Happy Halloween from a super chunky monkey!

Happy Halloween to everyone. We hope you have a spook-tacular day and find some time for at least a little bit of a sugar high! :) Tim, Noah, and I are headed up to Maine for some Halloween fun with all of the grandparents. We plan to make our way around the neighborhood to score a little bit of trick-or-treating loot for us...since we all know Noah isn't eating any! :) Hope everyone else has a great time as well.

For now here is a preview picture of our sweet Chunky Monkey! I'll post more from tonight once we return from our weekend!

Exciting News!

Just wanted to post some exciting news from families other than our own for a change! I just got word last night that my good friend from graduate school, Alison, has successfully transitioned from being very pregnant to mommy...of twins! Tim and I are so happy and excited for both Alison and Justin and are sending lots of love and prayers their way. Alexander James (Xander) was born 10/23 and weighed 6 lbs., 1 oz. and Hannah Elizabeth was born 3 minutes later, weighing 4 lbs., 15 oz. Hannah is now home with mom and dad, while Xander is still in the NICU while he finishes getting over a bit of early respiratory distress. I know I can say that I am amazed at Alison's strength and courage enduring 36 weeks of pregnancy with two small people! Both Alison and Justin will make wonderful parents and Xander and Hannah are so lucky to have found their way into a such a loving and welcoming home! Congratulations and we can't wait to see more pictures! :)

A productive weekend

So Tim managed to get an actual 3 whole days in a row off...it was amazing how all of the stars aligned and it just fell into place. Of course he had to work all of last weekend, he works this Wednesday instead of Monday, and Memere L. is coming to look after the wee man on Wednesday to cover Daddy's usual shift...but hey, he had the 3 whole days off. It was timed well actually...just about the time I was ready to freak out with so many things to do around the house and he announces that he has 3 days off. It was perfect timing...sadly, not as relaxing or fun-filled as it could have been, at least now I can stop obsessing about a bunch of to-do items that are no longer running circles in the back of my head. All in all, we had a productive weekend. For a breakdown of how long the list actually started growing, here are all of the things that we wanted to get accomplished this weekend, and after for comparison, I will list all of the things that were actually accomplished. Sadly, all of this ended with a couple of exhausted parents, a slightly over cranky wee man, and we still didn't manage to get to bed before 10pm...what gives? How do some of these people make it home from work, have time for a family meal, go out for an evening stroll, and get everyone in the house to bed at respectable times??? Noah gets to bed on time each night, but once he goes down, we spend the rest of the evening playing catch up to get ready for the next day. Do you think someday we'll get our act together and be able to get to sleep early? I certainly hope so.

Anyway, for our weekend...here is our starting To-Do List:

1) Paint Noah's room to cover the deleading nightmare (finally!)

2) Clean house

3) Clean cars inside and out

4) Make Noah some more baby food

5) Return 4 garbage bags of bottles

6) Donate 2 huge bags of clothes that I'll never wear again (do to lack of interest not the fact that I can't fit in them thankfully!)

7) Get Bed, Bath, & Beyond to refund us our 20% off coupon for the new coffee maker (which rocks by the way!)

8) Bake an apple pie and pumpkin whoopie pies as per request

9) Do the week's laundry (all 5 loads)

10) Get Tim to do 5 weeks worth of ironing (which he has been putting off for 4 of those weeks!)

11) Finish shopping for the baby present I am sending to Alison for her soon-to-be-arriving twins

12) Mail said gift to Alison

13) Go grocery shopping so I can pick out my own things for a change

14) Buy yarn for hat and mitten set that my mom is knitting Noah this weekend

15) Get Noah some more grippy bottom socks at Old Navy

16) Go shopping for a few winter basics for me since most of my clothes are 2+ years old or maternity (or donated as I refused to wear them ever)

17) Change in coin jar (which has been agreed to be the rainy day "Noah needs a new toy" fund...which makes sense given that his birthday is literally 2 days before Christmas...so there is no spreading that stuff out

18) Purchase said new toy with said rainy day fund :)

Seems a little lofty don't you think??? Yeah, I was dreaming big, and I can say we got pretty close. It's not perfect, but as the weekend wore on and we started to slow down due to shear exhaustion, we had to triage a few things...hopefully we chose wisely and if not...don't tell us, we don't want to know! :)
1) Paint Noah's room - CHECK!
2) Clean house - CHECK!
3) Clean cars inside and out - NOT SO MUCH
4) Make baby food - CHECK!
5) Return bottles - CHECK!

