Toilet Training

Not on purpose. I feel he is still a little young, but they say you can start around 18 months. Tonight as I was undressing Joshua in the bathroom for his bath, Joshua opened the cabinet door under the sink and started to pull out his potty. I hadn't really introduced it to him. I pulled out the potty fully and said " Joshua, do you want to go pee pee on the potty?" I sat him down and lo and behold, he peed on the potty and poo too. I was in utter shock. I didn't expect anything to happen. I am sure when I try again tomorrow and over the next few days, nothing will happen. For tonight, however, I will celebrate with Joshua.

19 Months

19 Months. The time goes by so quickly. Every day Joshua's vocabualry is growing. He is at 80+ words now, which is great for a 19 month old toddler. His walking and squatting is getting really strong and he is doing really well with that. Joshua is such a pleasure. The weather is getting nicer, and Joshua likes to go to the park and climb on the equipment and go down the slide. He likes to build with his blocks and loves to color with a pen or crayons. We tried to give him the special "toddler" crayons, but he wanted the real thing.


Loves pizza. The box is as big as him.

Doing what he does best...running away

All It Takes Is The Right Toothbrush

At 10 months, we introduced Joshua to the toothbrush. He only had 2 teeth at the time, however, he learned that the toothbrush is used to brush his teeth. We would say, "Joshua, brush your teeth", and he would take the toothbrush and put it in his mouth.

Fast forward 9 months and about 12 more teeth later. Joshua hates brushing his teeth and complains each day when we try to brush his teeth. When I try to give him the toothbrush to brush his teeth, he bats it away. I even bought the "training" toothpaste. However, all he wanted to do was suck the toothpaste off the brush and still hated brushing his teeth. The other day I decided it was time to try something different. I went to the store and bought Joshua a Spiderman electric spin brush. He loves it! He laughs when we put the spin on and grabs the toothbrush from me to do it himself. All it takes is the right toothbrush!

Animal Sounds

War Paint

Joshua is at the stage where he is starting to imitate different things. Over the winter, his face got pretty dry and so we put lotion on his face each night. Eventually, Joshua started to put his finger in the jar and start putting the lotion on his own face. Cute, I know. Now, Joshua equates any lotion looking liquid to face lotion. Ketchup! With his chicken fingers, we poured some ketchup on his plate. He put his finger in the ketchup and began to smear it on his face. War paint!

Airbeh And Understanding Your Child

They say when your child is born that you learn their different cries, and you can figure out when they are hungry, need to be changed, need a nap, unhappy, etc... This is a baby's earliest form of communication. When I was a new mom, I said to myself, "That is utter bullshit, I have no clue what my baby is telling me". Yet, one day, it did click and I was able to interpret Joshua's secret language as a newborn - his specific cries.

Now as a toddler, we are back to something similar in interpreting Joshua's language to try to understand what he wants. There is no special interpretation needed when Joshua says "No". Anyone and everyone knows exactly what Joshua is saying. However, there are certain words that Joshua says and it is only Mama and Dada who know what he is trying to tell us. Below are a few of my favorites:

Airbeh - Hairbrush
Airpay - Airplane
Met - Wet
Dar - Star

And my favorite gesture to communicate something:

Smiles and gives a chuckle - Yes

What Can I Say Today?

I decided to keep a mini list and jot down some of the words that Joshua can say. Without writing them down, I didn't really know his total numbers. In counting them today, I came up with a list of about 55 words. I think an average 18 month toddler has an average vocabulary of about 10 words, so Joshua is doing pretty well at this point. There were a lot of words that I didn't even realize that Joshua knew. I ran around the house and asked Joshua, "Do you know what this is called?" He would answer me "bed", "pen" or "teeth", etc... I was amazed, because I had no clue that Joshua knew what those things or called, or more to the point how to say them.

There were plenty of things that I asked Joshua about and he didn't know what they were called. Anytime I asked Joshua about something unfamiliar, he called it "baby". I don't know how he came up with calling everything "baby." "Joshua, what is this called" pointing to a hammer. "Baby!". Uh, ok. So, next time you see Joshua and he calls you "baby", just think of it as his term of endearment for you.