Merry Christmas!

We had a very Merry Christmas in the Jost household. Sam was so much fun this year. He go sooo excited over all of his gifts and opening presents. We got to spend a lazy Christmas morning in our p.j.'s, playing with Sam's new toys. Gregg's side of the family than came over for the rest of the day. Sam was so tired by the end of the day from an exciting day of presents and playtime with his cousins. Unfortunately, during all of the excitement Sam has come down with a nasty head cold (runny nose and cough). He just has bad luck- he has been so healthy since Thanksgiving- oh well! We all enjoyed having Grandpa Jost and Uncle Scott come and visit from NY. Now it is off to Marshall for the Gauldin family Christmas this weekend. First we are trying to enjoy a quiet day here to hopefully deliver a healthier Sammy to my parents. I am pretty sure that Santa is making another stop at my parents house tomorrow!

Merry Christmas to you all!

Our little Angel

Sam brought a gift home from daycare today for Mommy and Daddy. I, of course, could not wait to open it. The gift is definitely a keeper. I told Gregg that we are going to have to find some way to preserve this to bring out for years and years. Thankfully, Sam is not yet to the age that he is offended when he gives Mom a gift and she starts hysterically laughing when she sees it, b/c this is exactly what happened. Oh, but it is so cute, isn't the look on his face so angelic:















I think our Christmas season is now complete, I mean, what else could we need?

Puzzle whiz

Thanks Aunt Keller for the puzzle!

Book worm

Sam has recently acquired a bit of an attention span. I would that Sam having a love for books is an understatement. While he has always liked reading and looking at books he could never sit through a whole book until recently. Over the past few weeks he has been unloading his entire basket of about 40 books that we have in our living room for him and sitting on the couch and looking/reading them one by one. He really has a system too, if I try to put a book that he has already read into his "to be read" pile, he gets very upset. He usually lets me know with a very loud: "No, Mommy, No!".

It really has been so nice, he will sit there and read the whole time I am trying to cook dinner. I haven't had to rely on "Elmo" (Sesame Street) in a few weeks to get dinner ready. Not that he doesn't learn anything from Sesame Street but I would much rather have him reading. He does "read", well at least he names all of the pictures and remembers a few phrases in books like "Hello Fredbird" (from his Cardinals book- Hello Fredbird) and "M-I-Z Z-O-U (from his Mizzou/Hello Truman book).

As long as Santa brings a few books this Christmas, I think Sam will be a happy little boy.

Tis the season!

We started our Christmas season with a roar this past weekend. Gregg and I had two Christmas parties: Friday was Gregg's work party and Saturday the neighbors had a party. On Saturday we took Sam to a breakfast with Santa at our elementary school. We also put up our Christmas tree, decorations and did a little shopping.
Sam shocked us when we went to see Santa. We were standing in line and he saw a few other kids walking up to sit on Santas lap. After we figured out what was going on he took off running to do what the other kids were doing. I actually had to hold him back until it was his turn. When it was his turn he just ran right up to Santa and sat down. Once he was sitting on his lap he totally clammed up but gave Santa a huge grin when he gave him a candy cane. I am just thankful we were behind a bunch of kids that were not afraid of Santa because he may have reacted totally different.


The donuts may have been the highlight of the breakfast with Santa.



Sammy and Santa

Who would think a swimming pool of cotton balls could provide such entertainment?

We are still Thankful....

