Christmas Eve!!

Wow how time flies!! It's almost Christmas and Josie is 2!!! Here she is meeting Santa today!! Meeting Santa and sitting in his lap was a big deal!! She was not so found of him even just a couple weeks ago, but Carol said today she ran right up to him and jumped in his lap. Carol said Josie was a joy, I missed it because I am working at the station today but that doesn't make me any less proud of that great little lady being such a big girl today!

This has been an almost magical past few months, watching my baby grow has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. My adoration of this little beauty has not weaned one bit. I enjoy almost every moment with her ;) we have some trying moments as I think most parents of 2 year olds do, however for the most part I have a ball with Josie. We play ring around the rosie, everyone in the middle, chase the ball, toss, jump, get in my Dora house, walk with me and my stroller, look at the stars and anything else we could see, actually we play it all and I love it!!

That is Josie and I at her birthday party. It was a costume party and she was getting ready to get in her Kitty Kat costume and I was a "Hot Mess." Josie had a fabulous time, Carol had planned the whole party with the help of her friends. We had the party at Lonnie and Thalia's house and had a bouncy house, face painting, TP mummy, and a coloring station, we also had corn hole for the adults. I think everyone had a ball, at least I hope they did.

Carol and I and Josie have been on a couple trips this year including a trip to Williamsburg for a week in August. We had a good time, we stayed at a newly acquired timeshare that we got for $10 on ebay. Josie loved running around the whole unit, while still putting on her naked baby performance nightly :) I played golf a couple days with Nick Nelson, the family went to Busch Gardens which has really grown on Josie this year. We also got a night out to ourselves thanks to Carol's parents, which we appreciate greatly. I got to go on my first Myrtle Beach golf trip in November. I loved it, can't wait to go back. Carol and I also had a Mommy and Daddy trip to Baltimore to see Usher and Trey Songz in concert. We stayed at a beautiful hotel in downtown Baltimore and spent a couple days enjoying each others company, much needed and appreciated. Josie also got to enjoy ChristmasTown at Busch Gardens this year with Gamma, Pop Pop, Uncle Chris and Aunt Amber, it was a little cold but she loved the lights and the Holiday show at the Festhaus. She sang along and danced the whole time. The girl loves the train so we all rode that and froze our butts off!!

Josie has been an absolute highlight of our life with her personality coming out in buckets!! We love to spend the night with her and enjoying her dancing and talking about all of her friends from school and anything else she can come up with. She is a wonderful daughter and I can't wait for Christmas tomorrow!! I am so excited to spend it with my family :) Until next time...

WOW!!

I just took a look at this blog and I can't believe it has been forever since I have wrote anything and I feel terrible!!! How can I keep track any of my beautiful baby girls life if I only post once every 13 months!! Oh well nothing I can do about it now ;) So much has changed... Josie is a vibrant little girl who is going on a little woman. I absolutely adore her and I hope she knows it. I can't get enough of my little pumkin, I never understood what people were talking about when they would talk about there kids and how much they loved them, I would always think "love is love, i know love" well I was very mistaken. The love I feel for Josie is a whole new ball game for me, it actually has brought me to tears more than a few times, she told me I love you on the phone on Sunday the 30th of June and I was all tears!!! I couldn't believe my little baby girl was telling me she loved me, one of the greatest moments of my life so far, Carol gets a kick out of how emotional I get about her. I can also see the love in Carols face when she talks about Josie or laughs so hard when Josie is speaking all of her new words :)

Josie can now tell us almost all of the sounds farm animals and zoo animals make! She can sing her Abc's, although it started out as ABCDDDDD now she is to H no problem. She is also sing the I love you song from Barney and all of the songs on her moms veggie tale CD. I still have no kids songs in my car but Josie is clearly telling me that I need to get some, every time she rides in my truck she points to the radio and says "uhh" and I tell her that i don't have any songs and she frowns but then we play the I love you game where she says I love you and I say it faster and she laughs and says I love you and I say it even faster and she laughs even harder, I would give my everything to have her laughing all day, this little baby, my little baby has ruined me and I love every minute of it!! She has grown so much in such a short time, it was just yesterday where she was barely holding her fork and could hardly get a bite of food in her mouth and now she takes her whole plate and finishes it and doesn't even need either of her parents!! If either of us try and help her we get the NO NO with the pointer finger!! Now she tells me almost daily NO NO with the pointer finger, it's hilarious, I will even pick on her just to get her to tell me NO NO!! Josie loves to play chase and hide and go seek and absolutely loves playing NAKED BABY!!! After every bath she gets out ans helps us put on her lotion and then she gets to be the NAKED BABY!! She runs and squeals and laughs and screams NAKE BABY, she can't get the D in naked yet. I really am going to try harder to keep these updated because I want her to know all the great things she is doing and we all know if I don't write them down I will forget them all ;)

