Playing with the cousins

We got to spend a lot of time with The Whites for Lydia's First Communion at the end of April. It was good being with the family and Noah had a BLAST playing with his cousins...especially Lydia. It was great watching him have so much fun and just enjoy playing with other kids.

Swim!

Noah and I started a swim class together last week at the YMCA in Round Rock. We go on Mon and Wed mornings for four weeks. He LOVES it! When we went to sign up about a month ago it was all I could do to keep him out of the pool that day. So he was really excited when we went back and finally got to go in the water.

So far he's learned kicking with his legs (which he's good at) and reaching with his arms (which he only does if a toy is in front of him), "monkey walking"-which is using his hands to hang onto the wall and move back and forth (he's really good at this), and blowing bubbles (he's better at blowing above the water than under the water, usually when his mouth hits the water he opens it and ends up drinking more water than anything else).

I've been pretty surprised at how well he's tolerated the water. Water in his face and eyes doesn't bother him at all. I knew he liked being in the water but thought we'd have to work on it to put his face in, but not at all. In the class they don't "force" you to dunk the kids under water but suggest just going down as far as they'll let you and doing what you are comfortable with. On the very first day we just bounced in the water, me putting him further and further down till has head went totally under. As long as I was laughing and praising him, he didn't seem to mind at all. We've been having a ton of fun together.

My mom was in town with us last week and got some pictures of us. You can see Noah has his mouth open in a lot of them. We need to work on swallowing less water.

Out of the mouths of babes...

As Noah is talking more and more, I feel like we should keep a running list of the funny, not so funny or sometimes shouldn't be funny but I can't help but laughing things he says.

It's also been eye opening in that I've learned I apparently say some things a lot that I didn't realize I was saying.

Fore example, a while back he started saying "What happened?" all the time. It's really pretty cute, there would be a noise, or I'd drop something and he'd come running from the other room..."What happened, Momma, what happened?" He said this a lot and finally after I started paying attention to what I was saying, I was also apparently asking him "what happened" alot.

The dangerous thing about 2 year olds and talking is that even when they say things they shouldn't say, most of the time it's still really cute and funny just because of the way they say it. The most recent occassion of him imitating me came a week or so ago when we were at dinner trying to get him to start praying (He'll say "Dear Jesus" sometimes, will say "Amen" and often throws in a couple things in the middle). Well, for some reason he decided he didn't want to pray that night and in this little matter of fact tone said "No, don't think so." while shaking his head. I had to turn away becuase I couldn't stop laughing long enough to scold him. We've heard that one alot since then too. I was really wondering where he picked that up, and as I was re-telling the story at work my coworkers were quick to point out that Noah's "No, don't think so" apparently sounded just like me.

So, I guess we need to start really making sure we have all A language around here whenever possible.

He's got some other good sayings these days:

When he wants to do something for himself it's "No, no, me,me,me, Noah do it" all strung together in a row. Pretty much every time.

"Come back here, Mama" Even funnier when that's how I'm woken up in the morning-Noah yelling this to me through the monitor.

We're working on giving him choices...ways to give him control but still have things work for us-so for example, we'll say "Do you want to leave now or in one minute?" "Do you want milk or water?" "Do you want to walk or be carried?" etc. It works pretty well. But the funny thing now, is that when we ask him to do something, without even offering the choice he says, "No, one minute". I haven't decided yet if this is a good or bad thing.

We've taught him our names and they other day in the car he said "Daddy is Mike. Mommy is Liz. Noah is Noah". That's one of my favorites.

Last night Mike and I were talking at dinner and he told us to stop talking. Just like that. "Mommy, stop talking". We're working on excuse me instead.

A couple days ago I said "Upsy Daisy" when picking him up out of the bath tub and he thought it was hilarious. However, when I repeated it this morning he told me "Don't say that. Don't like Daisy".

This was precious--we were in the car altogether and talking about friends. I asked Noah who his friends are and he said (in this order): G.G. (his great grandmother), Nobs and Sam (my sister's dogs), and Kristi (my sister).

And so far, my all time favorite, in the car this morning we were listening to Chris Tomlin's Hellow Love CD. The first song is Sing, Sing, Sing which is Noah's favorite. So we hear songs 1 and 2 alot (we listen to the first song, start the second song, and he asks to go back to Sing Sing again). The second song is Jesus, Messiah. Mike and I both thought we heard him singing, sure enough as we turned the music down we heard him saying "Messi-dah". Yes, with a D. Mike's comment "Guess we need to let the praise team know they've been singing it wrong this whole time." Hilarious. Both my boys crack me up. I think hearing Noah trying to sing praise songs to Jesus has to be the sweetest thing I've ever heard!

I'll do my best to make additions to this list as I'm sure this is only beginning.

Allergies Attack!

