Josh survived the last camping trip, Barely!

On our camping trip to Maumee Bay there were a few issues:

1) I lost Lambie, Josh's favorite stuffed animal, in Findlay Ohio when we stopped for gas. He must have fallen out of the truck when I got Josh out of the car and I missed him.
2) One afternoon we were playing with Josh in his bed in the camper and he disappeared. On of the canopy tie-downs was not secured and Josh fell through it. Thankfully, he landed on his feet because he could have busted his head on concrete.
3) We had a major battle over a PBJ sandwich. Josh didn't feel like eating it, but that was what was for dinner. After 16 hours and missing out on ice cream the sandwich finally went down. I hope nobody is thinking we were to hard on Josh and let him go hungry. He was NOT going to starve to death. He was eventually going to eat it and he did. The parents won one battle!
4) We have photos of this one. We were playing chase on the boardwalk and Josh fell off. He fell about three feet into several inches of muck. He wasn't hurt just scared. The best part of that was we had a several mile bike ride back to the camper with a cold wet kid. By the time we got to the camper his legs were blue and there was muck in his diaper. He went straight to the shower.

Despite all that, we had a great time. We went for ice cream everyday and sometimes twice a day. We went up to Cabela's. Josh loved all the animals, the fish, the boats, and ATV's. Who doesn't love Cabela's? Josh liked going birdwatching and the older people liked playing with Josh too. We fed the gulls. Josh's favorite part was chasing them.

Josh would run toward the gulls roaring.

To cute for words!

This is Josh just after falling into the muck.


This is the spot where Josh went overboard.

One of Josh's favorite things to do is run and I mean run up and down the roads in the campgrounds with his dump truck. He also does stunt dump truck by tipping it up on two wheels. He has gotten very good at looking both ways for cars and moves over the to side of the road when a car comes.

In about two weeks we are going to Holiday World with my sister and her family. We are all very very excited to go camping with them. Josh is so looking forward to playing with his cousins. I'm sure there will be some good camping stories from that trip too.

M,J, and J

OOOHH BOY!!! A Boy and the Ocean

Since telling Josh about our trip to the ocean and beach, it is ALL we have heard about for the past month. "Eat dinner on the beach" was the standard reply to any questions concerning what he wanted to do or eat. THANK THE HEAVENS we finally made it there.

But first, we stayed a couple nights in a state park in Mississippi. We found a place that gave air boat rides into the swamp to feed gators. Yea, it was as fun as it sounds. The first part of the tour was holding one:

After holding this beast Josh actually said "let's get bigger one!"

THAT'S MY BOY!!

We had to wear hearing protection on the boat, but he didn't mind. When the boat went faster, the grin got wider. We stopped at a spot and our guide threw some marshmallows into the water and the gators (6-8 footers) came right up to the boat. He even let Josh throw one in which he just thought was too cool. Soooo, for the next couple days all we heard was "I hold baby alligator" and "I feed bigger one marshmallow"

The first Day on Dauphin Island, Alabama we went to the estuarium. It was a neat place that had numerous aquariums and displays about the geography of Mobile Bay. Crazy boy, of course, could hardly be contained

Despite the "Please do not touch the animals" sign on the tank, Josh did. Hey, he can't read that well yet.

That night we thought we would make a quick trip out to the beach to just get our feet wet. We didn't even bother putting on our suits. What were we thinking. Josh went straight for the water and jumped right in

Then, he decided to run up to the dunes and roll in the sand.

The result:

We had to take him back to the water, rinse him off, and then carry him back to the campsite. what a mess.

One day we went to a civil war fort on the island and took the "first-class" tour

After a while, Josh discovered he liked not being able to touch bottom. So we had some impromptu swim lessons. He has NO fear of the water.

No, Josh isn't drowning in the sea behind us.


Of course, Josh wanted nothing to do with naps. So he would just pass out at odd times; like on the back of the bike.

On our last day, we took our left-over hot dog buns to the pier and fed the gulls.

Josh is beyond learning new words. He's putting together whole phrases. He counts to ten with no problem and almost has the alphabet down. Sometimes we can hear him in bed saying it.

He is really jumping right into the terrible 2s. He knows how to push our buttons and challenges his limits all the time.

Potty training is still in progress. He understands it, but he just doesn't want to do number 2 on the potty. He'll sit there for a couple minutes and say "it's not working". He'll usually then go right into the other room and do it. We've tried several bribes and giving him privacy but he just won't do it. GRRRRRR!!