Noah this week - 14 Weeks

So it was a good week overall, my birthday was fun and Noah spent his first evening with a babysitter so Mom and Dad could go out on a well-deserved date. Our good friend Kristin has been begging to babysit Noah for weeks now, so we finally decided to take her up on the offer. Tim and I went out for a belated birthday date just the two of us. Not that we don't love the little man, but it was nice to hang out together and talk about non-baby related topics for a couple of hours. Kristin had a great time with Noah and she said she is up for frequent repeat evenings with him, so it will be kind of nice to have some adult time scheduled now and then! We also decided that it was about time to start sleeping Noah in his real crib and move him out of the bassinet in our room. I didn't want to get to the point where he reached the maximum weight of the bassinet and we were suddenly forced to move him, so we made the move on our own accord. Of course it was on my part under slight duress, but I survived and Noah didn't seem to notice the difference at all. He woke up at the same time and slept wonderfully all night long just like he always does! So now he does actually live in his room and we use it for something other than changing his diaper and storing his stuff...go us!

Noah has continued to surprise us by how much he grows and develops by the week. He is still just as grabby as ever and has really started to enjoy holding onto things in his hands and waving them around. Here he is, as usual with his keys, but this time he also has Mr. Monkey who is also a favorite (the tail is really easy to grab and he is light enough to shake all over the place)! The activity gym is becoming a place that Noah loves to hang out, the music and the lights are highly entertaining for him and with all kinds of things to kick and swat, who wouldn't have a ball down there?

All tuckered out from all that playing, its time for a little nap with Mr. Monkey (who he hasn't let go of yet). He also decided for this nap to sleep with his hand in his face, thankfully there is no finger or thumb sucking going on, so as long as he is comfy and happy, so are we! :)

Okay, so I admit, this was totally by accident, but during his bedtime snack, Noah grabbed the end of his bottle and was holding it himself for a bit (and obviously staring at me at the same time)! It was super cute, so we had to take a picture of course. He is getting to be such a big boy!

Happy Birthday Mommy!!!

Dear Mommy -

Since I wrote such a nice note to Daddy on his birthday, it is only fair that you get a note from your little man on your happy birthday!! You are the best mommy on the planet and I hope you have a wonderful day. I will try to be a really good boy and be super cute so you can have a really Happy Birthday.

I love you,
Noah


So today was a great day overall...I worked half of the day at Mass General in the morning and then the lab manager, Keely, and I went out shopping with Noah at Downtown Crossing while Tim went off to class. We found lots of great purses and shoes and even bought a couple each. Tim then came into the city and met us for dinner at Fajitas and Ritas. As expected, Noah was an adorable baby, he made friends with everyone that would stop and talk to him. We brought along his keys that the Easter Bunny left for him and he waved those back and forth for a good couple of hours until he got hungry, then he had more pressing business trying to secure his next meal and the fun was over!

Since today was also the second day of season opener for the Red Sox in Japan, Tim got up early and he and Noah watched the game together. Sadly Oakland won this one, but Noah looked awfully cute in his overalls and his Red Sox windbreaker.

Here he is playing under his activity gym. He has gotten really good at playing with all of the hanging toys and kicking the elephant rattle that is attached by his feet. If you look closely you can see him clutching his keys in his left hand, he is in love with those things...what a great $2 investment!



And here he is sitting in mommy's computer chair while daddy was doing some studying. Such a cute little man! GO RED SOX!

The new stroller...

IS SO MUCH FUN!!! As you can see, we got a new stroller recently. It is certainly not a replacement for the great Chicco one that came with the travel system, but it is nice for walks around the area. The sidewalks are not that smooth with all of the frost heaves and pot holes, so we got a jogging stroller with shocks and air-filled tires so that it is easier to deal with while we are out and about for our walks in the neighborhood. It was finally warm enough this afternoon to take it out for a test spin. While the tires needed a little inflating and some WD-40, Noah didn't seem to mind the ride a bit. In fact, he was out like a light for the first half of our walk around the Tufts campus. He woke up towards the end and made all sorts of fun baby noises at me while we made our way home. I can't wait for the really nice spring weather to show up so we can do this again.

Check out the adorable steering wheel and rearview mirror that Noah will get to play with eventually. The horn actually honks, and there are all sorts of fun car sounds that come out when you play with the buttons!

Happy Easter!

Well, its official, Noah is now 3 months old and on Easter Sunday no less. We spent the weekend up in Maine visiting Memere and Pepere B. and Pepere L. and Nana. Since Memere and Pepere B. have an extra crib for us, we stayed with them and invaded with all of the baby stuff. They just got back from Aruba and were super tan and rested, though don't ask them how their flights went...Continental is not currently their favorite company....cancelled flights that delayed the vacation a full day at the start and an extra night in Newark, NJ on the way back is not my idea of top form customer care. But, since you can't drive to Aruba, there isn't much of a choice.