I mentioned in an earlier post that Noah was really have some trouble with allergies lately, specifically some allergic conjunctivits. We've been giving him oral allergy meds and antihistamine eye drops and had seen great improvement. We've been careful about the amount of time we spent outside but slipped up on Friday some. We spent about an hour in the back yard. Noah played in his sand table while Mike and I attacked the jungle of weeds that is our backyard. At one point Noah got some sand in his eye and we washed it out. He rubbed it some and it was definitely more red than the other one, but nothing significant.

This is how he woke up Saturday morning: Poor baby had one eye that was almost swollen shut and another that didn't look much better. Luckily we already knew he was having problems, I've had similar issues in the past, and have seen/heard of kids with "allergic shiners" (basically allergies that make them look like they have swollen black eyes). But I totally didn't expect him to be that bad that morning so it was still quite a shock.

Thankfully it didn't seem to bother him much, and after loading him up on some more antihistamines they progressively improved throughout the day and looked almost normal by the evening.

This was probably about 2 hours after being awake. You can already tell he's getting better.

Aside from just feeling bad for my poor swollen boy, I was disappointed that he didn't get to enjoy being outside the rest of the weekend. We had planned to go take pictures in the bluebonnets Saturday morning and spend the afternoon working in the yard. No bluebonnets. And Mike and I worked outside while Noah was asleep and then rotated once he got up. It was so beautiful I was sad Noah didn't get to enjoy it with us.

Pollen--GO AWAY! I love the beautiful trees and flowers but I don't appreciate what it's doing to my beautiful boy!

2 year stats

We went for Noah's 2 year well check last Friday. This gave us his official 2 year growth statistics. The interesting thing about the 2 year growth stats is that height at age 2 is a rough predictor of what your adult height will be. Double the height at age 2 and that's what you'll be as an adult (roughly). I have no idea how tall I was or Mike was at age 2 so I couldn't tell you if this worked for us. All I know is that we've had a big boy since he was born and we were both curious if he's stayed on that big side of the growth curve. So, drumroll please....

Height: 36.75 inches (90-95th percentile)

Weight: 33.0 lbs (90-95th percentlie)

Head circumference: 51.5 cm (>95th percentile)

So far, he's remained big. He still has the same big head that got stuck on the way out as I like to say. But it is the cutest big head. A height of 36.75 inches now would be 73.5 inches or 6ft 1.5 inches as an adult. Who knows if he'll really get to that height. And who knows if I'll actually remember that at age 2 we thought he'd be 6'1.5" but it's fun to think about!

All in all he's doing great. We had a lenghty discussion with Dr. Chang about his picky eating and are enforcing a strict "Noah must eat the same thing Mommy and Daddy eat" (at least for dinner) even if that means he chooses not to eat anything. We've had a few rough nights. Tonight I made enchiladas. All he ate was a few bites of beans. Oh well. He's definitely not having any growth problems! It's hard for me though and hopefully he'll grow out of this soon. We did request that they check his hemoglobin to make sure the picky eating hadn't caused any anemia and he was perfect with that so we don't even have to worry about supplements at this point which makes me feel better.

He still has an innocent heart murmur but nothing to worry about. Ear tubes are in place and despite a few nasty infections earlier this year appear to be in good shape and doing their job. Otherwise a pretty uneventful visit.

Noah is starting to recognize our pediatrician now and tries to say Dr. Chang. We really love him-he does a great job with Noah, interacting with him and doing all the right things to make Noah more comfortable with him. He always gives him high 5's and "knuckles" which Noah loves. He also takes plenty of time with us and doesn't make us feel rushed. And also has a good balance of respecting my knowledge as a nurse without also asumming I already know whatever it is that he's talking about. And he does a good job of speaking directly to both Mike and me when we're there together (we've had issues before-with my OB-who rarely aknowledged Mike). It's so nice to have a doctor that you really like. If anyone in Austin/Pflugerville/Round Rock is looking for a pediatrician check out Treehouse Pediatrics http://www.treehousepedi.com/ . We see Dr. Chang but have heard wonderful things about all the providers there and have been going there since Noah was born.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! He is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

As it goes with a toddler sometimes, Easter weekend didn't go quite as we had expected it to. Noah woke up Friday morning with one really red eye. Fearing he had pink eye, I started antbiotic drops that would make him not contagious after 24 hours hoping we'd get through the weekend, knowing that there was no chance I'd stay cooped up at home with him and miss Easter worship. We tried to get him to sit thru Good Friday service quietly with us since I didn't want him in the nursery around other kids but also didn't want to miss that powerful service leading up to Easter. It didn't work. Usually we can keep him sort of quiet, but he was determined to be heard. And we were "those parents", continually shushing him probably being more distracting than he was. Finally after louldy pointing out Toodles in his Mickey Mouse book during a very quiet part of the service, it was time to take him home. I was disappointed to say the least. Thankfully after talking things through on Saturday, Mike and I saw how Satan could really use that to taint and take away from the joy of Easter and I felt better after that.

