Josiah at 18 months

It's been a while since I dedicated a post to my little third-born sweetie pie. He hit the 18 month mark on Saturday, so I decided it was time! :)

Josiah is so much fun. He mostly has a very sunshiney personality and his grin and giggle are so infectious! I truly cannot imagine life without him in our family. At 18 months, he is starting to "talk" more, but he still mostly babbles . . . he doesn't say a whole lot of real words. I guess he figures as long as he can make us understand what he's asking for with gestures, why bother using words?! :) He does have the word "no" down pretty well, plus "mommy," "daddy," and a few other random ones that pop out now and then.

I am not sure how much he weighs--I haven't tried weighing him on our scale and it wouldn't be accurate to the ounces, anyway. Somewhere over 20 lbs. He was supposed to have his 18 mo. checkup yesterday, but I cancelled it due to all the sickness that's going around. I'm not the type to really freak out over the swine flu hype, but I figure that the place he's most likely to pick up a bug of any kind is at the drs. office, so I might as well keep him out of there since he's healthy right now. :)

Of our three kids, Josiah is the one who looks most like his daddy. He has that charming grin and those twinkling eyes! He is generally very laid back and easygoing, although he does occasionally display a bit of temper! A few interesting things about Josiah that I don't think I've mentioned here before: Both of his hands have a "single transverse palmar crease" on the palms. This is where there is basically only one crease going straight across the palm rather than two creases which don't intersect. When he was born, my midwife was a little concerned because of this, because it's a common characteristic of Down syndrome. However, he is one of those rare people who just happen to have this interesting physical trait, but not Down syndrome. :) Another interesting thing is that one of his ears is different than the other--a little bit "not quite finished" at the bottom. I don't think I have a good picture of it, but basically one of his ears just looks a little bigger than the other. It's not really noticeable unless you happen to be looking at both ears at the same time. Josiah is also the only one of our kids to have never had any kind of hernia (thankfully!). To me, it is fun to notice these little things that are just part of who our kids are.

As far as other habits--he is doing well again with sleeping good long stretches (10-12 hours) at night. He had been doing this since August, then went back to waking again in the night a few weeks ago, and seems to be settling back into his normal routine again now. He has 7 teeth. He puts himself to sleep, usually without fussing at all--he was the easiest one to train out of all our kids; he basically trained himself. He eats pretty much anything. He's still nursing a little bit, but I think he'll wean himself before too long . . . if not, I'll give him a gentle nudge in that direction over the next few months. :) (Yes, I do like to nurse my babies a long time--please don't faint. :) Sam nursed for 21 mos. and Julia for 18.) He does not mind getting his haircut at all, unlike his older brother, who didn't like it at all for quite a while, unless we bribed him with M&Ms!Well, I guess this has been a rather rambling post about our littlest guy, but I wanted to write it for my own benefit, so I can look back and remember what he was like at 18 mos! I am so blessed that God picked me to be his mommy. :)