Trunk or Treat & Pumpkin Patch

Tonight Joel went with his Mammaw (Joel's name for Carol) to the Trunk or Treat event at her church. He was dressed in his cowboy costume and looking handsome, as always. He filled up his pumpkin pail with a few treats, and even won a cupcake at the cupcake walk!
I'm so lucky that Joel has such good grandparents in his life :) Love them.

Last weekend we made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch. Joel was in love with the pumpkins. Each one he saw it was like he was surprised it was there. Each one. Over and over. Crazy kid. He was definitely more busy this year going off on his own, so pictures were a little harder to get this time. We did still get some good ones.








Man, what a difference a year makes! 

17 months

Joel has been home sick for the past couple of days. He has croup again, but thank God this time it was not so bad. We did go to see the doctor but since we already have a nebulizer, we were able to treat it before it got too serious like last time.
So our little man is sprouting some new teeth all of the sudden. All four molars have cut through and he is finally getting some friends to accompany his bottom two teeth.
Here's so new things Joel has been doing that I of course think are the most precious, genius, adorable things ever:

• Joel helps me carry in groceries. Really. He gets a bag and brings it into the house, puts it down in the kitchen, and follows me back out to the car. Love him!
• Joel helps me put away dishes from the dishwasher. He loves to hand me the silverware one piece at a time while I wait by the drawer. Yesterday he got a little overzealous- when I turned around he was holding a big dinner plate, like, "Here you go!" I could see that ending badly real fast. 
• Joel loves to watch Joel. I have a lot of little videos on the computer and he likes to watch himself and laugh. He says, "Joel, Joel.." while he watches.
• He has developed a love for Dancing with the Stars. As soon as he sees it on tv he says, "Dee! Dee!" which obviously translates into "dancing". Duh.
• He has found a name for Carol. Although Grandpa was easy for him, he has chosen to forego the Grandma route and go with Mammaw. He came up with it on his own and says it when he sees Carol's picture, but has yet to say it to her face. 
• He is very into pumpkins. Going to HEB is very exciting for him now with all the "Big Mac" pumpkins outside. Note to self- carve pumpkins this weekend and go to pumpkin patch.
• He has started to put a few two-word sentences together. So far we have No dog!, Read Dada, and Me Read.
• He still loves his books and loves to hear the abc's. His favorite book right now is probably Chugga Chugga Choo Choo, but Little Blue Truck is a close second. He has even gotten to where he knows some of the words when he sees the pictures. He'll say, "bump bump bump" when we get to the page that has the truck going through the mud and on the last page he'll say, "beep, beep, beep!"
• While giving him his breathing treatments is not his favorite thing to do, he is ok if we start singing to him. The bingo song makes him laugh and he also likes Twinkle, Twinkle, ABC's, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. 
• He's still holding strong at 30.5 lbs 

A few new firsts

 before

 after

Today Joel had his first haircut! He did really well and wasn't scared. I was afraid he wouldn't look like my baby anymore, but I really like how his hair looks. We just got a trim so he kept the curls, but they are more tame :)

Here's another funny Joel story:
We were at Carol and Bill's house the other night for pizza and Survivor. Bill had made a milkshake for himself and he gave Joel a couple bites of ice cream while he was putting everything in the blender. Well, later on Bill walks into the living room and Joel says (for the first time), "Grandpa!" Clear as day. It was hilarious. He went right to Bill- like, where's my ice cream?
Needless to say, Carol immediately went and made Joel his own bowl of ice cream and kept saying, "GrandMA will give you ice cream"
We still haven't heard "Grandma", but she's working on it. (Carol) :)