about an hour off the trip by hitting Whole Foods by 10am), we came home for family naptime (because forget about the Bengals) and then headed to the park at Sawyer Point this afternoon. The park has always been fun, but now that Josie is walking around, it's even better. Here she is toddling...

On to the big metal tubeslide (that she used as a giant drum in a photo a couple of weeks ago). Today, she got very curious & wanted to go down it (head first of course), and since Daddy was waiting at the bottom, we let her go for it.
But, leave it to Josie to have fun with good ole' fashioned nature. Slides and swings are great, but dancing with and chasing your shadow is the best!
Seriously, how cute is that!?

And, I'll leave you with a photo of Josie picking the grass. This is the same field where I took the picture of Josie and Louie exploring the grass at the Earth Day celebration back in April. She's grown up so much since then. :)

Allergy Test Results

The trip to the allergist yesterday confirmed that Josie has a severe allergy to peanuts and allergies to other nuts (although markedly less severe). We were glad that she only had to have twelve tests since we knew she was okay with milk, eggs, and some other common allergens. Poor little thing definitely cried, but they let me hold her so once they finished with the actual scratching, I was able to nurse her and she calmed right down. She was actually quite cheery during the 15 minute wait to read the reactions. They even had a TV set up next to her with a tape of Tweety Bird playing. All in all, it was frightening for all of us, but Josie was so brave.

It's easy to tell below which one was the peanut test. She scored at 4+ on a scale of 1-4 regarding the severity based on this reaction. Perhaps the scariest thing is that this is with a serum that is only a small fraction of the actual strength of the peanut protein. (I believe he said it was 1/32 strength.) So, obviously letting Josie come into contact with an actual peanut or peanut butter would mean real trouble.

Really, it is such a blessing in disguise that we now know this about Josie so we can do everything we need to do to keep her safe. Obviously we'll be having follow-up conversations with friends/family about the changes we will all need to make to protect her. We are also going to go ahead and do the blood test so that we can have a number to track each year. The doctor was hopeful that by the time she is a teenager (and if her exposure to peanuts between now and then is nill) that she could even outgrow the allergy! :) Thanks for the outpouring of support over the past week. Love you all!

Peanut Allergy Update

Yesterday afternoon we met with the allergist and came up with an action plan re: Josephine's (obvious to him) peanut allergy. Since she had Benadryl on Saturday, we had to wait until today to do the skin test for peanuts and other common allergens. I believe I mentioned that they were going to do blood tests, but after talking with him we decided to go ahead with the skin patch test which will give us instant results. (Since we are flying to Rhode Island one week from today, we would likely not have had the test results back before the flight where we will need a letter from the allergist to give to the flight crew re: her peanut allergy and in order for us to travel with epi-pens.) We learned A LOT yesterday and will undoubtedly learn a lot more today. Thanks for everyone who has emailed to check on Josie today. Please keep our little sweetie in your hearts today as she is going to have to undergo some pretty uncomfortable stuff at 4:30. (They will be pricking her back with various allergens to wait for a reaction. I'm absolutely ill over the thought of putting Josie through this, but it is very important for us to know the severity of allergy in order to move forward appropriately.)

THANKS!

Thank you to everyone for your kind words, support, and suggestions as we work to figure out all of this peanut allergy stuff. We have her appt with the allergist tomorrow afternoon & I will update everyone after that. Big Hugs, Your Three Schneiders

The scariest thing that has ever happened in our lives!!!

