South Padre Vacation

We went to South Padre Island for our family vacation again this year. We went in early June for week and thankfully had great weather! It's the perfect mix of fun and relaxation when you have a toddler in tow. Noah loves the beach and had a blast. He had absolutely no fear with the sand or waves. There was lots of digging and burying of Noah. And one of his favorite things was to turn his sand buckets upside down and bang on them and sing like he is playing the drums (he's way into drums and music right now!).

We had some good food and good beer too. The Padre Island Brewing Co. was within walking distance of our condo so we ate there once and took a growler (large jug) of beer to go that we refilled a few times. We also had excellent seafood on the bay one evening. We went to Port Isabel and ran along the pier by Pirates Landing and also went to the Sea Life Center and looked at some sea creatures. We took one half day trip to Brownsville to go to the zoo (I'll write more about the zoo in a separate post).

Pirate's Landing

Padre Island Brewing Co.

Dinner on the bay

Noah decided he wanted to poop on the potty while we were there. He just randomly told us "poop on the toilet" one day while we were eating lunch. We put him on it and sure enough he went! We had a few more successes after that but will be waiting just a little while longer to start the hard core potty training. We're going to be leaving Noah with my parents for a week later in July when Mike and I both go on the church youth trip and I want to wait to do any major changes in life until after that. We happened to have so big boy underwear with us so we let him wear them for a bit.

Enjoy these videos of Noah on the beach. He spent most of his time running, spinning, digging and playing "drums" as you can see from these videos. The first one is our first few minutes on the beach the first night we got there. It was great seeing his reaction to the water.

Random silliness

This is a random mix of pictures I've been meaning to post...

Mr. Fix It working on Aunt Nessa's bike

Like father, like son. Need I say more?

Silly Boy. He actually posed himself this way.

Ouch!

A week or so ago we had a group of college kids over to our house for dinner. There were probably 10 or so people, so not a ton but enough to make Noah a little crazy. He was running around like a crazy man and then hiding his face in Mike's legs (this is what he does when new people are around-the hiding, not the running). All of a sudden he apparently decided to chomp down on Mike's leg while he had his face buried there. Ouch! It left a quarter sized red, purple spot right away. He must have really bitten down pretty hard.

I was pretty horrified when I realized what had happened. This is our first biting incident with Noah. He was immediately sent to time out. It hasn't happened since but we are both now paranoid anytime he comes up and buries his head in our legs.

The funny part of this story was what Noah said afterwards. When Mike went to get Noah out of time out, they had this conversation:
Mike: "Noah, why did you have to go to time out?"
Noah: (in a very sad, pitiful tone) "Ate Daddy's leg"

Yep, Noah is now our little leg eater. Hopefully that was the first and last time.

Happy Graduation Thomas!

My brother Thomas graduated from Texas State May 15th with a Management degree. (this is a late post, so I now know that on July 6th he'll be starting his new job as a personal banker for Well Fargo). It was great having all the family together. My grandmother was even able to make it up (she's 96, so she doesn't usually travel much). My parents and grandmother came up and stayed with us on Thursday night. This was great because it gave grandmother the chance to see our new house in person. Mike and Dad played golf together on Friday. And we all had BBQ out at Thomas's house after the graduation on Saturday. The weekend went by really fast but it was a great time.

Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures but there are a few...mostly of Noah being cute.

Express Game

We took Noah to his first real baseball game Saturday. We went to the Dell Diamond to see the Round Rock Express play. He was SO excited to go see baseball. Really I don't think he had any idea what we were doing. He didn't watch much of the game but was super interested in all the people. The cool thing about the Dell Diamond is that there is so much to do there in addition to the game. There's a rock wall, big playscape, pool, and other stuff. We didn't do any of this stuff with him but he liked looking at it. And I love that they have the berm or lawn seats. So, we just brought our blanket and relaxed on the lawn. This gave Noah more room to roll around instead of being confinded to a seat. He also was introduced to cotton candy and instantly fell in love. We all had a great time and hope to do it again soon.

Dinner conversation

Noah gave us some particularly good dinner conversation the other night...so good that I had to post it.

After we started eating, and he was actually liking and eating what I served for dinner that night, I asked him if his food was a little bit good or really good? (both things he's said before).
His response: "Big good" I interpreted that as even better than little good or really good.

Later, after he finished all his dinner, he was given the choice of a brownie or some M&M's for dessert. He chose M&M's. Mike and I each had a brownie. After he finished his M&M's he started whining that he wanted a brownie. We explained that he'd chosen M&M's, not the brownie and that he wasn't going to get a brownie tonight.
His response: "Grandma will give Noah brownie." (Grandma wasn't at our house, she is back in Angleton at her house but had stayed with us for 3 days the previous week)
Seriously, that's exactly what he said. Yes, the manipulation attempts are already starting. And no, he didn't end up getting a brownie that night. We had some good laughs though.

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.