What a crazy Thanksgiving weekend it was. It started on Tuesday night, we had Gregg's family over for dinner. Gregg's cousin, Amanda is going to school at Truman. She is from NY so she came to St. Louis to share Thanksgiving with her family in Missouri. We ordered some good old NY style pizza so all of the New Yorkers would feel more at home. We all had a good time, especially Sam, he loves playing with his cousins!
Than early Wednesday morning Sam woke up with croup (the famous seal bark cough). He came down with this several times last winter and spring but the summer had given us a welcome break. I knew the routine from his previous episodes, we took him to the Dr. and he prescribed him steroids. This did the trick every time last year. Unfortunately, I had to work on Wednesday so it took a little maneuvering of our schedules to work in that Dr. appointment but we figured it out.
We had already packed our bags on Tuesday night and were ready to take off to Marshall for Thanksgiving. After running by Walgreens to pick up Sam's steroid prescription we took off to my parents as planned.
Sam did feel better by Thanksgiving day but still had a pretty nasty sounding cough. Unfortunately, we found out that the reaction Sam has to the steroids is much more intense this year now that he is more mobile and closer to the age of 2. I fully blame his new personality on the steroids but he turned into a crazy child: he ran wild, screaming, hitting, biting, taking my cousins kids toys, not sleeping well, climbing on anything and everything. I think my Mom actually needed a break from Sam after this trip- she would never say it but I am pretty sure she rested well after we left.
On top of Sam's illness, I came down with the stomach flu on Saturday. Not a very pleasant end to the weekend. I thought I was the only one cursed by it but I talked to my sister (who had left on Friday to her fiance's family) and she had the exact same symptoms hit her on Saturday. We were the only lucky ones- I hope, I sure don't want to wish that on anyone else.
We also came home with a broken camera. I guess the camera had taken too many falls in a home with a toddler. This camera has taken lots of abuse from Sam taking off with it but a simple fall off of an end table was the last straw, I guess. Thanks to this fall we do not have any pictures to document the weekend- oh well a bunch of pictures of us being sick wouldn't be too exciting, huh? Instead I just posted one of my favorites from earlier in the football season (you all see what a good sport I am, I didn't even bring up our loss- actually I has too sick to sulk too much over the game).
Despite all of our illnesses, craziness, and lack of sleep, we did have a great Thanksgiving weekend. We got to see my entire immediate family, unfortunately not all at the same time but everyone did make it to Mom and Dad's at some point during the weekend. It is great we are still able to get together now that we are all having to juggle making it to both sides of the families. We also made it to my Aunt and Uncle's houses on both sides of the family. Sam has so many cousins to play with this year- he is no longer the baby in the family.
Gregg and I often say how thankful we are to have such a loving and fun family. That is what we are most thankful this year. It is easy to get caught up in what we don't have and what we wish we had but Gregg and I continue to remind of ourselves of how lucky we are to have everything that we do have.

Cheese!

Sam constantly brings the camera up to me now and says cheese. He usually turns away before I can actually get a picture though. This time he wanted Mommy and Sammy to say cheese. Everyone says Sam looks like me, I guess I can see it. He is just a lot cuter, I don't think I could pull off the cheeks.

ABC's and 123's

Sam is talking like crazy these days. It amazes me from day to day what he says and understands. He is not usually one to say anything when you ask on command- guess he is already letting me know he has a mind of his own. I was able to capture this little clip on video. For some reason he seems to be partial to the letters EFG and numbers 1 and 3. Sam definitely has the cadence of the MIZ-ZOU chant down but is still working on sounding out the letters. For awhile now he has been doing the MIZ ZOU whenever he sees a football game on T.V. He suprised us last night when we were at the store, he saw a Mizzou shirt and started in on his MIZ-ZOU chant- it made his Mommy so proud! I think he definitely got the Mizzou fan gene from my side of the family.

My boys.

I realize that poor Richter and Buzzy have not been mentioned on our blog much since we started. I don't think it is uncommon but they have gone down in status in our house since Sam arrived. We do still love them and Sam really loves them. The dogs are really great with Sam. They put up with him hugging them, aggressively petting them, pulling them around on a leash, etc. It doesn't mean they really like all of it but they are very gentle with him and they only react with a lick in the face or run to the other room if they have had too much. In this picture, Sam insisted that Ricther and Buzzy sit with him and read books. That has kind of become a trend lately, he wants Richter and Buzzy to be doing whatever he is doing at the time. It is crazy how clearly he says there names these days. I think the dogs will eventually come to appreciate the extra attention from Sam b/c they just don't get as much from us these days. Sorry dogs!

Time gets away from me

Where have I been that past few weeks? Not blogging, obviously. I went to post today and I didn't realize how long it had been since I had put a new post up- oops. It is not because our life has not been as fun and exciting as it usually is. I mean, look what we did last weekend while at my parents house.
We were all suffering head colds as this glorious cold season has sprung. Therefore we decided to go out and buy earwax candles for all us to clear our heads a little. The kids, as you can tell, watched on in amazement. Nothing like an ear wax party on a Friday night! Wish we could have invited more of you but it was a pretty exclusive crowd- family only:)


Gregg, unfortunately had to miss this excitement. He was in Florida for his annual football trip with all his buddies from NY. It sounds like another fun weekend for the crew: lots of football, beer, and college girls to look at. The guys have already started trying to figure out where to go next year. Gregg may have a more difficult time going after seeing how exciting it came be back here when he is gone.
More post to come soon!

The last nice day?

I have a feeling this could well have been the last nice day we will have this season. Sam, Aunt Suzy, and I got out and enjoyed it. We spent the afternoon at the park in New Town. Sam had a blast, I think Suzy and I were tired just watching him running from thing to thing. On top of that he was very insistent on us going on the slide, swings, etc with him. Suzy and I did get a little nervous about pushing the weight limit on the equipment when he made us both go across the bridge with him at the same time. This poor boy doesn't get his way very often, does he? I guess I should be working on it but it is too hard to tell that sweet little voice no right now. I know my sister can't say no to "Su-Su come on, slide!"