Well, Big News at the Schneider house and not the fun kind. We found out on Friday night that Josephine has a peanut allergy. I'll try to keep a long story short and just say that some miscommunication between Louie & I led to him giving Josie a bite of peanut butter to taste. As I was walking in the door, I saw a spoonful on her high chair tray and when I found out it was PB, scooped it up and as we were cleaning off the tray, she started to have a pretty severe reaction that involved raised welts on her face and hands, swollen face/eyes, coughing, and later big puffy hands and feet. We immediately knew what was happening, so Louie called 9-1-1. They instructed us to meet the EMTs in the lobby of our condo. I was actually pretty calm until I heard the sirens coming and then it hit me that we had just called 9-1-1 and they were coming to help poor little Baby Josie. Through it all, she was a little angel. She didn't cry, just rubbed and rubbed her little eyes. The EMT crew was outstanding and the woman was very relaxed and comfortable with children which I think made the whole thing better. Once it was clear that her breathing didn't appear to be in danger, they just stuck around for a bit to observe her for a while and help us decide whether or not to put her in the ambulance and take her to Children's Hospital. Taking their advice, we decided to keep her here and give her Benadryl, make sure she didn't come anywhere near peanuts over the weekend, and call the doctor on Monday to get a prescription for an Epi-pen.
The rest of Friday night was pretty scary because the whole thing happened around 7pm. Even after the Benadryl she was still really puffy and it was clear her throat was swollen because she had trouble swallowing food that is normally no problem at all (this went on into Saturday where she actually choked at my parents' house which was the 2nd scariest thing that has ever happened to us). After about 24 hours of Benadryl, she was back to her normal cheery self on Sunday although Louie & I are far from back to normal ourselves.
After a talk with the pediatrician this morning, the director of the Children's Center where we attend Josie's music class, and the allergist this afternoon - it looks like things are really going to change around here. Obviously we are willing to do whatever we have to do to keep Josephine safe. There are sure to be major changes to our diets and a lot of education for us and for anyone who comes in contact with Josie (sorry Grand-daddy, no more peanut butter anytime Josie is in the house). Louie & I have realized that we have so much to learn, too. (For example, the chips we were eating for lunch today contained peanut oil and were promptly tucked away until we do a complete food overhaul.) We have an appt with the allergist on Wednesday afternoon. He will take Josie's blood and test it for a number of allergies, prescribe us the epi-pen, and educate us on how to proceed.
Thanks to everyone in advance for your understanding, as we will all undoubtedly have to make some changes. If Josie would've had that second bite of peanut butter, it is no exaggeration that you could quite possibly be attending her funeral today instead of reading her blog. One thing is for sure in considering what's ahead, she's worth it!

Some random fun

Since our babysitter had an out-of-town soccer game today, I got to spend the day with Josie instead of my laptop! :) We had a really fun day! And here are some photos and videos to prove it. To start, I finally got some video of our bi-lingual daughter who speaks "Canine" in addition to English.


And - speaking of dogs - today was Cincinnati's annual "Dachshund Dash" to kick off OktoberFest. Picture 40 little wiener dogs, complete with foam buns, ketchup, and mustard racing toward a line of adults each waving a squeaky toy or treat in the air. It actually attracted quite a crowd, including one very excited 13 month old. These are the impromptu events that I will miss when we move out of the city - especially since Louie met us for lunch and the big race as well.
Here is Josie getting a closer look. The funny thing was that it took her awhile to even register these as dogs since she's used to much bigger ones, but after reassuring her that these were in fact dogs she was woof-woofing in no time.
And I'll end this post with a regular scene around here that I was able to capture on video to share with you all - the excitement that can only come from one thing - the Sesame Street theme song. (It is a little sweet to think about how many children around the world smile and dance when they hear the same thing.) Enjoy!

Cuddles and more...

Is there anything cuter than a sleeping baby? Okay, maybe a sleeping Josie cuddling up to her little Steiff bunny. Over the last week she has become absolutely obsessed with anything stuffed in our house. It's funny. She takes things on "rides" on her alligator, hugs and kisses them, and refuses to let them go when it's necessary that she have a free hand. Case in point - lunch time. She woke up from her nap and was ready to eat, but absolutely refused to let go of either one of these toys (that would be the bear the front desk people gave her at the Beverly Wilshire on your left and Cook Monster on the right) -
After several moments of negotiating & temper tantrums, we reached the following compromise:
It's truly amazing that it feels as though she was just a cooing newborn and now she is a full-on toddler, complete with opinions and demands. (Heaven helps us when she's a teenager.)