6) Donate clothes - CHECK!
6) Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupon refund - CHECK!
7) Bake apple pie and pumpkin whoopie pies - CHECK! and CHECK!
8) Laundry (all 5 loads) - ugh...CHECK!
9) Tim's ironing marathon - shocker...CHECK!
10) Baby present shopping - CHECK!
11) Mail baby gift - NOT SO MUCH (I blame Tim for not bringing me a box, sounds like a solid argument, right?)
12) Grocery shopping - DOES IT COUNT IF TIM DID IT TONIGHT?
13) Buy yarn - CHECK!
14) Grippy bottom socks - CHECK!
15) Me shopping - CHECK! (of course...who passes up shopping?)

16) Change in coin jar - CHECK!
17) New Noah toy - CHECK! (see this post to see how popular and fun it is!)

All in all, I feel pretty good about what we accomplished...let's just not make a routine out of having to be that busy...I won't be able to keep up!

In more enjoyable news, Noah has developed a new fascination with highlighters... he greatly enjoys stealing them and then continuing to go about all of his usual baby business with said pacifier...I mean highlighter, safely stashed in a death grip or his slimy mouth. What do you think? Is this a battle worth fighting on the off chance he might fall and hurt himself with a highlighter to the roof of the mouth or is this one of those times when you just let the kid get the obsession out of his system and hope the phase passes? The occasions when it has been taken away always result in baby-sized temper-tantrums, so we try instead of keep them out of sight (and therefore hopefully out of mind).

We found a really great set of gently used Lego Quatros (for little people ages 1-3) that apparently are compatible with the more advanced sets of Legos as well. It is a huge bucket of 70 bricks and though Noah is not sure quite what to do with the bricks, he has been having a great deal of fun with the bucket as you can see here!

Adorable Halloween pictures to come in next week's blog update, stay tuned, you won't want to miss it! :)

Gracious, he walks!

So, Noah walks now. Not independently without holding on mind you, but it is still exciting to watch. In lieu of pictures for this post, which really wouldn't do the milestone justice, Tim has graciously assisted and we have for the first time ever some video!!! Yes, people, this is exciting! :) I will admit, it is a very short video, but that is our fault...we were too dumbfounded and he was too quick for us to pull our act together. We figured it was about time the little dude got a push toy and so as not to spoil any fun for his birthday and/or Christmas, we got him something that we hadn't given ideas to anyone for. Its a very cool grocery cart that plays music, counts, and sings the alphabet. We figured it was pretty fitting given his Daddy's line of work and all!

So, no sooner did we get the thing assembled and put it in front of him, Noah grabbed right onto the handles and took off across the living room!! We were shocked and very excited to say the least. Tim finally got it together enough to pull out the video camera and, for your viewing pleasure, we present to you a very short clip of the wee man tooling along doing some groceries (too bad he doesn't pay for his own food!).

Enjoy! We certainly did. By the end of the weekend, he had made it (with some Daddy hovering to make sure no wee man was harmed) all the way from the living room to the kitchen where I was cleaning up! It was pretty cool, and of course he thought he was just the greatest (which he is of course).

A letter to my little man

Dear Noah –

I know I haven’t done this in a while, but I wanted to write you a letter to celebrate your 10-month birthday. I can’t believe how quickly time has flown and how big you have grown already. It really does seem like just a few weeks ago when we were looking at ourselves and trying to figure out how we got so lucky to have you as part of our growing family. I still look at you everyday with a bit of wonder about how far you’ve come and excitement over where you will go next. I also look occasionally and wonder how on earth you have gotten so big so fast. And while I certainly miss the days when you were tiny, helpless, and wanted to be near me all the time, I understand that you are growing up and need to be busy on your own sometimes now too. Your accomplishments over the last few months astound both your Daddy and I. We are so very proud of the little man you are becoming. You have such persistence and while some may view it as a stubborn streak, I can't help but think about what a wonderful gift that will be later in life when you hit bumps in the road and will persevere past them, not letting them slow down your amazing progress. I simply marvel at the sense of independence and desire to learn and do things on your own. I hope that you do still find ways to need us because we are always there waiting when you bump your head or need a good square meal. Someday some cuddles would be nice too, but I won't rush you, take your time and explore...I'll be here waiting with some hugs and smooches when you are ready to slow down!

I love you little man!

