Happy Memorial Day, Happy Summer!

Things this week were pretty quiet on the home front...aside from the huge amounts of nighttime activity stemming from Noah's general direction. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the world is not such a nice place when you aren't getting a good night sleep, but we experienced it first hand in a big way this past week! It all started at the end of last week when our regular sitter, Nana Lou, heading off to Italy for a much deserved 10 day vacation. We had everything lined up with her back-up sitter, who was wonderful to Noah in just about every way. She unfortunately didn't value naptime as much as we would have liked, so instead of getting in roughly 3 hours of napping during the course of the day, Noah got about 30 minutes of cat naps in while shopping at the mall or Target or having lunch at Panera Bread. What this results in is a VERY cranky baby in the evening who spends the majority of the hours before bedtime sound asleep. This in turns ends in middle of the night wakings, utter confusion about when he should be asleep and when he should be awake, and countless hours of lost sleep on mommy and daddy's parts.

Things got so bad that we had to take a step back and re-start our sleep training by re-setting up the pack and play in our room, getting much more strict about nap times, and in general working like crazy people to reinstate our nice little routine. Suffice it to say, it was a LONG week, with some pretty unpleasant nights and ensuing days of crankiness...mainly on the adult front. Thankfully Nana Lou is back now and Noah starts back with her tomorrow!! So, hopefully with everything falling back into the normal routine, Noah will start sleeping better this coming week...if not, more cranky posts will follow.

In other news, we had a very relaxing Memorial Day weekend. Instead of doing the traveling this year and because Tim had to work both Saturday and Monday, we stayed home and people came to visit us! Saturday Memere L. and Auntie Beth came over for a lunch visit. Sadly, I was still working hard to get Noah back on his routine, so I spent a great deal of the time encouraging the little dude to take a nap, but at least they got a chance to visit.

Sunday, Pepere L. and Nana came down for a BBQ lunch and a day to hang out with us. We had a great time. They brought Tim's old basketball hoop, which with a great deal of love and lots of spray paint will someday be a new fixture in our driveway. Tim grilled his famous beer-can chicken and we had a wonderful lunch and the "big boys" spent some quality time at Home Depot while Nana and I got caught up and Noah napped!

Here are some pictures from this week...This is Noah's inaugural ride in his outdoor swing. Tim and I did some work on it so Noah could enjoy it this summer. Tim restrung the ropes to recline the seat a bit more, and we got some hardware to attach it to the decking above our patio. It looks great, and Noah seems to love being out there swinging back and forth...probably because he doesn't have to do anything but sit there and be cute! :)


Watching the Red Sox again, this time Noah got a view from Daddy's Red Sox hat. He is terribly cute, too bad Daddy was too busy with the game to pay attention!


This is what happens when babies start getting mobile...and what would happen if you decided it wasn't necessary to buckle them in. Public service announcement...always buckle in the baby, you never know what new feat they are now capable of! (Yes, in case you are suddenly worried about our suitability as parents...we ALWAYS buckle him in using the safety straps and we were standing right next to him supervising - admittedly while laughing hysterically - this Houdini act).