Overall, it was a good weekend. Tim had to work on Saturday since it was a busy day before Easter, so I went out shopping with my mom (Memere B.) to see about finding some birthday presents. I was fairly successful and got some cute shoes and a Vera Bradley diaper bag...I know its an odd gift for a birthday, but it is something that I have been checking out for a while and I absolutely love it and isn't that all that matters? Sunday was nice, we had a great ham dinner and Pepere L. and Nana came to visit along with Aunt Pris. Noah got a little cranky with all of the excitement and was a very tired baby, but he looked awfully cute in his little Easter outfit that Uncle Christopher got him.

Here he is in his Easter duds...yes that is a button down shirt, and yes, I did have to iron it (the iron pretty much covered the whole shirt in one pass)! This was in the morning before people came over when he was still a happy baby.



Here is the basket the Easter bunny left Noah, a lovey, a stuffed frog to love on, some Peeps stuffed chicks, his own set of keys, a couple of outfits, and a brand new book that mommy can read to him! Noah likes this Easter bunny guy!



Here is the little man with Pepere L. and Memere B. This was during his 15 minutes of happy baby time for the whole afternoon. He was laughing at Nana...its a great picture Noah with his Pepere.

Noah first professional pictures

Since we are fast approaching Noah's official 3-month mark, we decided it was high time to get some professional pictures taken of him to forever document his insane cuteness (not that I am biased)! After a great deal of research and waivering, we decided to try out Sears as we didn't have the dough to go to an independent professional photographer. Overall, I was moderately staisfied, there are certainly some cute pictures, but we have taken some equally cute ones, so I think for his 6 month pictures we may try someplace that specifically caters to kids portraits. I have included low resolution copies of the cutest ones that we have. Incidentally, if any of the family members are interested in ordering copies of any of these, just email me and I can send you the electronic link to the ordering site!

We got a few family pictures taken, these came out really good, though Noah seems like he is on another planet! The shoes he has on in the first picture Tim wore when he was a baby, I am SO excited that they finally fit his feet. The overalls on the other hand are still a bit on the big side.





We got some much cuter pictures of Noah once we were out of the picture, perhaps it was more fun to see mom and dad looking at him rather than sitting behind him?!?!



While I like the green background on this picture, I absolutely can't stand the lacey pillow and Noah looked fairly confused and frustrated most of the time he was on the pillow anyway. This is the only picture from the cute green background that was even remotely worth posting sadly.



Beware, the following pictures look like baby floating in mid-air hehe! :) He is indeed laying down, and he is adorable in them, so I can deal with the floating baby thing.





This one is my favorite, it makes me smile everytime I look at it. I am getting one printed to put in my office so that I can think about him and smile everyday when I look at it! :) Such a happy baby...







These last 2 were all my doing. I couldn't stand the whole diaper hanging out thing, so I brought in his fleece blue moon blanket that goes every where with him. At least here he doesn't look like he is floating in from the side of the picture!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Although we are not Irish, its still fun to take advantage of a holiday whenever you can, so Happy St. Patrick's day everyone! Hope you got a chance to enjoy a beer and found something green to wear. Noah was all decked out in his little green polo and we even found him a St. Patrick's day bib that didn't make claims that he was Irish!

Here he is "flying." He is not sure what to make of this activity yet, but I am sure someday soon it will be a favorite. At least he is a good sport and lets us try it out on him now! :)



Obviously, his Daddy is really funny because that is who he was looking at when we got this hilarious picture. Or we could just say that he had a little too much mommy milk in celebration of the holiday, whichever you like best!



Check out the bib, it says "I'm your lucky charm." No false claims about being Irish here, he's a mini-Frenchman through and through!



Happy St. Patrick's Day. I already have an Easter outfit picked out, its super cute and I can't wait to post the pictures next week!

Do we need a reason to take pictures?

As if you really need a good reason to take more pictures of a new baby, but we found one, it has brown fur and stripes. Last weekend, Noah and I were hanging out under the activity gym together (yes, I was under it with him...its more fun that way!) and I had brought the camera out in case anything randomly cute happened. Normally the cats come and go about their usual cat business and don't usually cause too much trouble, that is until last Sunday. Mia came bolting in from God knows where and jumped onto the coffee table (which coincidentally is right behind where Noah and I were playing). Suddenly she seemed to take great offense in the camera and decided it was insulting her fragile sensibilities so she shoved it off the coffee table. It is admittedly only a 3 foot drop, but we have no carpets and so it landed with a resounding thud on the hard wood floor. I panicked since we use it on an almost-daily basis and turned it on to try and test it out. It thankfully turned on, but the LCD display on the back of the camera was almost dead and had a large black streak running diagonally across the top left corner...awesome! Naturally we purchased a warranty with it, but somehow it covers EVERYTHING but accidental damage...what kind of warranty is this??? Best Buy is now on my list for selling me some stupid useless warranty and the cat is OBVIOUSLY on my list for breaking a perfectly functioning digital camera, what the heck? Long story short, we had to go out an buy a new camera this weekend and as a result have taken a ton of new pictures of Noah while we tested out the cool new features. Its pretty much an upgrade of the Canon Elph we had previously, but now it has image stabilization, which pretty much means we will stop having to throw out so many pictures because they are blurry...fine by me, too bad the cat had to get in hot water over it though. Here is a sample of some of the cute ones for you to enjoy!