Mommy

P.S. I do hope that second top front tooth is part of your life plan in the very near future, it will be best for everyone, trust me!

What gives Obama?

I wanted to get a little venting off my chest while I have a couple spare minutes. First, can I express how glad I will be when November 4th has come and gone and these stupid elections will be over!!! It can't come soon enough! Anyway, for my brief story. On Monday, the wee man and I went out for a walk as usual to the park for a swing. The godforsaken Mr. Coffee maker that we just got like a month ago decided it no longer felt like brewing, so while out, I decided perhaps a Starbucks was in order as I hadn't filled my caffeine quota for the day. So I stopped in Davis Square and grabbed a little something and on the way out we got accosted by a chick from the Obama campaign. She desperately wanted us to contribute money to help increase Obama's monthly earnings from $150 million/month to what $200 million/month. Not that I have anything against Obama or anything, he seems like the lesser of two evils based on what I have read and heard on NPR, but seriously, we have a 10 month old who will eventually need to go to college, and bills, rent, cars, gas, and a fast approaching New England winter with potentially obnoxiously high heating costs. Do I want to make an already extremely rich man even richer...umm, no thanks, I'll pass. Instead could you arrange for my donation to go to the local food pantry (cause food costs are certainly not going down anytime soon) or the ASPCA (and kitties and puppies are certainly not going to have it any easier this winter). Let's be real, let's focus a little less on the wars and defense budget spending in countries around the globe and focus a bit more on the homeless and hungry people that live around the corner. Okay, that's my rant, sorry for the interruption...I'll get off my soap box now! :)

Waiting for some excitement

It was a pretty uneventful week in the life of the wee man Noah. Monday was at home with Mommy...we went for a nice walk to the park and he got to go on the swings for a bit. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday he spent as usual with Nana Lou. Did I mention Nana Lou got a puppy. She named her Mia and she is a teeny teacup Maltese. She's terribly cute, but as per usual puppy ways, she is very hyper and constantly biting something...mainly Noah's feet as he is crawling around the floor. Thankfully I keep soft leather type shoes on him, so he doesn't seem to mind much, but how annoying, poor guy! I guess Nana Lou crates the puppy for most of the day so she doesn't take away time from the kids, which is really nice to know and makes me worry less about the safety of Mia...with 3 baby boys, things could get ugly!

The defense would like to submit the following items for evidence of the above point. This is our Mia, sitting on the couch arm JUST far enough away for little hands to reach. But believe you me, if that paw was an extra inch closer to the edge, it would have most certainly been harassed and poked!


What Ma? I'm not bothering her, really...she likes it!


The rest of the week, and the weekend for that matter was pretty uneventful. Daddy worked both Saturday and Sunday getting trained in Taunton, so there wasn't really time for any fun activities. We did manage to get the yard cleaned up, which was shockingly easy. Just about the time Tim was getting ready to head out to start cutting the lawn, the little dude started losing it. I fed him and he was down for the count. We just took the monitor outside and got all of the yard work done in a matter of about an hour (let's face it the yard isn't that big!). Perfect timing. We are looking forward to this weekend, when Daddy and Mommy both have 3 days in a row off. There are sure to be some fun plans made and good stories to share afterward.

For now, enjoy a couple of adorable pictures of Noah trying out his Halloween t-shirt. Too cute!

Homemade Applesauce - Part 2

I seem to have perfected the art that is making homemade applesauce for the wee man. He likes it and scoops it right up whenever I give it to him, so I will accept that as a compliment much like the customary belches that compliment the chef in other cultures! :) So since I seem to have gotten myself a system going, I figured I would share my process with you to show you one, of many potentially successful ways of making your own applesauce (either for your little people or yourself...whatever strikes your fancy).

Start with crisp fresh apples. These came from Tougas Farms and we picked them ourselves....tasty!


Peel and core your apples and place them in a pan with just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan.


Cook them to "death." I mean...cook them until they are quite soft and start to turn to mush when poked at. (This is the very scientific part as you can see).


Remove apples/apple mush from the pan with a slotted spoon so you don't end up with apple soup. Put the mush into your food mill (which is needless to say over a bowl) and turn away.


You'll end up with perfectly pureed apples that I then spoon into ice cube trays and freeze. This leaves them in the perfect size portions for little people. Once they are firmly frozen, I transfer the cubes to freezer bags and start a new batch of something else tasty!


Good luck and enjoy!

