Today we celebrated Joshua's first birthday! Praise God for the healthy happy little boy that God gave to us one year ago today. He is still the same cute bundle of joy that we held in our arms in the hospital but, unlike then, he now wriggles out of our arms and flees naked across the room while we chase him down to put some clothes on him. So many changes within a year. Joshua was pretty oblivious to the fact that it was his birthday today although we think he enjoyed the icing on the cake and sucking on his new toys. Here are some photos from our celebration for Joshua (during lunch time with some other missionaries.)

It's official! Joshua can walk. Sure, he stumbles and falls on his face or his bum sometimes but he can definitely walk. He loves exploring and just about runs anyplace he wants to go. Of course, with greater mobility comes more opportunity for trouble so Mom & Dad don't get much of break even though we are not holding him all the time now.

A couple weeks ago, Joshua decided he didn't want to be spoon fed anymore. He'd twist and turn and shout and the spoon just wouldn't go in. From that point on, picking up little pieces of rice, meat, cracker, vegetable, and so forth was the order of the day. Since then he has allowed some spoon feeding again but overall, he still prefers to use his pincer grib to pick up food with chopstick-like precision between his thumb and pointer finger. It is often the left hand he uses for this so we wonder if he is a lefty. Only time will tell on that front. Personally, I am routing for ambidextrous as it seems much more versatile.  Here a video of the boy going after a raisin.

 

Joshua is sprouting teeth like crazy. His eigth one just popped through his bottom gum a few days ago so now he has four on the top and four on the bottom. These later ones have not come with as much drooling, screaming, and sleeplessness as the first few, thankfully. Here is good picture that we got recently which shows Joshua's toothy grin.

Here on our vacation at OMF's holiday home on the beach in Southern Thailand, Joshua has had a number of first time experiences. We'll try to post more vacation pics later but here is photographic evidence of some of Joshua's firsts.

 

 

Joshua continues to grow in leaps and bounds - literally. He crawls faster than the Road Runner and is even able to take a faltering step or two before falling on his bottom or doing a faceplant. We finally found some colorful foam squares with ABC cut-outs to put down on the floor to make a play area for his in our compact home. Joshua has a great time crawling and stumbling around although his sinful human nature shows through as half the time his goes for the edge of the play area where the dirty floor begins, desiring what he can not have. He has the whole garden of fun and soft alphabet squares to play on but still makes a B-line for the dusty dirty wooden floor wilderness east of Eden.

Joshua has been a bit whiny recently as what looks like his seventh tooth attempts to break though, right after number five and six started to poke out last week.

With Joshua's greater mobility and great enthusiasm, he is so much fun to be with although he is also a greater challenge to care for. The worst place for him to practice standing is in the slippery baby tub. He refuses to take his bath sitting down. We put some suction cup fish on the bottom of the tub but they can't prevent every possible slip when he stands up.

Nevertheless, as you can see in the following pictures, he has a lot of fun in the tub with Mr. Ducky, the water scooper, and the facecloth that is supposed to be for washing him down.