Noah and I having a little quality time after daycare.



As usual, a very happy baby



A very sleepy baby as well...probably another growth spurt on the way since he has been sleeping and eating like a maniac lately.




The problem cat joining Noah in a good nap on the bed.

Another letter to my sweet little man

March 13, 2008

Dear Noah –

Well, we seemed to have survived the first week of daycare relatively unscathed, and we are almost done week 2 now as well. I hope you are having good days there while I am at work. I hope someday you become an outgoing and happy little boy who looks back at your days with Nana Lou and the other kids as a fun way to learn and grow when you weren’t able to be at home with us. I have begun to really enjoy coming home in the evenings to see you, and I have been so excited lately to see you grow and change. You started to grab at things this past week and have latched on to your pajamas, my hair, your shirts, and for a little bit you were holding on to your toy phone (until you accidentally hit yourself in the face with it and the fun ended). It is absolutely adorable how you love to stuff your fists in your mouth and suck on them, you get such grubby little hands and refuse to let me clean them up, but that is what makes you so much fun. You are developing such a little personality already. I feel like you are going to be a confident, strong-minded person who will stick up for himself. I hope you had a good week little man and I am looking forward to seeing you tonight when I get home.

Love you,
Mommy

He grabs but doesn't roll?

So we have survived our first week of daycare and all are relatively unscathed. I can't say that I am a huge fan of the situation myself, leaving him to go to work and all, but Noah doesn't seem to be to phased by the whole thing. He seemed to be excited to see us when we pick him up, but he also seems to like Nana Lou when I drop him off in the morning too, which is always a good sign I guess. Noah went to stay with Nana Lou on Tuesday and Thursday and on Wednesday and Friday both Tim and the little man came to work with me since it was spring break at B.C. He was such a good office visitor, he hardly made any noise and he made friends with everyone who stopped by to visit.

Here he is hanging out on the floor with some toys. Isn't he cute in his tiny jeans?

Friday was Tim's 30th birthday. After work we got home for what was supposed to be a quick stop to change Noah in to warmer clothes for the T ride. Noah had a different plan. Even though we had just fed him an hour and a half earlier, he decided to start letting out the most distressing screams. There was no way of getting him in his car seat and getting out the door. I must have spent 30 minutes trying to convince the little man to eat something so we could get out the door. Suffice it to say, he wasn't having any of it. After multiple attempts and failures, I finally had resigned myself to the fact that we would have to cancel the reservations. That was when he decided that perhaps he did want was in that bottle after all and he proceeded to down the 5 oz in 15 minutes. He is so strange. After we got the food in him, he settled into his car seat and not a peep was heard from him for the rest of the trip out. Of course by the time he decided he was ready to go out, we would have missed the reservation if we had taken the T. So we drove in, who knew parking at the Prudential in the evenings was so cheap. Other than the "minor" set backs in getting out the door in time, we had a great evening out and dinner was as expected delicious!

In other, less momentous news, Noah has begun to learn how to grab things, and now he is forever clamping onto my hair, his clothes, or whatever else happens to find itself near his hands. Of course we are not talking about anything serious here, he won't reach for something and pick it up, he just clamps down on things that accidentally find their way into his hands. In addition to this new skill, Noah has also recently mastered the fine art of chewing on his own fists. We now have grubby baby hands, covered in milk or spittle that he grabs things with. You see where this is going...sticky hair, previously clean clothes that end up slimed with his most recent meal. Its cute I have to admit, but not the most charming thing he will do I am sure. I am just imagining now when he gets into the stage of putting EVERYTHING in his mouth, its bound to happen sooner or later! What is slightly distressing about the whole thing is that he seems to have missed learning how to roll over, hopefully that one will come around real soon!

Here he is grabbing his sleeper as I was trying to get him ready for bed. He gets mad when you try to take it away, so I figured I would take a picture while I was waiting for him to let it go.

Now that he is getting a bit older, Noah is starting to pick out and stare at new things around the house (thankfully he is also staring less at the blank spot on the wall behind our heads now too!). This weekend he figured out there is a fish tank in the house. Check out how cute he is fascinated by the little fish swimming around in there.