P.S. I think this total process took me about 30 minutes including the cooking. The worst part was the clean up afterwards...I don't like doing dishes :)

Too cute to wait for the weekly post

Noah has lately been displaying signs to us that he is indeed too big for the baby tub. I am getting this mainly based on the fact that he will literally climb out of the baby tub...thankfully we have lately been putting the baby tub in the big tub anyway, so there isn't far for him to go. But, given his clear rejection of the cute little baby tub that used to be so overwhelmingly big for him, we decided that alas, it was time to move on. Enter the non-skid bath mat and the first attempt at a bath in the "big boy" tub.

It went really well in the fact that he didn't drown, smack his head on the tub and render himself unconscious! We did spend the majority of the bath sitting him back up as he had a tendency to try and take off and crawl to the other end of the tub. We'll have to work on that! So in the meantime, Daddy donned some swim trunks and joined the wee man in the tub for some soapy baby wrangling...it was fun! :)

And for nostalgia purposes, here is a picture of the final "tubbie" in the baby tub, wet hair faux hawk and all!

TGI FRIDAY!!! :)

First, I must make a couple acknowledgements to my peeps.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! I hope you had (cause you will read this long after your birthday I am sure) a wonderful day. I can't tell you how much I have appreciated all of your love, support, and advice over the last year. I could not have made it thorough all of these wonderful life changes without you. Happy Birthday to the woman I can only hope to be someday! :) Love you!

I must also acknowledge my better half, the bigger of my two boys, who may have some exciting news in the very near future!! He is unfortunately working all of this weekend and most of next week in Taunton (an hour+ drive from home) to finish his training and to prepare for upcoming excitement, so my joy is tempered by disappointment over the leaf free yard I am sure will not be present at our house by the end of another weekend, but oh well...more news on that front to come!

So its Friday...no kidding, huh? Thank goodness. I don't know what it is about this week (perhaps the endless work on my job interview presentation) that has got me so ready for a weekend to hang out with my two favorite boys! But here we are, almost at the end of the day on Friday, and I can't get out of here fast enough. The prospect of job talks, and all of the work I have been doing trying to prepare for one (or hopefully multiple), has got me in a panic. When I look at myself, I can't see a professor, one of the faculty members of a college/university....that prospect confuses me. How did I get here? And for that matter, who decided I was grown up enough to be responsible for another human being??? I still view myself as a college kid, still trying to figure out where I am going and what I am suppose to be doing. When I look in the mirror, I see... a few stray gray hairs...what the crap are those doing there???...and a few laugh lines, which I guess I'll take happily over frown lines...but what I can't see is a grown-up. When do you ever really feel like a grown-up, or is that something you realize you missed when you look in the mirror and realize you are old? Not like 40 old, like 75 old. But I digress.

Back to the panic. I have to GIVE A JOB TALK PEOPLE!!! Or at least ultimately I hope I will, I am pretty sure they won't hire me based on my stellar personality, my CV, and my recommendations alone. Somewhere along the way I am going to have to prove I deserve this job in person. I still haven't heard back from any of the 12 places I have sent applications out to, but its still really early. One school had a deadline of Sept. 30th, and 3 more had deadlines of Oct. 15th, so its still a waiting game. But, to prevent from a mad panic should I hear from a school asking me to come for an interview in say...2 weeks, I am attempting to avoid chaos, have time to practice, and am working on putting together my presentation now. I am well on my way, but it is taking WAY longer than I thought it would. Who knew that summarizing the last 2+ years of my career and providing the necessary background for it so the average Joe/Josephenia Professor would understand the point of it all has proven more challenging than I thought. I mean, of course I understand the importance of what I do, that is a given to me, where I am having problems is in conveying the "So what, who cares?" factor to the outsider who hasn't been chin deep in these topics for the last 7 years. I am sure I will get there, but for now, only about an hour before I can shut my office door behind me and head home for a weekend with the boys!