We worshipped at PoG Sunday morning and Thomas and Brittany joined us. Noah's eyes were still looking pretty bad so he was with us or in the office with Mike most of the time. He did go up on stage with the other kids for Rock Time for the first time. This is the children's sermon portion of the service. Traditionally one child is given "The Box" to take home and bring something back (can't be living or recently living) and Pastor makes his children's message based on the item. It's actually pretty cool. And the kids love it. This week all the kids got a watch and of course heard the Easter message of new life through Jesus. Noah was very proud of his watch. I also told him before worship that he needed to be quiet during church whenever Pastor Delton was talking and if he could be quiet he would get a treat at home. He did pretty well the time he was in there. He kept talking about "Pastor Delton talking" and even a couple days later when I say to be quiet he asked if Pastor Delton was talking.

I loved the hope-full message from Sunday. As Christ followers, we are not hopeful because of what we hope for but because of who we hope in. Delton talked about responding with "Hope-Full" when someone asks us how we are doing. Why? Because good things are happening in our life? No-becuase despite what is happening in our life, good or bad, we know that Jesus lives and we put our hope in Him!

Since Mike had to be at all three services and was therefore at church from 630 am till after 1pm we waited to have our Easter Egg hunt with Noah at home until after naptime in the afternoon. Eggs were hidden for him in the living room, office, and his room and he had one special basket hidden with other goodies in it. He did a great job, finding almost everything all on his own.

You can see from some of the pictures that Noah's eyes were still red and puffy on Sunday. We found out later that he wasn't infectious at all and was instead having really bad allergic conjunctivis. Poor boy. Thankfully it didn't seem to bother him much, he just looked bad. I missed getting a picture of all of us in our Easter clothes. Noah didn't want to sit still long enough at church. That's the way it goes sometimes though. We did have a wonderful afternoon together as a family and even though the weekend wasn't exactly like I'd planned, I'm still Hope-Full because we know that Jesus is alive! Happy Easter!

Hunting eggs in the living room

His Easter basket with books, Peeps, and bath markers was hidden in the tent

Bunnies!

Hunting eggs in the office

A couple eggs waiting to be found

Found another one!

Hunting eggs in his bedroom

A mouth stuffed full of ???

Peeps! (or Easter bunnies as Noah called them)

Looking at his watch from church with Daddy

Coloring Easter Eggs

The day before Easter we bravely set out to dye Easter Eggs with Noah for the first time. Honestly, Mike and I did most of the coloring, but Noah did help some too. We came out mostly unscathed. I really did try hard to not be overly controlling in the whole thing. I wasn't 100% sucessful but I did try. There was some splashing and all of our fingertips ended up colored in the end. But it was a good memory making experience. Noah's still talking about colored eggs (not that he'll actually eat them!).

The finished products

We used a Sesame Street themed kit and it had stickers for some of the characters. I thought this was so cute. There was Elmo and Abby.

Finally catching up

After quite some time, I'm finally getting more caught up on our blog. Scroll down to see posts from Dec on. I've gone back and posted video and extra pictures to some previous posts also. Check it out and enjoy!

Egg Hunting

Last Sunday (Palm Sunday) we had a Spring Festival at church. There was food, bouncy houses and other games, the Easter bunny, and most importantly an Easter Egg hunt! We've been playing with plastic eggs and Noah's Easter baskets at home for a couple weeks now, so I knew he was ready to go "egg hunting". He was very excited and did a good job picking up eggs, but did it at his own pace. He just didn't get the whole frenzied mad dash for eggs that the older kids did.

This year the kids were only grouped in two groups-5 and under and 6 and up. So Noah was really competing with some well seasoned egg hunters (and also some parents who were just scooping eggs by the handful into their kid's basket, but hey-I'm not judging anyone). Since he wasn't in a huge rush we made our way around the corner of the building where there weren't as many kids at first and found some nice piles of eggs all clumped together. We both really tried not to help too much and really let Noah just do it however he wanted to (easier said than done sometimes!). I helped carry the basket some, but other than me picking up eggs that he missed when attempting to drop in his basket, he picked them all up on his own. And you can see by the looks on his face that he had a great time in the process!

We didn't do much else at the festival. We did go see the Easter bunny, but Noah clamped down his legs around me (I was holding him at the time) and wouldn't go close to him, even when I went and sat there so we didn't force the issue (he had a similar reaction to Santa this year). We attempted the bounce house but all he cared about was the slide and the only way you could get to that was by going inside the big part and he didn't want to do that either--I think there were too many big kids inside at the time. We did watch Daddy play some basketball though and Noah kept talking about "Daddy going fast". A good time was had by all.

Egg hunt starts-trying to figure out which way to go

And he's off!
Score! A big pile all clumped together!

Now where to? The crazy thing is, he left half that pile on the ground. I think he just wanted to walk around a "find" them.

Daddy's basketball game...some of the youth girls were trash talking and saying they could beat Mike in basketball or football. Mike and our friend Nate took on 4 girls and beat them. The girls apparently want a rematch.