Post-Christmas, with Robot

We had a lovely visit with the Pytel clan for Christmas, and now we're hunkered down at home awaiting the storm. So far lots of snow in the air, not so much sticking to the ground.

Noah got a robot for Christmas, and has been playing with it a lot. And by playing with it, I mean directing it to walk places and talking to it. "Over here robot! Go in closet robot! Wrong way robot!" Also earlier today the robot helped give Henry a diaper change.

Obviously this adorableness stops as soon as I get out the camera. But then he started taking pictures of his turtle and his badger so I figured it was worth it to show the video anyway.



Happy snow!

hi again

So I guess it's been a while. It's been crazy around here. Let's see...

Hanukkah happened...

And that was fun. Then we got the stomach flu.

That was decidedly NOT fun. But did make us very grateful for our neighbor that brought us popsicles.

In more fun news, I am getting very pregnant...

And we bought a house. This was exhausting but we are very, very, very excited.

More to follow on the house front. In other news, snow! Amelia taught Noah all about how fun the snow is this morning.

So in summary, life is good, busy, more house, less vomit. I'll try to keep you better updated.

Hanukkah weekend

It was a beautiful weekend.

We went to the park.



I subject you to this next one because I was trying to capture Noah's running narration. Unfortunately, the leaves make it kind of hard to hear, but you can try to follow along:



Condensed subtitles (he repeats a lot of this stuff): wire, big stick, big rocks, come down there, all done woods, more woods, wire, come daddy!, leaves, leaves (no idea what this word is), ouch, orange

Unfortunately I was not taping when he first went into the woods and declared "Woods! Grammy in there!" I think there is some confusion about which woods Grammy lives in. Apparently it is not this tiny patch of trees in the park.

Then last night we had a great time at our temple's Hanukkah party. Noah was able to sit still for several minutes (!!!) while we lit candles and sang songs, then he painted a menorah, then disassembled said menorah while waiting for the rest of the group to finish. We then watched a short performance by Levi the clown. I know, I also thought it was a bit odd to have a clown at a temple Hanukkah party, but the kids (including Noah) absolutely loved it so I ended up impressed. Noah was very excited to "eat latkes" but didn't actually end up eating any latkes, he did enjoy using a spoon to spread sour cream all over our plates. Finally, we left to go home and had about the cutest scene ever:

Scene: Noah is riding on Chad's shoulders, walking to our car in the dark
Noah (shouts at the sky): Moon? Wherere you moon!??
Rachel: Honey, we can't see the moon because it is behind a cloud
Noah (shouts at the sky): Excuse me cloud! Excuse me cloud!!!!!

It was awesome. And even more impressive when we were talking about the party before bed and Noah said (unprompted) "Moon behind cloud." It is just amazing to me to watch his language and memory develop.

Overall, an excellent weekend!

Again, I don't know. Don't ask.

Noah loves to play in his closet. He will often ask for me to turn the light on and then go in there, close the door, and entertain himself by singing a song or whatever. I sit outside and laugh.



It's like his own little clubhouse!

I don't even know

where he comes up with what activity would be fun right now. Or why he is obsessed with my swimming hat. Or why he throws himself on the floor.


(sorry not much time for video editing, it gets especially funny around 2 mins)

Indoor playground

Please enjoy my new favorite picture ever.

Noah and Amelia got to play at a new indoor playground last week. I think they had fun.

And by fun, I mean fun, whack-a-mole style.

Oops, wrong whack-a-mole event.

Back to the playground. They took some short breaks for adorableness

Then they decided to open an organic vegetable stand

and Noah rode a dinosaur

The end.

pictures in the kitchen

Noah loves playing in his cabinet

Especially after the cleaning people come and put some new stuff away in there.

Also, it is fun to play with the camera :)

Bake me a cake

While he does seem to have some of the necessary supplies, I am not sure his methods will yield much dessert...

Brown Bear

Lately Noah loves to read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," and can recite basically the whole thing. Except, of course, when we try to record it. Obviously.

Oh hi!

Yeah, we're still here. And it's fall.

Which means that in addition to crazy things like trying to buy a house and teach a class and go to a conference in New Orleans our family is also doing things like running around in the leaves.

And because we have no yard we run around in the leaves at the park.

Which I highly recommend, as there is never the feeling that you should quit playing and rake up the stupid leaves.

Also, there may be a tree to climb.

Or if you can't climb it you can just say "too big" a bunch of times and instruct Daddy to come help.

Happy Fall. :)

More evidence I am insane

So this morning Noah and I were hanging out at home and he put his toy snake into his crib, then tried to climb into the crib from the outside and when he realized he couldn't, started asking me for a ladder.

