George Stephanopoulos and Pink Floyd?

This is longer than I thought it would be, but Josephine has given me plenty to talk about. I've been bad about not taking pictures lately. I'll have to add some in the next post.

Josephine has been keeping us laughing these past few weeks. She thoroughly enjoyed all the football bowl games last month, especially the marching bands. This month she has been excited about all the basketball games that have been on tv. She could have a future as a sports commentator. She loves to tell us "He missed it!" when a player misses a shot or "He got it!" when a player hits a shot. "Go Lady Vols!" is another one of her cheers. I think she really likes Smoky, so she got interested in basketball from looking for Smoky. One night she started saying "Dangit!" when the UT men missed a shot. She was imitating Nathan. It could have been worse. :)

The news is also something she gets excited about. George Stephanopoulos is her favorite TV personality. No idea why, but he is. (She gets this from her father's genes.) Josephine stayed at Granna Lynda's Saturday night. Granna was going to put in a movie for Josephine, so she turned the TV on first. The ABC World News was on and George S. was reporting. Josephine jumped off the couch, raised her hands in the air, yelled "George Stephanopoulos!", and ran to the TV. Granna was so taken aback that she called Nathan to ask him about it. They watched the rest of the news with George S. :) At home, she'll see him, say his name, then say "He's a boy.". So funny.

News and sports are usually the only reasons we turn the TV on while she's awake, so in order to watch TV, she'll ask for news or basketball. Despite what it sounds like from this post, she does not watch TV 24-7. : ) We turn the news on in the evening and if there's a game on, we'll watch it, but it's not an all day, everyday thing.

She was under the weather a few weeks ago. At one point she wasn't up for playing or reading, and Nathan wasn't coming home until later that night. I asked her if she wanted me to find some news or basketball on TV. She pitifully said no, then said, "Lady Vols?" I told her that they wouldn't be on. "Soccer ball?" I had to tell her that soccer wouldn't be on either. She was so pitiful. I don't remember what we ended up doing, but we didn't watch the Lady Vol or soccer.

This afternoon I had to stop by Toy's R Us to get some passies. Nathan and Josephine stayed in the van while I went in. Nathan was flipping through the radio stations and stopped on a Pink Floyd song (Dark Side of the Moon, I think). Josephine said, "Music! JoJo's music! I like it!" I'm assuming that she gets this from her father's genes, too. : ) I don't have a Pink Floyd CD, so I haven't had an opportunity to test out any more songs.

We made space for a playroom and moved all of Josephine's toys upstairs. She really enjoys her own area. When she wakes up in the morning or from her nap, she usually announces that she's going to play with her kitchen. She's depending less on Nathan and me to play with her kitchen and other toys with her.

She has an alphabet puzzle and a 0-9 digit puzzle. I think she's getting bored of them, though. The puzzle part is way too easy. She knows all of her digits, and we're working on counting. She knows the order of her numbers, but counting is a different skill altogether. As long as there are only 5 or 6 items to count, she can do just fine. She forgets what she's counted and double-counts sometimes. She knows about half her letters and some of their sounds. They are all upper-case, though. I'm on a search for a lower-case puzzle. Her favorite letters seem to be w, q, n, i, j, and a (in that order, too). Sometimes p, b, and d.

Josephine is really into maps right now. I found a map of the continents in the dollar section at Target. She can identify all of the continents (not that she really understands what they are) and can say some of them. She knows that we live in North America and that there is snow and ice in Antarctica. I'll break out the U.S.A. map in a week or two.

We went to the library last week. Josephine's favorite books are still the books on space and our solar system. We got books on Astronomy, Mercury, and Saturn. She knows most of her planets. She says Saturn incorrectly and says "Sat-ur-rin". It's cute. Of course, she doesn't understand the concept of what outer space or our solar system is, but she certainly loves learning about it. She knows that we live in the Milky Way galaxy, too.

Josephine got some Winnie-the-Pooh books for Christmas. I am so tired of reading those things! I read at least 4 a day. And that's on the "slow" book days. They are actually pretty good and have some decent information in them (evaporation, growing plants, etc.). But an adult can handle only so much Pooh. She also has some science books that I intended to give her when she was in elementary school (gravity, wind, weather, etc.). I am required to read them everyday, too. Luckily, she's memorized most of them, so she can "read" them on her own.

Josephine talks non-stop all day now. She wears me out. It's not necessarily directed towards me, sometimes she just talks to herself or her dolls. But it is non-stop. Her sentences are getting pretty long and she sometimes gets her words in the wrong order (can't think of any examples at the moment), but she usually gets her meaning across.

We received some free samples of baby formula in the mail the other day. It comes in slender, single-use packs. We explained to Josephine what it was for (when the new baby comes, it's food for the baby). Since then, she has been "feeding" the baby. She pretends to pour the formula into my belly for the baby to eat. It is very sweet. The corners of the platic wrap are very sharp, which I've explained to her, and she has been very careful not to hit my belly with the corner.

I think I'm out of Jo stories for the moment. I'll take some pictures soon and post them.