Speaking of our little lady growing up, I keep forgetting to post her "stats" from her one year doctor's appointment:
Height -31.5 inches (Or 2 feet, 7.5 inches which sounds taller for some reason)
Weight - 22.5 pounds
The big change here is that she used to be 50% in height-for-weight, meaning that she was perfectly proportioned. But now, she is in 95th percentile for height and only in the 60th percentile for weight, so as her doctor put it she is "long and lean." It's so strange because she has lost so much of her baby fat. In the last three months, she grew over two inches but only gained about a pound. (No worries, the doctor said she is perfectly healthy and that this is just the result of her crawling, walking and burning more calories.) It's just unbelievable how much she has changed!

This week in review...

So the big news at the Schneider house is that Josie is now 13 months old, has "gone mobile" and is therefore officially a toddler (didn't we just have a newborn?!). I thought it would be fun to show her progression over the last week. So, here is how it all began. Last weekend she started taking short bursts of steps after pulling up, but with little confidence.

As the week progressed, she took steps for greater and greater distances, but usually only if she had a "catcher" at the end and if she started from one of us or holding on to something. Then, midweek, she just randomly started trying to stand up on her own. (She could stand unsupported before, but only if she was already standing and holding on to something and let go.) I thought this was so cute that she was this persistent. She literally did this for about 30 minutes until she was out of breath and had it mastered. Here are some of her early attempts to stand up from a sitting position and start walking on her own.

Last night was definitely the night she mastered walking. We had a really fun night. We watched the movie "Across the Universe" (all Beatles music) and had a blast watching Josie dance and clap every time a song came on and practice walking around the room during the boring parts. And that brings us to this afternoon. In just one week she has gone for trying to walk to full-on walking! Now, she walks on her own when she's trying to get somewhere (like in the video below) instead of before when she only walked if encouraged. Look at her go!

Here are some other photos from this past week. (This is a good time to apologize for not posting sooner this week, but Carissa was sick so I didn't have a babysitter Thursday or Friday. And no babysitter means that any downtime goes to work and not the blog.) Anyway, back to this past week. As you know from past videos, Josephine loves shoes. Here she is wearing her daddy's work shoes. Too cute! (I should mention she went over and did this herself. We just took the photo.)Since I had some extra free time with Josie this week, we walked down to the awesome park at Sawyer Point. Here is Josie crossing a little bridge at the playground. It was a weird moment for me, because I had this big flashback to crossing the little bridge in the Brownie ceremony when I was little and a big flashforward to Josie doing the same thing one day (should she so choose.)We had a great time at the park - and the big metal tube slide made a perfect drum!Here is Josie playing the big chimes - And peeking out around the corner of the playhouse (this picture cracks me up). Looking back, we had a lot of quality "park time" this past week. Lou's annual lawfirm picnic was yesterday. It was so strange to think back to last year's picnic. Josie was only about 6 weeks old and this year she was busy walking around and socializing with everyone. Here she is with Louie and one of the big flowers from the gardening basket we won as a doorprize. She carried this flower around for about an hour (almost as cute as that frozen bag of peas months ago).
Here is Josie's awesome tshirt that all the kids at the firm got airbrushed for them. (Lou and I were disappointed that we couldn't get one made for ourselves with a Carri + Lou and a big unicorn.)Here's just another random photo from the week - Josie and I reading some books before bedtime. And that brings us to today - lots of loose ends to tie up around the house & the Bengals game. We started the day with high hopes for our Bengals and suited Josie up in her new Bengals gear courtesy of "Grandma Who-Dey". But, by half time we were looking for other entertainment (darn Bengals), luckily Josie was in the mood to entertain us.

Here she is taking some of her favorite toys for a ride on her "clacky gators". As I'm typing this, she has just piled another set of toys on top of it to take them on a ride, too. So cute!