I have really been struggling with whether we should move him to a bed soon or not - he sleeps great in his crib so I don't want to mess with that, but I also don't want to buy another crib if he's going to move to a bed soon after the new baby comes. I was basically at a stalemate about what to do when we decided to buy the house, and that made my decision for me. I figured if we were going to be moving AND having a new baby, we should keep the rest of his life as consistent as possible and keep the crib.

And then this morning he asked me for a ladder.

So I thought, what the heck. And I converted his crib.

Clearly I am a glutton for punishment. This week is super crazy with my having to teach lab and Chad is going out of town and we have to get the details of the P&S sorted out for the house and etc etc etc. And now I am going to have to deal with a toddler getting out of bed and causing trouble and maybe not sleeping at all and what is WRONG WITH ME!?!?!

And then, it was naptime, and Noah was excited to sleep in his big boy bed ("big boy bed!" "Noah bed!") and I took a deep breath and we gave it a shot.

And that's him on the video monitor, totally passed out about 10 minutes after I put him down. He got out of bed once. ONCE.

This evening it took him a little over 20 minutes to go to sleep but he didn't get out of bed at all.

Could it be possible that some of the things I really stress about just aren't that big a deal?

Huh.

Busy.

So the past week has been totally crazy. Rachel ran a poster session that ran until 11pm a few nights in a row and then we decided to try to buy a house and then there was a bunch of other stuff and also Noah wore underpants to day care for the first time and it seems some other things must have happened but honestly I'm not really sure where the time went but now I have to teach lab tomorrow and next week is almost certainly going to be worse.

Instead of listening to me ramble, please enjoy these pictures of Noah in a belt and tie.

Also, it is very possible that before the new year we will have a new front door...

Pumpkin Situation

So the weather here has been crazy. 75 degrees and sunny yesterday. It is very weird to go walking outside and see the beautiful foliage and feel kind of hot and sticky. But that's not the real problem. The real problem is our "big pumpkin" totally disintegrated. By Wednesday. It took a total of three days for it to become totally moldy, collapsed, and dripping.

** picture omitted due to exceptional grossness **

This was quite shocking and heartbreaking to Noah. "pumpkin broken!! Big Pumpkin Broken!!! Fix it? Fix it!?"

Unfortunately, there was no fixing it, so we threw it away. Noah seemed to accept this. "Pumpkin trash."

But then about 5 minutes later he was back to pointing to where the pumpkin had been and saying "pumpkin broken!" Then we discussed how we couldn't fix it so it went into the trash (not a lesson I am thrilled about repeating, btw). Over and over and over and over until we all went to the store after dinner and bought a new pumpkin. "New Pumpkin! New Pumpkin!"

** picture omitted due to mommy never thinking to take a picture **

That was Wednesday. He has been repeating this story on average every two hours since then. He'll point to where the original pumpkin was, then "pumpkin broken!" Then some variation of how it went in the trash, then we'll point out the new pumpkin and talk about that for a while.

The child is clearly obsessed.

Also clearly I am teaching him that when things break we throw them away and then buy new things. I am not very comfortable with this being the take-away from Halloween 2010. Could someone please bring out some candy to teach him the real meaning of Halloween?

My favorite part of this conversation was yesterday afternoon I was trying to explain that we will carve the new pumpkin on Halloween ("ween!" "ween!") and he was listening with that expression that makes me think he is trying to pay attention but has no idea what I am talking about. Then he said:

"shabbat candle in there?"

Then my head exploded because he is way more cognizant than I give him credit for.

Updates to follow once some pictures are actually obtained.

Holy Terror

This is the calmest he's been in the past 24 hours, except for sleeping.



oy.

Pumpkin

The problem with writing a state of the toddler post is that you keep thinking of other things he is doing after the fact. He can reliably count to four! The other day he counted to seven! He can recognize about half of the letters of the alphabet! He loves to help daddy make his coffee! Chad taught him how to pretend tap dance the other day and now sometimes when the music is on Noah will tap dance and will say "happy feet" and it is the cutest thing ever!

Basically, there is no hope of keeping up. If only there was some sort of hard covered book in which I could write all of this stuff.. .

... oh wait, I am failing on that one also...

Let's casually change the subject, shall we? Pumpkin Time!!

It's almost Halloween, so we brought home a "big pumpkin!" Noah was very excited about this, though didn't really understand what we were going to do...


But after a bit of instruction he was all in.


If by "all in" you mean highly amused, but not crazy about getting pumpkin slime on his fingers.



