Giant Josiah!

I've been wanting to dedicate another post to Josiah for all of those who haven't been here to witness his incredible growth and to give me a chance to acknowledge my tremendous gratitude for his incredibly sweet nature. We'll start from the beginning because it's fun to watch a photographic journey of his growth and hopefully it will help me remember some of the major events from his young life.

At one week old and already an angel: Almost a month and Mommy just can't get enough of him:

Two months old and already winning the hearts of everyone he meets with his genuinely charming smile: We waited until the first week of December to have his baby blessing so that our house would be fit to hold people and because our life was truly crazy with all of the construction still going on through November. My parents, brother Jordan and fam, and the Mills family who are our best friends from Salt Lake all came up to support us (not the best picture, but the only one we got...): Three months old and already playing hard to the point of exhaustion:

This might be gross to some of you, but we found it fascinating that Josiah has an almost perfect star shape in his "innie" bellybutton (the picture doesn't do it justice): We started him early (not quite 4 months) on solids because we were hoping that it would help him sleep through the night. It did help him go from waking up three times to only twice each night--not quite as miraculous as I had hoped, but it was an improvement. And like Emma and most of the Corneliuses, Josiah loves to eat:Four months and ready to walk (well, not quite) and doesn't he look dashing in his Sunday clothes? Oh, and he was topping out the scale at 18 lbs 10 oz.--95 percentile for weight, 92 for length, and 98 for head circumference! Five months old and already a star. This is a 6 month-sized onesie that I got him for Christmas which he only got to wear a couple times because he grew so huge! It was the only thing he owned that was green for St. Patty's Day, so I put it on him even though he had long since out grown it. One of Gavin's preschool teachers compared him to a stuffed sausage... I had to agree: I couldn't put it off any longer, at six months old Josiah was desperately in need of a real haircut! I had trimmed it previously, but I just loved how long it was and all the comments that we would constantly get about how much hair he had. Unfortunately, when the sweet old ladies at church started laughing at him, I knew that we had to do something about getting rid of the terrible toupee look. You see, Josiah had a beautifully large bald spot on the back of his head that made him look like a normal mostly bald baby from the back, but then when you saw the front (see the picture above) it was just too much-- and everyone couldn't help but laugh. So he got a real haircut and thankfully he still has all of his many natural hair colors still intact (I was afraid that they would disappear as baby hair). He was fairly patient at first but then got really upset so I stopped and discovered why he was so upset--he was exhausted, so I finished while he was sleeping: Six and a half months, weighing in at almost 21 lbs, he's now 89% for weight, 93% for length and still 98% for head circumference (he's wearing mostly 12month clothes now). Gavin, Josiah and I all went to the American Heritage Center to see the new baby animals for a field trip for Gavin's preschool. Josiah was absolutely fascinated when one of the ladies brought a chick over for him to see: He really enjoyed the long walk that we took while Easter egg hunting at the downtown shops here in Logan. Josiah is perfectly content to just be with people--you don't really even have to entertain him, he just loves being in the middle of things. So hanging out with his siblings and parents is pure bliss (I can hope that it will always stay that way, right?). Don't I have the sweetest family? By size comparison, you wouldn't necessarily guess that this cousin of Josiah's, my brother Jordan's sweetie Elanor, is almost 9mos older than him! It was cute opportunity to see Papa holding two of his baby grandkids at the same time:

Now at 7 months, Josiah is bigger (weighs more, but is slightly shorter) than this other cousin who is over twice his age. My brother Nate's family joined us in Disneyland and this is Olivia and Josiah patiently waiting for everyone else to be done on the Tea Cup ride (more on that trip later):
Josiah is growing so fast! I remember with Emma, just marvelling at each step and wondering when she would do the next exciting thing--it seemed like forever between each step. Now Josiah is already sitting steadily, eating healthily, and playing happily all day long and I'm left wondering what happened to my "little" baby! Here he is with Daddy thoroughly enjoying an opportunity to play with Lego's at Legoland:

Josiah is now sleeping through the night 90% of the time, unless you count the one wake up between 4 and 5:30 AM that he still does every morning to eat. He really wants to eat whatever we're eating--but I've been slow to introduce new foods and he still has no signs of any teeth coming--so his diet is slowly expanding everyday and he's eating more and more "real" foods with the rest of us. He is so content that he hasn't cared to try and move much, he's happy to just sit and play or watch. He could roll both ways before he was four months old, but is just now starting to use that to try to get around. He hasn't tried to crawl and frankly I think it will take a while for his arms to get strong enough to hold up his big body and huge head, but I'm happy about that because I really don't need him to be mobile yet with all that that entails. He is quiet a lot but also loves to babble and is just starting to try to imitate. Overall, he's thoroughly endearing and we get comments EVERYWHERE we go from all kinds of people (even those you wouldn't expect to notice a baby) about just how cute he is--and I can't help but agree!

Funny kid story: A couple of days ago, Jason and I were talking to Josiah and standing above him on either side. Josiah seemed in heaven to have these two big adults--the most important people in his life--paying so much attention to him at the same time. He was looking adoringly back and forth at each of us as we talked to him. So just for fun I asked him, "Who do you like better, Daddy or Mommy?" He seemed to look back and forth between us like he was thinking, then very distinctly (so both of us heard it as clear as a bell) he said,"Blargh, Da Da." I am choosing to think that Blargh means "not".... LOL!