13 Months of glory.

Josiah is busy as ever these days. I came home today to find Jonathan had misplaced his keys. Not surprisingly, we couldn't figure out whether Jonathan had misplaced them or Josiah had. As it turns out, Josiah led Jonathan to the keys after a long search. He was fussing and pointing to the window as he tried to move the items hindering him out of the way. Jonathan picked him up and tried to figure out what he was wanting so badly. The keys were dangling from the curtain drawback in the office. Obviously Jonathan had hooked them there at some point--probably to keep them out of reach. Josiah has learned how to push the lock button on the automatic entry--which means from anywhere in the house he can make the car horn beep repetitively. The other day I was changing his diaper in his room, clear across the house from the car, and he beeped it about five times proudly before I took the keys away for fear our neighbors would otherwise despise us.

The Christmas tree seems to be going over moderately well. I even have been bold enough to tuck presents underneath it, and he couldn't be more uninterested. He has on more than one occasion held a tree light right next to his mouth and looked at us for our reaction, knowing chomping on it would certainly be forbidden. This "boundaries testing" is a common theme as of late. He does things he knows aren't acceptable just to see what our reaction will be. Consistency is the key.

I feel like he has exhausted every possible bathroom story I could write, but somehow it isn't true. Lately his favorite thing to do is sneak into the bathroom and turn on the tub faucet and let the running water flow over his hand. I wouldn't be too concerned, except I fear he will scald himself by turning on the water too hot. We set our thermostat to the "baby safe" 120 degrees, but 120 degrees is still hot. He loves baths so much that when I start running the water for one, he stands next to me pulling at his clothes, trying to take them off so he can get in. It is really cute. Speaking of baths...pooping in the tub has become far too frequent an occurrence for my liking. I think a fair assessment would be that we are cleaning out poop tubs 50% of the time. If it's night time and he doesn't have a bath, he rarely poops at that time. It is as if the bath water is a little too stimulating...or relaxing. The other night I hadn't even used soap yet when he did it, leaving me in a very compromising position at home alone with him. I had a wet naked baby, a tub filled with disintegrating poo, and a cold house. I settled for soaping him down in the sink, which proved to be successful only in the sense that I avoided major catastrophes. He kept turning the water on and off, freezing himself with one side and threatening to burn himself with the other. Then, he learned to let the water out with the drain stopper, so he was sitting naked in an empty sink with me trying to combat his tactics and still manage to rinse his hair. In my current moment of clarity, I hope I don't think that that is a good idea again.