Happy Halloween!

It was a fun Halloween on Suffolk Drive. We did not officially go trick or treating but Sam did run around the court with all the neighborhood kids and got lots of candy.
He started the night as a sweet little bear.

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Midway throught the night we changed costumes. We were talking to one of our neighbors last week and she was mortified b/c her teenage kids both wanted to be gangsters for Halloween. We thought we would make her feel a little better....

Our jack o lantern

Thankfully I did not take any pics later in the night. All of the parents in the court put the kids to bed and came back out with the baby monitors on them. We sat around a fire pit in the middle of the court talking, laughing, and maybe having a few drinks into the wee hours. Our neighbors are so much fun but Mommy is taking a nap when Sammy does today.

"Mess"

While carving our pumpkin the other night, this is what Sam kept repeating over and over: "mess, mess". I have to kind of agree with him, it is a mess. He was brave and stuck his hand in the pumpkin a few times to clean out the stringy mess but soon decided that gathering the pumpkin seeds was a much more pleasant job. Mommy got stuck with the messy party of the job. We think he did enjoy the whole thing, at least after we cleaned up the "mess".

What a difference a year makes....

Its on me...

Sam so kindly paid for our dinner while we were in Columbia. I am so glad he is able to pitch in during this down economy.

Homecoming

We had a great weekend. Homecoming was fun, although we didn't even stay to watch the game. My parents, Gregg, Sam and I tailgated and drove to Marshall before game time to watch the game from the comforts of my parents home. We decided it would get a little too cold for Sam. It turned out to be a good decision because I picked him up from daycare today and there was a note telling me he was running a 102d fever. I am sure sitting out in that cold would not have helped this oncoming illness. Plus, the game was a blowout and Sam loves being at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Sitting on the columns!

Tailgating



We snuck Sam on a few floats for some pics on our way back to the car.




This was actually on our way to the game- you would think this would be taken after a few hours of tailgating.

Homecoming here we come!

We are off to Columbia for Homecoming weekend. It will be the first year in a long time that we are going to go early for house decs and the whole sha-bang. It should be a fun weekend and please Tigers we need a win! We should have some fun pics to post when we get home.

Enjoying Fall

Some of the neighborhood kids raked up some leaves for Sam to play in the other day. He had a blast! I don't know if I have mentioned how awesome our neighborhood is. Not only are there lots of younger kids around his age, there are 4-5 kids around the ages 10-14 and they just love Sam. It is great they come running over when they see us come home to play with him. I am able to unload my groceries, get dinner started, while Sam is outside playing with the older kids. Not to mention our handful of very responsible high school aged kids who love to babysit. We feel like we live in the perfect neighborhood.

Too busy playing to blog

Sorry I have been so bad over the past few weeks. I was out of town this past weekend. We had our 2nd annual girls weekend at the Lake. My mom, sister, aunts, and cousins all go down for a weekend of fun, shopping, and lots of laughs. It was a fun weekend again, I always go home sore from laughing so much. Sam and Gregg had a fun weekend together. They got lots of father-son bonding in. Sam did say his first four sentence while I was gone, "I want my Mommy". Hearing that while you are out of town is enough to break your heart. While I did have fun being away, I was so glad to see my boys when I got home.
I have had a light schedule at work this week so Sam and I have done lots of playing. On Tuesday we spent the morning at the zoo and today we went with the Winkers to the Museum of Transportation. Sam had so much fun at both places. He is at such a fun age. He takes off running to see everything and gets so excited that he can't stop giggling. He is such a happy little guy- I sure hope he stays this way.

The penguins: of course the fake ones were just as exciting as the real penguins


Not sure what we are looking at here but it was just good to get a pic of him looking at an animal. He would go look at an animal for a short time, turn around to me and say "other one", that meant it was time to move on to another animal.


This is the excited look he usually has on his face but as you can see I can never capture it because he is usually so excited that he is running to whatever he sees and giggling


Sam and Ben playing at Creation Station in the Museum of Transportation


Checking out the trains or "choo choos" as he says.

My little helper?

Sam has really been into "helping" the past few months. He loves helping me unload the dishwasher, put clothes in the drier, dust, sweep the floors, or assist in whatever I am trying to do at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I do want to encourage this while he enjoys doing it. The other day, I was folding laundry and he of course decided he needed to help me with this. He proceeded to pick up shirts and shake them out and do his best attempt at folding them. After a few attempts at the shirts, he takes a pair of my underwear and a sports bra and puts it over his head and than starts stuffing socks down his shirt. I'm not really sure what to think about the whole thing, pretty strange but it was funny.