I guess I'll give that one to him, sticking your hand into an unknown slimy pit that is twice the size of your head might be a tiny bit intimidating.



After we finished carving the "big pumpkin!", we stuck a shabbat candle (the only kind of candle we have, apparently) inside and lit it up. This was highly confusing, resulting in Noah saying "shabbat!" over and over.


But with some coaching that was replaced with "ween! ween!" (halloween).


In other news, apparently Noah LOVES roasted pumpkin seeds! Clearly he has excellent taste. Now if we could just convince him to at least try on his costume...

State of the Toddler

Noah continues to keep us entertained.

He talks constantly. He he likes to narrate his activities "all done bathroom; monkey in there; big truck Noah drive." He can ask for demand things "draw! draw! New paper! Elmo music!" and will say please if we remind him to say it or tell him no. Example:

Noah: Dide? Dide!? (translation: outside)

Rachel: No honey, it is raining outside

Noah: Please???

He will randomly say "thank you" on his own after we give him something, which is a delight. Most of the time we remind him and he'll say it.

He will pick up random things that we say and repeat them. Example:

Rachel: No honey, it is raining outside

Noah: Honey! Honey!!

Please watch your language around the toddler.

Speaking of things he's picked up, he has stated calling Chad by his first name. Usually when he is telling Chad to do something. "Chad! Light off!" or "Chad, open!" I swear I do not talk to Chad this way. Really.

Also, anyone have any ideas about how to nip this in the bud?

Noah is getting really good at playing pretend. His favorite activities involve cooking:

He will pretend to heat something up and then deliver it to one of us and tell us what it is "hot pasta!" and what we should do "mommy eat it!!" He LOVES the game where he takes a cup and pretends to splash one of us with water "big splash!! Daddy all wet!!" FYI, if he tries this game with you, you are required to over-react to the pretend splashing. He'll then repeat and repeat and repeat the scenario.

Noah's memory and language are improving to the point where he can talk about things that happened earlier "big kids playground" or things that he can't see. For example, the other day Chad picked Noah up from day care because I had to work late. Noah saw him and asked "Mommy Yoga?" (I go to yoga one night a week)

Speaking of yoga, Noah can do a reasonably convincing downward facing dog and a terrible but adorable triangle pose. I will capture this on film eventually.

Potty training is going well - he never wears diapers at home and we have just started to take short trips away from the house (over to the playground, to Amelia's house, running to the grocery store) with underpants and regular pants. He still has one or two accidents a day, but is clearly progressing. Along those lines, I have no idea how it might be possible to potty train a toddler if you don't have hardwood floors.

Noah is interested in other kids, but is generally shy when actually around new ones. He is still totally in love with his friend Amelia, and when the two of them get together they alternate between parallel play, cooperative play, and actively ignoring each other. Oh, and arguing over toys.

Noah asks for Amelia about once a day, and also asks about "baby Hanley" (her 1 month old brother). Noah is very interested in babies, and wants to hug and kiss my belly all the time "hug baby! kiss!". This is quite adorable, but as I am a very ticklish person it is also kind of annoying. He loves reading the big brother books we have for him, but is clearly confused about the gender of the coming baby. Between Amelia's "new brother" and his upcoming role as "big brother" he doesn't really understand the concept of sister. We assume he will figure this out eventually...

In baby sister growing news, I am still rather pregnant.

27 weeks and counting, heading away from the happy cute belly trimester and into the oh man this is uncomfortable trimester.

Chopped (again)

Who is that short-haired boy playing with Noah's toys?

After watching Noah brush his hair out of his eyes for the past few weeks we finally chopped it off again. Mommy got out the scissors and we went from this:




To this:

Honestly, I kind of prefer the crazy hair, but I don't think it's fair for him to have to be uncomfortable because I think his little baby curls are cute. You may ask: why didn't you just trim it a little to keep the curls and keep it out of his eyes?


Answer: because I have no skill.

Also, WAH HE LOOKS SO OLD!!

-- posted from the phone

My beautiful, photogenic boy

At the park yesterday, working on his parallel bars routine

Responding to my request to smile and say cheese

Posing for his picture on the swing







For having such a cute kid and such a lovely day, I sure stink at getting a decent picture. I think maybe I should go ahead and throw out that application for sears portrait studio.




Happy Fall :)

-- posted from the phone

Fireman Noah

From the indoor play space that we go to sometimes when mommy is especially tired or out of ideas about what we should do today...


Clearly this is a big hit with Noah due to the availability of a BIG TRUCK and a HAT!!

Not pictured: "Elmo is my co-pilot" bumper sticker...