I so crafty! :)

I would like to give myself a formal pat on the back for my newest crafty project success. I had recently tried to figure out how to keep the wee man warm in his new big boy car seat with the upcoming freezing cold winter weather. We had adorable car seat "bubbles" as I called them that went right over the car seat and had a little flap for him to see out of. My aunt made them for us, they were adorable, and they kept the cold air out and the toasty air in! Now that the car seat stays in the car, I was racking my brain to try and figure out how to keep him warm in the car since huge coats under car seat straps are a big no-no. I found this idea online in my search, but since I am fairly skilled with a sewing machine and am cheap and didn't want to pay $40 for $8 worth of fleece, I figured I would try it out myself. I had a 50% off coupon at Jo-Ann's, so worst case scenario and I failed miserably, I might be out like $6 or something and then I could break down and order the one online. With some engineering assistance from Tim, and a great deal of pinning (which I normally avoid at all human costs), I was quite successful! Its not perfect, and certainly doesn't match up to the machine crafted perfection pictured in the online example, but I am quite proud. It stays on the seat, and it is big enough for some growing legs so it should hopefully be good for next winter too. I even left the extra fabric on the top so I can tuck Noah in up to his chin if it is really cold...and the best part is that I have much more exciting fleece. I will post a picture as soon as it is cold enough to use it with the wee man in the seat. It kind of loses something in translation if you show it without anything in the seat or with a bear like the website's model....stay tuned for my latest masterpiece! :)

Apple Picking - Round 2

How sad, we were out of apples! Really, it was my own darn fault since I went and made apple sauce for the wee man with the majority of the bag from the last trip to the orchards. So we remedied it real quick and hopped in the car and drove out to an orchard out a bit west of the city. Memere and Pepere B. decided to drive down from Maine to spend the day with the wee man and accompanied us on our second trip in search of tasty apples. We visited a cute farm called Tougas Farm...having flashbacks of traffic to get to the Topsfield fair, we waited in bumper to bumper traffic again to get in. Apparently we picked a popular place. Fortunately though just as we were pulling up near the back driveway entrance one of the workers opened it up so we could cut through the back way and cut out about 15 minutes worth of extra waiting. We missed a lot of the lines too since we were the first in that side! Since apparently MacIntosh and Cortlands (my 2 favorites) are both September apples, we went for Empires and Idareds, which are supposed to be October apples. The smaller Empires are for eating and the much bigger (as in ridiculously huge) Idareds are for baking. Since I intend to do mostly baking with this round of apples, we got mostly ginormous apples! :) It was fun, up in a tree getting all of the good ones from the tops, but as usual, it was over too quickly. I think we finished picking our 1/2 bushel in about 15 minutes, and that included some roaming around to see if the MacIntosh ones really were past ripe...they were. Sad.

Noah enjoyed sucking and tasting some more apple, this time Pepere ate off most of the skin, leaving Noah with the goods!


Once we were done picking, we dropped off the apples and the stroller at the car and hopped on a wagon to go over to the other side of the farm to pick out a pumpkin and check out the petting zoo. Here are Noah and Daddy hanging out on the wagon ride!


I know its cheesy, but one of my primary goals in this little outing was to get an adorable picture of Noah in the pumpkin patch. Mission accomplished! Its not completely up to our usual standards, but leave it to us...we remembered our camera, but forgot the battery for it on the kitchen table. Hey, the battery was charged, sadly, not present, but it was charged nonetheless! Thankfully, Memere remembered her camera this time and so we used hers. It, however, doesn't have Noah's favorite red light on it, so he was less impressed and getting cute pictures where he was actually paying attention was pretty hard.


Evidence of how Noah is totally not paying attention...that pumpkin we picked out was much more interesting.


Noah did have a good time riding up on Daddy's shoulders though. Perhaps he'll enjoy the animals and the playground they had there a bit more next year when he is independently mobile, but for this year, it was a cute place and worth the drive for some more goods for baking!


The rest of the week was pretty uneventful...both Noah and I had the nose dribbles. At least I possess the capability of blowing mine. I spent much of the week chasing after the little dude and wiping the dribbles up for him...fun! We have also had continued trouble with the nursing this week...I feel like most of the problem though is the plugged up nose. He has trouble breathing through his nose and therefore has trouble staying latched on to nurse...hello bottles, sorry to see you again. We still have no sign of the pesky second tooth on the top. Dear god, it will never show up! As a result, Noah is still throwing fits when we try to give him solid foods. I have even been failing with the yogurt lately. This afternoon after a quick walk out to Davis Square and a visit to the park and some swinging, I even tried dicing up some apple and cooking it up to soften it. I figured perhaps if he could feed himself he might eat more...nope, he took his requisite 3 bites and then started shaking his head, spitting bites back out, and shoving my hand away. The child cannot survive off of pumped wee man juice for life! Hopefully we'll get him back on the solid food band wagon soon!

