Wiggle It...

My baby is about to lose her first tooth.

Make that her first TWO teeth.

We were brushing her teeth the other night and I noticed something white behind her bottom teeth.

I was sure it was some foreign food object stuck back there.

No way it could be any sort of tooth.

The girl isn't even 5 yet!  Kids don't lose teeth this early!

But sure enough, a panicked inspection revealed Josie has not one, but two loose teeth.  

One of them has a grown up tooth popping through behind it.

Which apparently is kind of common and is called "shark teeth."  

I called the dentist this morning after spending the night convinced that her teeth would be forever jacked up if I didn't tug out the baby tooth.  They told me to chill out.  If it doesn't come out in the next two weeks they will bring her in to check it out.

That's right.

Only two more weeks of all baby teeth.

I've handled all Josie's milestones like a trooper.

Proud of how she's growing up.

But this one has me in a tizzy.

Something about losing teeth seems like such a big girl thing to do.

As if turning five wasn't going to be hard enough on me.

So here's what could be the last picture of Josie Girl with all her baby teeth...

She is so excited.

You'd think losing teeth was like winning a shopping spree.  

She's been wiggling and wiggling and wiggling.

I have a feeling 2012 is going to be a big year for Josie.

Cleaning House

I love the last week of the year.

I get hit with an insane burst of energy.  

After living in a house filled with Christmas decorations for a month and a half, I'm always ready to pack it up, declutter, and clean house.

We've spent the week packing up Christmas and throwing away all the extra that we accumulate throughout the year.

I love cleaning house.

And I love clean babies.

I'm lame and don't really have a Christmas post.

We did the whole putting presents out at night and surprising the kids in the morning thing this year.  

Of course we did it four days before the rest of the Country so that Andrew could be here.

It was insanely fun and I'm sold on doing it that way from now on.

We don't do Santa and have always told Josie the gifts are from us and that Santa is a character like Dora, but this year she wasn't buying it.

She was convinced Santa was coming.  

I was a bit nervous and even considered throwing the old man's name on a gift or two so she wouldn't be disappointed, but before I shut her light off on our Christmas Eve she winked at me and said, "goodnight Santa!"

Little Stinker.

I'm cleaning house here at Journey To Josie too.

As much as I've loved documenting Josie's journey, it isn't just her's anymore.

The new design will be more appropriate to our whole journey and I can't wait to go live with it.

Last year I threw a major fit at Pottery Barn.

I love their stockings, but they all depicted little white girls with blonde hair.

Not one brown princess to be found.

I even wrote letters.

Yup, it was serious.

So I am taking full credit for this year's stocking designs...

I was too cheap to pay full price for one so Andrew and I drove up a couple days after Christmas to snag one for next year.

Josie loved it.

Now I need them to roll out a brown boy design.

Better write another letter ;)

These two have suddenly become best friends.

I hoped the day would come and it magically did the week we got home from Minnesota.

Josie comes up with all sorts of crazy games for them to play and Gabe is happy to do whatever she tells him to.

Listening to them laughing together is the sweetest sound in the World.

Josie is a great big sister.

And that about catches us up.

I hope you all had a magical Christmas and are excited about the new year!

I can't wait to see what 2012 holds for our family!

Marshmallow Art

It's hard to believe the Christmas Crazies are over already.

December seema to have flown by especially fast this year.  And the 70 degree weather we're having in Georgia didn't help.

I'm taking time this week to regroup on lesson planning.  We are starting actual curriculum this year so instead of coming up with math and writing and reading lessons, I can spend my planning time thinking up creative art and craft activities!

We tried one out last week and it was a big hit.

Marshmallow Painting!

It's as simple as it sounds.

Paint, paper, marshmallows.

Endless fun.

Gabe's going to be joining us for school time more this year too.

But I didn't let him Marshmallow Paint.  

I knew where the marshmallows would end up if I did!

Holly Jolly Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas from my family to yours!

Gingerbread 101

Last year I had a temporary lapse of sanity and planned a gingerbread decorating party for Josie and about 20 of her little friends.

The candy coated, frosting laden party ended up being a huge success and a ton of fun.  Which of course means we decided to make it a yearly event.

The past two weeks have been nutso around here, but that didn't stop me from breaking out my glue gun and whipping up 25 graham cracker houses.

Yup, I hot glued those bad boys together.

Last year I was all fancy and melted sugar to use as our glue.  It worked OK, but was a pain in the butt and didn't hold up very well.

This year I decided to just tell the little elves to not eat the house and do it with hot glue.  I also glued them down to the cardboard to help keep them from sliding around.  It worked perfect.

I was SO glad my Mom was here to help with our little Rudolf who wasn't feeling totally back to normal from his procedure.

I had each mom bring either a candy to share or a can of frosting.

We ended up with enough candy to cover next year's party but almost didn't have enough frosting.  If you have one of these shindigs, double up on frosting and slow your roll on the candy.

I made goody bags filled with leftover Halloween candy.

I figured kids don't care if candy is old and I had to get the junk out of my house!

We put out cookies, peppermint brownies, chocolate covered marshmallows, and cupcakes.

Oh, and chips to counteract all the sugar.

The head elf was really excited!

Gabe was certain all the candy was set out for him! 

This party really is so simple.

The only prep work is making the houses and laying out table clothes and candy.

Once everyone was here, we handed out the houses and the kids got to work.

Each mom helps there own kids and even though the potential for insane messes is very present, they don't happen.

When the houses are done, we set them up to dry and let the kids run off some of the sugar overdose.

Cleaning up is as simple as rolling up the table clothes to throw away and sweeping the floor!

Christmas Math

We haven't done much schooling in December.

There are just too many crafts and fun things to go out and do to spend much time lesson planning.

This week we made salt dough ornaments and read a million Christmas books.  

I did manage to squeeze in a little math and Josie absolutely loved it.  

She asked to do it every morning.

It's super easy, can be adapted to any theme, and was cheap.

In fact, we had all the supplies in our closet, so it was free!

I cut a wonky tree out of felt, used buttons for ornaments, and wrote numbers on some star cutouts.

Josie has 1-10 down and has no problem with them.  10-20 still trip her up a little bit so this was great practice for her.

These trays are from Target and I wish I'd bought a set just for school.  They are perfect for this type of game.

She picked a star then added that number of ornaments.  Then she'd count them back to me, that way if she'd made a mistake she could hear it and correct it.

Next month we are learning about stars and I think this will work great with that theme too!

Center of Puppetry Arts

I've lived in Atlanta for almost 11 years now and there are still a ton of fun places in the city that I've never been to.

The Center of Puppetry Arts is one of them.

I've talked about taking Josie a bunch of times but thought it would probably be kind of lame.

I mean, come on, how cool could puppets be?!?!

I was SO wrong!

We went for the Rudolf Puppet Workshop and Puppet Show and it was by far the best field trip we've done.

The museum is in a cool old building, the workshop was led by an energetic puppeteer, and the puppet show was over an hour long and held all the kids interest the whole time.

Even Gabriel and there are few things that he will sit still through.

The kids made shadow puppets in the workshop.  

There's Josie in her Twinkle Toe Light Up Shoes and Glitter Dress circa 1989.

I was a good girl and followed the No Pictures Rule while we were in the show.

If you live near Atlanta, I highly recommend visiting The Center of Puppetry Arts.  We are already making plans to go back!

An Adoption Day In Pictures