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Well it's been a month since I posted anything, I am terrible!! Well a lot of things have happened since my last post and stinky butt has grown a ton!! Since Valentines Day Josie has done so many things, she has been on a 2000 mile road trip, she has seen all of her Grandparents, Great Grandparents, and Great Great Grand Mother multiple times!!! She traveled thru multiple states to get to Florida where her Great Grandparents and Great Great Grandmother live. She also has started this great new thing called moving!! She now rolls over every time you put her down on her back, which means Mommy and Daddy can no longer just set her down and walk away! That has changed things a little for us to say the least. Josie has also started to be so interactive. She reaches for all her toys and smiles almost every time she looks at you! She will pull your hair, grab your necklace, your lip or anything else she can get her hands on. She has also started putting anything she can in her mouth... no surprise there, she is just like her Momma :)

I will start with the drive that we took to Florida, Josie's Great Great Grandmother had been asking to meet Josie and she hadn't been doing to well so the timing was right and Carol could get the days off so we decided to make the drive to Tampa to see all of the family!! We left on Friday February 27th at 9 a.m. and surprisingly Josie did great! She made it all the way to St. Petersburg Florida before the meltdown began!! That was almost exactly ten hours into the trip, as one can only expect a four month old will only make it so far before she can't take it anymore. Carol did have to ride in the back seat most of the way to keep her entertained, she is a little needy:) I think she gets that from me! Josie's meltdown didn't actually start till 10 p.m. and she was only able to keep it up for 15 minutes and then she passed out cold. We made it to the hotel at 11:30 and she was knocked the F*** out!

The next morning Josie got to see her Great Grandparents and they were so happy to see her again!! Of course we did not get to hold Josie for the rest of the weekend, because she was being spoiled by all of the rest of the family! We went to see Great Great Grandma and she also was very excited to meet Josie and hold her hand! Josie loved it and Great Great Grandma said she thought that Josie fit into the Avery family perfectly! Josie also got to meet her Great Uncle Paul and Great Aunt Janet. They didn't have a hard time bonding with each other either!! We spent most of the day hanging with the family and playing with Josie. While we were visiting Great Great Grandma we took Josie out back by the fountain and let her sit in the grass for the first time! She absolutely loved it, she wouldn't stop grabbing it and standing in it, we even let her fall face first in it! She didn't like that too much but it was hilarious for me and her Mom. For lunch we took Josie to her first ever tea room, it was actually my first visit to a tea room too. The tea room was called Limoges and it's located in Dade City a quaint town outside of Tampa near Zephyhills which is where the family winter home is located. We had a wonderful lunch and look forward to taking Josie back to Limoges every chance we get, after all she was the hit of the place, all the ladies having tea couldn't get enough of her! After lunch we went back to the house and relaxed in the beautiful 85 degree weather. Great Uncle Paul and Great Aunt Janet were nice enough to make us steak and potatoes, which were wonderful and then we headed back up to visit Great Great Grandma before retiring for the night! 

We woke up on Sunday and went back to see all the family. I dropped off Carol and Josie at the house and then I drove to Cocoa Beach to pick up Josie's Gamma Debbie. She was fresh off of a great cruise to the caribbean and wanted the chance to see her Grandma and we were able to do that for her so I went and got her. When Debbie and I got back we went straight to see Great Great Grandma and we were happy to see that Cousin Brigid and her mom Great Aunt Theresa had gotten into town and were enjoying Grandma and Josie!! We all visited a while and we also took the now famous 5 generation picture!!! We went to dinner after that and a little mexican place that wasn't worth the time. We went and visited a little longer and then retired to the hotel to get ready for the long drive home :(.