Saturday Memere L. drove down for the afternoon. I was originally going to work on a sewing project, but since Tim was excited to help me out with it, I busted it out on Friday evening after the little dude went to bed, leaving Saturday for some shopping. We were on a mission. After a quick stop off at Panera Bread for some lunch (the wee dude sat in a highchair with his Floppy Seat like a big boy....SOOOO cute), we headed to Babies R Us, Old Navy, The Children's Place, and Kohl's...all in search of the elusive hat and mittens to match the snow suit. God help us...we still haven't been successful. While all of the places certainly had hats and mittens, none of them remotely matched his snow suit. I have found a set on Old Navy.com that looks like it will match, however, did they have it in the store so I could see the colors in person and avoid paying as much in shipping as I did for the hat and mittens???? HECK NO! It was seriously, $10.50 for the set and then a god awful $7.00 for shipping???? Are you kidding me? I am going to give it another couple of weeks to see if they get their act together and get them in stock before I get drastic. I remain optimistic and take solace in the fact that we have a back up set from Columbia that is completely adorable, sadly, it totally doesn't match his snowsuit in the least...but at least the kid will be warm in case of suddenly cold weather!

Seriously...who decided

that decent winter hats and mittens would be so hard to find for a 1 year old. I know that you can find them all over the place, but seriously...I have standards people. I will not tie on my precious son's head some jester-style cover for his adorable noggin that will make him look like something out of Ringling Bros. circus. Come on people, does he need a 2 foot floppy extension off the back of his head with a 1 foot diameter, 2 pound fleece pom pom or worse...eyeballs? I think not. Of course there is also the small matter of now trying to remotely match this hat to his new snow suit. All of the ones that are sold at L.L. Bean that match the colors of his snowsuit have ridiculous bears, eyeballs, or triple peaks of fleece fringe every where...what the heck? I am just trying to keep my sweet wee man warm this winter without making him look like a side show freak! I may head to Jo-Ann's one evening to pick up a pattern and some fleece by the yard and get make it myself...how hard can it be? Then at least he would look normal and maintain his fashionable reputation! Besides, I have been meaning to try and concoct a fleece blanket style cover for his new big boy car seat since big winter coats under the seat straps are a huge no-no. I'll keep you posted on my success (that is if I have any)!

Noah's day at the Topsfield Fair

Since it was such a nice day Sunday and we hadn't gotten a chance to get out much this fall and enjoy the season, we decided to head to the Topsfield fair for the day on Sunday. Supposedly, its the oldest agricultural fair in the country, which makes sense given the fact that New England is a very old part of the country. Unfortunately no one told us that you will get old trying to get to the Topsfield fair! We figured that we would head to the fair around lunch time, so that Noah could play during the morning and get a good morning nap before we headed over. Good logic, unforeseen circumstances blew this plan out of the water, however. It took about 30 minutes to drive to Topsfield itself. We got to the exit and traffic was backed up about 1/2 mile up the road before getting to the exit itself. Okay...fine, we'll wait.

We waited...

and waited...

and waited...

and waited some more.

Two, yes I said 2, hours later we finally parked the stupid car. So a 30-35 minute drive took 2 1/2 hours!!! I call that poor traffic management, seriously, this is a town fair. The NC State fair you could drive up, park, take a shuttle or walk and boom, you were in! It was well planned and executed. There was neither planning, nor execution, just 4 cranky, hungry, people who had now wasted 2 precious hours of happy Noah time parked (most of the time) in bumper to bumper traffic. I was pretty pissed, but things got better once we all got some food and started walking around to enjoy the sights.

Noah spent most of the day chilling in his backpack either on Daddy's back or Uncle Tim's. He and Uncle Tim had a blast together. When we were walking through the Trade building checking out all of the gadgets for sale, Noah got a bit antsy, so he started jiggling in the backpack and laughing, so Uncle Tim assisted and jiggled the backpack a bit more and Noah ended up in hysterics. They jiggled back and forth up and down the rows of useless products, providing entertainment not only for them selves, but also for everyone that walked by us...listening to the little man busting up into peals of laughter every few minutes was just so entertaining! :)

