Pray for me y’all.

This little girl could ask me for a unicorn and I’d find a way to get one for her…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjHQCBhTHGw

Did I just write that?

TWO YEARS OLD?!?!?!?

Is my son really turning TWO years old today!?!?

Someone please explain to me exactly when my son went from this little 7 1/2 pound cuddler:

To this curious, running, jumping, talking, ball-throwing, counting, movie-watching, hide-n-seek playing, water painting, sports worshiping little boy who recognizes U2 and John Mayer songs when they come on the radio, bargains with me about how many more bites he has to eat before he can watch a “DD”, and runs at least one naked lap around the house right after we get him out of the bath tub every night:

I set out to write a “Here’s To You On Your Birthday” post for Josiah, but I was immediately overwhelmed.

I just couldn’t possibly imagine having a more amazing son, and I think it would take at least a book for me to explain all the details of why.

So, instead, I think I’ll just try to capture a little bit of his essence at this age, and maybe this time next year, I’ll look back at this and laugh.

For starters, here’s 2 minutes of video from last week that captures him at this age pretty well. This was a couple of days before Halloween. Josiah was ‘helping’ me rake the leaves:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6zrvIAsnTY

Here are a few of his favorite things to say as he turns the corner to becoming an official 2-year-old:

Ooh too! (U2, his favorite band)

Hit it!

Play baseball!

Play basketball!

Throw ball daddy!

Daddy, hit ball!

Daddy, sit! (So I can play catch with him. He’ll only play catch with you if you’re sitting.)

K.S. (Kharis. He also calls her ‘baby’)

Hiding! (He loves hiding)

P’h! P’h! (Pops his lips like a fish. This indicates he wants goldfish.)

Aaaaaple juice!!! (ALL juice is ‘apple juice’, regardless of which fruit it was actually made from, and he never just says ‘apple juice’, he announces it: “Aaaaaple juice!“)

Mean shark! (A reference to Finding Nemo)

Mean doggy! (A reference to Sandlot)

Vwoooody! (A reference to Toy Story)

Jumping!!! (A reference to what happens to the crowd during ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ on his U2 DVD)

Grab hat. At the plate. Swing bat! Hit ball! Pow! Running now. Past first. Past second. Past third. Wow! (A paraphrase of the first SIX pages of his favorite book. He can ‘read’ them to you.)

Chill out, DUDE! (Another Finding Nemo reference)

D-D! (“DVD”)

Da da da! (This is kind of like “yeah yeah yeah!” It’s an emphatic yes in Josiah’s dialect)

Diddy Bot It (“Forget about it”. Josiah pretty much repeats everything he hears you say. If he gets a laugh, he continues to repeat it. That’s what happened with this. He repeated it one day and we cracked up, so now he says it from time to time.)

Preeeeeety good! (His grandma taught him to say this when you ask him how he’s doing)

I lub daddy! (This is how he says ‘I love you’. If I say ‘I love you Josiah’ he responds in the third person, ‘I lub daddy!’ or ‘I lub momma!’)

Bad kiss! (At some point, Josiah saw me lay a serious smooch on his momma, so then he decided to try it. She taught him that that’s a “bad kiss”. So now at bedtime, he gets a devilish look in his eye and tells his momma “Bad kiss!”)

Jacket off! (When I’m heading out to the garage my ‘office’, I usually get pretty bundled up, because it’s chilly out there. And Josiah knows that if daddy has to work, then daddy can’t play. So, whenever he sees me with any kind of jacket on, he points and says “Jacket off”, which means “No more working or going anywhere for you today. Stay here and play with me.”)

Basketball! (This is what Josiah says whenever he figures out that we’re at church. 90% of what he does at church right now is play basketball. But trust me: for him, it’s worship.)

F#@! (Can’t forget this one. If Josiah is talking about “fork”, “truck” or “work”, then he’s bound to drop an innocent little F-bomb. This is especially funny if something get’s stuck under the couch and he wants his big wooden fork to dig it out and rounds around the house yelling “Fork it! Fork it!”)

Well, that’s all big daddy has time for today.

Happy birthday Josiah.

You bring us more joy than you’ll ever know.

We googled for places where we could take Josiah to get a pumpkin and a hayride, and we got a lot more than we bargained for.

When it was all said and done, we were there for THREE hours and took enough pictures to sink a… tractor.

Here’s one of my favorites.

What should the caption be?

(you can find some other posts begging for a caption here)

Her tone makes it hard to tell whether she’s upset, or just expressing her thoughts.

But either way: it’s one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard.

Last week, I happened to have my blackberry handy when she started her discourse.

The room was fairly dark, and the video quality on my blackberry is TERRIBLE, so you can barely see anything here. But if you want to hear what it sounds like when angels talk to themselves, the sound came through pretty well:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=11JAINvM1Vc

She’s a whopping 14.4 pounds, as of yesterday, and can wear clothes that Josiah fit in at SIX MONTHS.

She talks to herself at least 30 minutes a day, has been rolling over on her own for a couple of weeks now, and I swear she already knows how to roll her eyes at me.

Oh, and did I mention that she is GORGEOUS?

In her ‘free’ time (while taking care of a one-year-old with more energy than Wake Electric and a 1-week-old who eats eight times a day) this week she took some amazing pictures of our daughter.

This is one of my favorites.

In the meantime, whatcha got?

Hey, what's up?

Don't worry, the cup was empty

Dad, what are you doing up there?