After a busy weekend the four of us got up on Monday at 6:30 and started our wonderful drive home, of course we had to swing by Mari's donuts for the obligatory donuts and chocolate milk or coffee whichever you prefer. We drove and we drove and we drove! We stopped near Charleston SC to see my old friend Trea and her three beautiful babies. Trea has been in my life since I was just a baby, we grew up together and she and her sister used to pick on me to no end! Believe it or not I still miss them terribly! We enjoyed our two hour lunch at Cracker Barrel with all the kiddies!!! It was wonderful to see them all! Then back to driving and driving and driving. Josie made it to the 10 hour mark again, then the meltdown began but this one lasted a little longer than the first, Josie cried at full bore for over one hour! It was absolutely fantastic!! One of the highlights of my life to be honest!! She finally went to sleep and then the snow started but it was beautiful and not too bad to drive in. After we made it home Josie went right to sleep and we were in awww that we had all survived the first road trip of Josie's short life and it will not soon be forgotten!! 

Valentine's Day

Well I said I would try and blog once a week and it has already been two... Life is always busier than it seems I guess! Josie's first Valentine's Day has come and gone, it was an eventful one to say the least. Josie reached for her frog for the first time on Valentine's Day! This was actually the first time she had reached for any toy with any purpose, so we were very excited. After Josie reached for her frog we took her to see her Great Grandmother Coo Coo and her Great Uncles Roddy, Kenny and her Great Aunt Alice. We had a good time going through some of the old stuff at Coo Coo's house and left shortly after the smoke got too thick, so to speak. We left Coo Coo's and headed over to Gamma and Gampa's house. Josie was excited as usual to see her Grandparents and they were ever so kind to let us sneak out to see the movie Taken. The movie was awesome and when we got back to her Grandparents Josie was still awake and was talking so loud Gamma had to take her to the other room so Gampa could hear the movie he was watching! We took Josie home and she went quickly to sleep, after such a busy day visiting family who could blame her???

In the two weeks since my last blog Josie has developed quickly! She is standing in anyones lap who will let her, she will enjoy tummy time to watch Mickey Mouse! She is talking more everyday, including very deep conversations with her new best friend Mr. Frog. Josie also is quiet a morning girl she wakes up smiling and will not stop for about an hour. She loves to smile and she is so adorable that I can already tell she is going to have me struggling to ever say no to her! I need to start practicing...

Well that's all for now, here is hoping for many great Valentine's to come!

FIRST BLOG EVER

Well I'm starting this blog so my new baby girl can see what was going on in her life before she can even remember it! So feel free to follow along, my spelling is bad but my wording will probably be even worse so I apologize ahead of time. :) I already have one bone to pick with blogspot and that is that i can not blog from my iphone, it is more of my iphone's fault than blogspot but I love my iphone so much that I can't possibly blame my iphone. So now off to blog!

A crazy thing happened in our life on November 3rd 2008, after nine months of a crazy belly growing experiment Carol gave birth to the greatest 9 lb 12 oz, 21 1/2 inch baby that anyone has ever seen! We named her Jo Anne Taylor after her late Grandmother. We decided that she would be called "Josie" I am sure that will change over the years but we like it! We brought her home after 3 days at Depaul hospital in Norfolk. The staff at Depaul could not have been better, and Carol's Ob/Gyn Dr. Nawrozi was wonderful!

After bringing Josie home the adventure began. We had many new Mommy and Daddy experiences. Josie's first bath, first poop, first scare the poop out of Daddy projectile poop!!! and many other firsts. Most all of them are great to look back on, even the carrying Josie around the pond at 4:45 a.m. because she has not been to sleep at all. The walk was the last straw that finally got her to go to sleep! It was an amazing night to say the least.

So now Josie is 14 weeks old and I finally got around to starting this blog! I hope to keep it updated at least once a week with all of our new experiences. This past week Josie went with us to our friends Amber and Jarrod's house and Josie actually saw their great danes Buddy and Sarge and she was a little scared. It was hilarious. Josie also got to see her Great Grandmother Coo Coo this week too, Coo Coo enjoys our visits immensely. While we were at Coo Coo's Josie also got see her Great Uncles Kenny and Roddy, they think she is adorable! Who Knows what the weeks ahead will bring but I am sure there will be more and more memorable moments...