I've been doing double takes recently with Jack. His hair is getting longer and right now is styled very similarly to how Josh's was at the same age. I was thinking I'd have an easier at toddlerdom with Jack since he was an easier baby that Josh, but I think I may have been mistaken in that assumption.

He acts so much like Josh did at that age, running as fast as his little feet will carry him, bumping into all sorts of things on a regular basis, testing the boundaries of "no", relishing in making people laugh and repeating whatever behavior elicited it. He's jabbering up a storm when he's around us or other people that are familiar, but shys up around new people. He's started putting two words together like "up, please" and is working on multi-syllable words like "cracker" and can name pretty much every one of his body parts.

His cute (albeit sometimes obnoxious) habit that he has is when he wants you to hold him he stands in front of you with his arms reaching up. If you are at something like a counter (which as a cook I regularly am) he pushes and wedges himself in there until he has placed himself between you and the counter disabling ones ability to get anything done. And then he looks at you with his baby blues and says "u" over and over. Which is his way of saying up.

Josh's funniest moment recently was when he came home singing "Pants on the Ground" from school. For those of you not in the know it's a song that was on American Idol. Even though he occasionally gets to watch some of Idol, he missed that part so I guess one of the kids at school started it. He told us his teacher was singing it as well. I think this is just the beginning of all sorts of "fun" things he'll learn at school.

We've had a fairly mellow and healthy couple of weeks, we almost don't know what to do with ourselves!

Josh has officially started reading. His interest level isn't as high as I would like (meaning he'll entertain you through a few words and then he looses patience, I can't imagine where he gets that from...) but he'll let you read to him all day long plus progress is progress and I'm pretty proud of him! He points out letters everywhere and his favorite book for me to read to him is the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (by C.S. Lewis). A non-picture book. I'm so proud!

He has also been praying some very entertaining prayers recently. Some snippets are: "please help the people in Haiti and watch over my family and help none of their cities to catch on fire." and "please help Sonic and all my superhero friends beat up all the bad guys" plus " please help my head to feel better and Dad, don't EVER do that again, okay?!".

The last one he was praying after him and Chris had been building Hot Wheels race tracks and he was standing on a chair to reach the tracks. He climbed up too fast and fell between the chair onto the fireplace. Scared us really bad we thought he had dislocated his shoulder or broke his arm or something, thankfully it was just some really bad bumps and bruises on his head, shoulder, elbow and hand.

Jack's letting more and more of his personality shine through and there is a lot of feistiness coming out in it (I personally applaud a little feistiness so don't read that negatively). He knows how to pretend to fuss to get Josh in trouble, he can fake cry or pout to try to get his way and he also will come lean on you and look up at you with his adorable baby blue eyes and just gently rub your leg until you cave and pick him up. The boy knows how to work it.

He's also reached the age where he has the patience to read books so it's been fun getting to read to both him and Josh together and working on creating a bedtime routine that we can do with both of them. Transitioning Jack out of the rocking phase into the bedtime story phase.

Jack is also fascinated with the potty. He follows everyone in there when they go and comments on whatever business you're doing in there. Whenever someone goes he always wants us to take his diaper off and let him try to go too. He's also started going off in a place and standing with his knees slightly bent when he has to go #2. It's really funny to watch if you catch him, but if he sees you watching him he freaks out and starts crying and won't stop until you change him. I'm not sure if all that means anything, he may very well not end up being potty trained until he's 2 1/2 but it's interesting to see him catching on so quick and being aware.

That's pretty much life with us. We've been doing some painting around the house as well and it's nice to start getting (and having the time to) get some things done around the house again. I think I've gone through almost every closet and gotten it organized in the last two months. I'm not sure what it is about Christmas that makes the amount of stuff we have more noticeable, but I'm not a fan of clutter or junk so there have been lots of Goodwill trips.

I find organization with two boys plays a large role in my sanity. Now if I could just figure out what to do about laundry.

Check out what Josh and I did today on my CupKates (my business) blog:

I had to make an emergency trip to the dentist yesterday. That was a first (strangely).

While at church Jack fell and hit his mouth really bad. We thought it was just a bumped lip and it would be fine, but when we tried to feed him lunch he couldn't eat or drink he was in so much pain.

We thought the next morning would be better since mouth injuries tend to heal pretty quickly, but when he took a bite of something he started crying. After checking things out a little bit I realized that the pain seemed to be coming mostly from his teeth. Great.

Long story short, the visit was much less traumatic than I was expecting (expectation courtesy of Josh) it to be. One tooth is loose, but thankfully the root isn't broken. However they won't know for about a month (when we have to go back) if it's damaged the nerve endings or blood supply (which would make it turn brown).

Add additional medical bills boys incur to post below.

I have heard several people comment on how girls are more expensive to have than boys. Mainly because of the cost of the wedding.

I disagree with that. Not only do the guys parents have to cover the rehearsal, but there is one major factor that everyone fails to take into consideration about the expense of boys:

All of the money you have to pay to fix or replace all of the many, many, many things that the boys destroy!

In the last 24 hours Josh has managed to tear a hole in our couch and sit on silly putty which was on the afghan my grandma made me, in his new superman costume he got for Christmas.

So in case your counting, mom gets to either fix or replace a couch, an afghan, and a superman outfit. Although I will not be replacing the silly putty.

So I'm kind of anal about what I feed my kids. Not obsessive, but I don't like them to have junk. I know if I can make it it's going to be way better than anything I could buy that's full of preservatives and artificial coloring and other kinds of yucky stuff. My two biggest "no-no's" are hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup, mainly because it easily weeds out a lot of junk.

Chris had a big party at his work this week and they were pushing food off on employees. I guess from his college days he's always enjoyed chewy chips ahoy, and when they were up for grabs gladly took them off their hands. He also decided he would bring them home.

He brought them in to get them checked, and I told them I didn't think it was a good idea (high fructose corn syrup, plus we still had several homemade desserts left over from the holidays), but the kids had already spotted them. I told Josh they weren't very good because the had high fructose corn syrup, but of course he didn't care.

After eating them he looked over at me and claimed "mmmm, I love high corn syrup!"