Saturday, September 27, 2008

The baby of the family (for another four months)


Josiah is my fun loving, very, very active little boy. He has Robert’s looks and Abby’s outgoing active personality. When happy he runs around the house yelling and chattering as loud as possible. He is very vocal, but unfortunately I do not understand much of what he is saying, yet. He does have a few words that we understand, but most of the time we have to guess what he wants by his pointing. Over the past few weeks I have figured out a few more words he is saying. He uses the sound /bo/ to mean several things like; ball, book, bottle. I have tried to teach him signs like I did with Abby and Robert, but he doesn’t seem to care to use signs when his pointing works well enough for him.

He loves to follow the twins around and get into their stuff. They will be playing with something like Robert’s train, and Josiah comes and starts taking the pieces to what they are doing. They start chasing him to get their stuff back and he runs away laughing. He loves to be chased. When he doesn’t get his way he will hit or through a fit. Abby calls it “taking a fit”. They all can play well together – unless Josiah is tearing apart what they built. For that we have nicknamed him Hurricane Josiah.

When I do ‘school’ with the twins he enjoys going from seat to seat and bothering Abby and Robert. I got him his own desk, but he never sits in it for long. When I tell Abby or Robert to go make their bed, Josiah will run ahead of them and crawl onto their bed. Then they come out and complain that they can’t make their bed because Josiah is laying on it. I have learned to keep him busy collecting trash (which he loves to do) while they do their chores. He loves to try to help, but they don’t always understand him or appreciate his help.

He also loves the animals. He gives weeds to the rabbit and chickens. He spreads cat food all over for the cat, and will hold them as long as they put up with it.

He is learning to use the potty. After waiting too long to start to train the twins, I decided to start sooner with Josiah. When I remind the twins to go potty, Josiah will lift up his shirt and head for the bathroom. The lifting of the shirt has become his ‘potty’ sign. The month of October we will work on going potty more often, since Rueben will be on break from schooling.

When I first got pregnant with Josiah I was worried about how to handle a baby and two year old twins. I am glad God gave me Josiah, and I am looking forward to our little girl. Since Josiah and the twins are learning to do chores around the house they are becoming big helpers.

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