We saw lots and lots of fun animals, chickens, turkeys, fancy pigeons (really?), rabbits, guinea pigs, cows, a couple of HUGE oxen, sheep, work horses pulling obscene amounts of concrete blocks...we somehow missed the goats and alpacas, but we did see a huge pig with her adorable piglet. Of course we had to sample lots of fair food and check out the people. I was amazed with the number of people there with double wide strollers and only 1 child in it??? Does that seem kind of rude to you?? I can see the need for a double wide stroller with twins or a family with two small people whose legs get tired, but a double wide with only 1 kid in it and the other seat filled with purchased fair loot...come one people, have a little courtesy for those around you and carry your stuff for god's sake! Oh, I would like to acknowledge the unbelievable (yet, almost expected) rudeness of Massachusetts stroller drivers, they were just as rude and unbelievable as drivers of cars on the roads. Thank you for not disappointing me and giving me yet another reason to want to move out of state! :)

We got a few cute pictures of the little dude at the fair, here he is right before we went in to look at the chickens. He thought they were hilarious. He would look in the cage, the bird would make their usual chicken noises and he would laugh at them...tres cute!


Here he is enjoying the chickens some more. Note the hat that keeps creeping up on his head. Eventually it came off and went in the backpack...he just won't leave it alone! No wonder I forget to bring hats with us wherever we go...they just end up in the bag anyway! We'll have to make sure his winter one has a Velcro strap or something so that he can't yank that one off too.


Oh...mommy, can you make me some wee man food out of that one???? Noah was seemingly confused about the sheer size of this 1st place winning pumpkin. I think it weighed something on the order of 325 pounds, which was nothing compared to the one they had in a glass case further up...a whopping 1,464 pounds...that is just ridiculous!


So we had fun at the fair and probably stayed a bit longer than we should have...by the time we got to the car, Noah was a very tired baby. He slept the whole ride home. We hoped he would eat some dinner, have a bath, and grab any early bedtime. Instead we got about 15 minutes of happy playing and then a meltdown of epic proportions. We did squeeze in a bath since he loves those anyway, but an early bed was not in the cards. It took both Tim and I 3 tries and one huge diaper change to get him down for the count.

He woke up a couple of times during the night for the pacifier and as he always does, decided to get up for the day at 5:45...during Daddy's shower. This has been a very frequent occurrence lately...on the nights when it is Tim's watch, Noah will sleep fairly well, maybe waking up a time or so for a pacifier run, but really pretty good. Then the punk wakes up while Tim is in the shower getting ready for work, meaning that I end up getting up and feeding him, and usually staying up with him since he hardly ever goes back to sleep now, resulting in a loss of an average of about 1-1 1/2 hours of sleep for me...almost no lack of sleep for Tim! Fast forward to the next night when it is my watch...the man wakes up 2-3 times in the night, one of which results in a bottle usually about 3am and a bleary-eyed mommy still gets the shaft on sleep. Screw it...tonight I am going to be at 9pm and Tim can get things organized for work tomorrow and fold the laundry...he's the one that seems to get all the sleep he wants around here anyway! :)

Teething and the big boy car seat

So Noah is still teething and is still not eating or sleeping well. Oh well, I can always sleep when I am dead right? I keep checking on the progress of the second front tooth, which seems to remain an unchanged bulge on his upper gum taunting me with its refusal to turn into an actual tooth. The first tooth has been out for a couple weeks now, but with the lack of arrival of that second one, we have no idea which of the two, or both are bothering him. Rest assured though, he is bothered! We have a nasty vicious cycle going on in the house, any tiny diversion of his normal routine results in a fight to get him to eat any solid foods, which results in one or more night time wakings for a pacifier or a bottle, which results in further deviations from the precious and currently elusive routine. I am getting a bit frazzled. Just when I think we are turning a corner and things are starting to settle down, he wakes up at 5 am and refuses to go back to sleep! Hopefully this week will result in an actual tooth and we can make some headway in that department...I remain cautiously optimistic!

In other news, Noah got a snazzy new pair of jeans, which while completely adorable are still a slight big on him. They are size 12 months, so that really isn't that surprising, and at least they should last him the better part of the winter this way. Their bigness didn't deter us from trying them on him and then leaving them there rolled up like farmer Bob all day. Still cute though!

It has also gotten cold enough around here, 40s and 50s in the evenings, to start getting into the real fall and winter clothes. In my attempt to find easy dress and super comfy outfits for the wee man to wear on the weekend and at Nana Lou's, I came across this absolutely adorable fleece romper. It looks super comfy, so much so that I would take one in my size if they made them! I know what you are thinking, he looks a bit ridiculous with the hood up, but I couldn't resist testing it out! He is still just as cute with the hood down.