Hopefully we can find an adorable St. Patrick's day outfit so I can post a picture of that next week.

Dear Daddy, Happy Birthday!

Dear Daddy -

Mommy says today is your birthday...Happy Birthday Daddy!!! I don't really remember my birthday, and from what I remember of mine, I hope you don't remember your very first birthday either. Mommy says you are getting old, is 30 old Daddy? I am almost 3 months, 30 seems very old to me :) I hope you have a really good day today Daddy, I will try very hard to be a good boy today. Mommy says we are going into the big city tonight to have dinner, as long as they have mommy milk there, I will be okay.

You are my favorite Daddy ever, Happy Birthday.

Love,

Noah

P.S. Noah was a great baby today, that is up until the point when we were getting ready to walk out the door to go to dinner, then he lost it....BAD! We ended up not having the time to take the T in to the city and instead had to drive in. Who knew it was only $12 to park at the Prudential in the evenings, lucky for us! We only ended up being about 5 minutes late for our reservation, not bad with a 2 month old and a major tantrum! Dinner was fabulous and we had a great rest of the evening out. 30 seemed like a good birthday for Tim, hopefully mine is just as fun next year! Here are a couple of pictures from the restaurant (of course we forgot the camera again, but we had Tim's cell phone).

To my little man on my first day back at work

March 4, 2008

To my little man –

I know its been a while since I wrote you a letter, you were only a few days old back then, but I wanted to share with you how much I have loved spending every minute of the last 10 weeks together. You are the sweetest gift I could have ever received and I love you more than words can express. Today was my first day back to work and your first day of daycare and I can’t believe how hard it has been for me. You were such a happy baby this morning, smiling at me and Nana Lou when I dropped you off, it made it so much harder to leave knowing that I would miss spending those hours with you. I hope you had a good first day and that you grow to enjoy spending a few days a week with some other kids and that I get used to a routine of those days spent working and not being home with you. Even though I can’t be with you all of the time now, I want you to know that just because I am leaving you with someone else during the day, that doesn’t mean that I love you any less and that I wouldn’t prefer to spend that time with you. I have been so privileged to have you as a son, and to watch to grow over the last couple of months, you have made my job as a mommy so much fun and so easy. I hope you enjoyed meeting new people and having some new experiences. Don’t forget me while I am away and know that each day when I come home from work, I will be looking forward to each minute I get to spend with you!

Love you sweet baby,
Mommy

End of Maternity Leave

So today marks the end of an era I suppose. It is my last day of maternity leave and I am confronted with the thought of having to drop off my little man at daycare tomorrow morning. I am needless to say quite traumatized. Over the last couple of days I have ebbed and flowed through a variety of feelings ranging from panic (not at all surprising if you know me), to sadness, to bargaining (perhaps we really can pay the bills with just one income?), and now we are back at terror. Don't get me wrong, the woman we have picked out for daycare couldn't be nicer or more qualified, and all of her references spoke of her as a wonderful person who would be ideal to look after Noah, but I can't get over the feeling that when it comes down to caring for a child, who could do it better than his mother? With the end of this leave comes the beginning of a juggling act....trying to figure out how to be a full-time employee, a good mommy, and an expert in the art of pumping when I have to be away from the little man. I can't say that I am excited to start the rat race, but I can say that I will give it my best effort and try it out...what's the worst that could happen, I freak out and burst into tears at work...? This will at the very least give me a perspective when I start the search for a career job. Isn't it interesting that when I was pregnant, I would have never guessed that I would have loved being a mom as much as I do. I figured I would be itching to go back to work after a month or so and would be okay with the idea of a qualified professional taking care of my child. I have spent the last 10 years of my life educating myself and preparing for a high-level career in science. I always knew I would have children, but figured that I would be able to be perfectly happy making it work with a full-time career AND kids. What I have discovered instead is that I am so madly in love with my little man that I can't even envision going back to work and being happy there. Instead of being bored and going stir-crazy at home, I have spent the days and weeks marveling in how quickly Noah has been growing and I have enjoyed nursing him, providing him comfort and in turn being lucky enough to get a chance to see the world with a fresh set of eyes all over again. I have not regretted a minute of the time I have spent at home with Noah, getting to know him and taking care of him day and night. And surprisingly, I have not missed work, though I have terribly missed my co-workers there. I am a bit afraid that I will not be happy back at work and that I won't be able to dedicate myself to the work in the way I have in the past. Its such a catch 22 in that I have come to love being at home with Noah so much and yet financially I don't see how we could ever make it as a single-income family, especially in the Boston area. Who knows, maybe after a couple of weeks back at work I will have a new perspective on things and I will be able to emotionally handle dropping Noah off 3 days a week and going to work. There's only one way to find out...wish me luck!