And we have also gotten to move beyond the onesies and sleep sacks for sleeping at night. It is finally footie pajama weather. How cute is this little dinosaur one that I found 50% off!?

In our final bit of weekly update news, we have hit yet another milestone! Noah has moved into his "big boy" car seat this weekend. The upper weight limit on his infant seat is 22 pounds, and since he was just over 20 a couple weeks ago at his check-up, I figured before I started to worry if he was over or under the limit every time I strapped him in, we should probably move up to the convertible seat. Noah didn't seem to notice the difference of course, but I am quite excited about our new purchase. Its a much bigger seat and will go rear-facing at some point after his first birthday. We have up to 35 pounds before we absolutely have to flip it. This one is also safe for him to use up to 65 pounds, which thankfully will cover him for a good long time! Scary how big it is though, we had to tether it to the base of the driver's seat, which unfortunately means that he can't ride in the middle of the car, which is safest, but I would rather it be stable and installed properly. Speaking of installation, I thought I was going to have to get another doctorate degree to figure out the manual and how to get it in the car. They just make those instructions so super confusing with all of the combinations of possible ways to install the thing...LATCH straps, seat beat, forward-facing, rear-facing, tethered in the back, tethered in the front. With a few deep breaths and re-reading the pertinent sections about 5 times, I am confident that we are good to go. Of course Tuesday night is car seat inspection night at the police station, so we may drop by just for a double check! For nostalgia purposes, here is a picture of his beloved infant seat and the new cow beast replacement! Sorry, no Noah in the pictures, we had to be able to concentrate during installation, so we did it while he was napping! :)

It was the Mount Vesuvius of poo!

Now I have heard that baby boys have more "blowouts" and leaky diapers than baby girls (not sure why but based on my anecdotal evidence I am by no means going to disagree), but honestly with the mess I observed and then was forced to clean up last night, I should have just skipped the diaper and let him run amok pooing all over the house. It would have probably made less of a mess and then I wouldn't have 2 days worth of stain removal to deal with! It was a weird evening. I got home to have Memere L. and Tom waiting for us after a trip to Boston for a doctor's appointment. They visited for a bit and then headed out just in time for me to feed Noah some dinner. Tim was working late and then doing the grocery shopping, so I was alone with my little man (not usually a problem really). Then it happened...there was some grunting, and some redness and squishing up of the face and then the smell hit me. Thankfully, we were just about done his dinner. He finished off the last few bites of yogurt and I cleaned him up (or at least I thought I cleaned him up!). I grabbed him up, smooched on him a bit for being such a good boy and not spitting out his dinner and we headed to the change table for some clean shorts. He needed a lot more than clean shorts!! As I put him down my hand squished in something unseemly...I looked down and on my DRY CLEAN ONLY sweater was a HUGE steaming smelly spot of poo where I had rested him on my hip. OH MY GOD!!!!!!

My first thought was to cry because I honestly had no idea where to start the clean up. It was everywhere!!! It had literally shot out the side leg hole area of his diaper and flooded his pants and since he had the cute button crotch type pants you can guess than it didn't stay in the pants! Suffice it to say that no one else was home to help get the tub ready, to help contain the mess, or to wrangle the wee man, so poo ended up in the following places over the course of the 20 minutes that followed: his hair, the wall, the edge of the coffee table, the high chair seat, his outfit, my sweater, my tank that was underneath the sweater, the cloth diaper under his butt, the change table cloth cover, the laundry basket in his room, my hands, his hands, and pretty much the whole rest of his body. Once I had him relatively clean (meaning no visible poo), I put him on the floor naked to play around while I ran and got his tub ready. I gave him a quick but very soapy bath and dried him off and dressed him up. Then came the clean up of the rest of the house. Thankfully high chairs are designed to be messed on (granted traditionally we are talking food), so the clean up there was fairly painless. The change table needed to be stripped down and disinfected, the tub needed to be cleaned up and put away...then there was the small matter of the laundry. I needed a time out before I tackled that scenario. Tim finally arrived home, we played with the wee man for a bit, put him to bed and had a late dinner. I ended up getting out almost all of the stains...I am still working on my sweater and Noah's outfit. I am fairly confident that his outfit will be okay, its my sweater I am worried about. I may be bringing it up the street to the dry cleaners for some assistance, but at least I got the worst of the mess out of it before I dropped it off at their door step! That was one for the record books! :)