Christmas Countdown

We are eagerly awaiting Christmas in our house. We've been doing a lot of Christmas preparation and shopping these days and so Noah and I have been talking quite a bit about it. I'm not sure what I said the other day, but as he was talking to David at bedtime, we realized that Noah thought Christmas was the very next day. He was so disappointed to find out that it's still over a week away! And every morning since then, he's asked if it's Christmas morning. I sure hope the anticipation doesn't build it up too much!

Noah, Elena and I have had busy days these past few weeks. Thankfully, Elena is easy going and is generally happy to tag along shopping, meeting friends for lunch, long walks through the neighborhood and lots of other outings.

Today, Noah helped David clean out the gutters. Noah was all bundled up out in the cold and playing nicely in the dirt while David did all the work. (Here's a little relevant background: Noah is used to helping me water flowers and I usually let him use the hose to water them by himself for a little bit.) So today, he saw David using the hose and was desperate to water the bushes with it. The only problem was, I usually have the nozzle set to a gentle rain-like setting and David was using it to clean the gutters so it was set to a full blast fire-hose kind of setting. In a matter of seconds after Noah pressed the trigger on the nozzle, he lost total control of it and completely soaked David. I had to hide my smile and giggles while I herded Noah inside. I think we can all laugh about it now, but David had a hard time finding the humor of it all drenched in 40 degree weather. Here are a few pictures of Noah helping out before "the incident."

Here are a few more pics from around the house...

Sylvester update

So far, Elena has been a generally laid back baby. It's enabled me to be far more productive during the day than I was when Noah was this little. We venture out of the house a lot more and enjoy stores where we can park once and spend a lot of time in that one place. We've already gone to the zoo (sorry, somehow with me and two kids in tow, I forgot to take pictures!), the mall and gotten done most of our Christmas shopping.

One of the best inventions for little ones is babywearing. We stumbled on it with Noah when we used our Bjorn all the time and have taken it to a new level with Elena. Since she's still sleeping lots, but needs to be held the majority of the time, she spends most of her days in a carrier like this wrap...





The hardest part of the day is Noah's naptime. Noah still has a hard time falling asleep (although it has gotten so much better), but it's hard to juggle both of them. So there was one day where I was working to get them both to sleep and lo and behold, they both fell asleep on Noah's bed. Elena's too little to leave her there with him, but it was so cute to see them asleep together that I had to take a picture!




Here are some other just random pictures of Noah and Elena around the house...

Noah's Birthday & Family Visit

We had a terrific time last week spending time with Katie's parents. And Bryan, Ashley and Emma were able to come up and help us celebrate Noah's birthday, too!

We had a big Thomas-themed party and Noah loved it. He was so distracted at dinner by the table with all the presents on it. He kept running over to the presents and yelling, "I don't know what's in this box!" I'm not sure he ate any pizza with the anticipation of all the presents he was about to open.

With the great help of Nana and Poppy, we had a really productive week. We were able to clean the house up, get to storytime at the library, work on some Christmas shopping, and have a great time together. Thank you Nana and Poppy!

Life's Simple Pleasures

Today we were able to get out and go for a nice long walk. One of Noah's favorite things to do outside these last few weeks has been to run through fallen, "crunchy" leaves. So as we're out and about, when we come upon a bunch of great leaves, he gets out of the stroller and runs like crazy kicking up all the leaves and it's even better if he can find a stick and use it to stir up even more leaves.

So far, his favorite place is our friend Beth's house because we actually let him go into the yard and run around in the leaves. Here we are at her house today on our walk...






We also stumbled onto another find on today's walk. Someone has a ceramic or cement alligator in their yard, near the street. Noah thought it was great and didn't want to leave it!

Elena Sophia Sylvester

The long wait is finally over! Elena Sophia Sylvester joined us last week and weighed 8 lbs 3 oz. We are all doing well and adjusting to our new family of four. Noah adores her and loves to kiss her, hug on her and hold her. He also likes to check her out with his goggles on (picture below) and hold her hand while she gets her diaper changed. She has such a great disposition and so far, really loves her sleep! Here are a few pictures from these first few days...

Halloween

We had quite a dilemma this Halloween on what Noah was going to dress up as. We had planned to go to our church's fall festival and also do a little trick-or-treating in a nearby neighborhood. It was the first year he really had some input on his costume and once he has his mind set on something it's hard to change it!

At first, he wanted to be a flamingo and then it was a wolf. We had a hard time finding any outfit in his size that he was excited about, but we finally found a lion costume that he liked. However, he made it perfectly clear to us that even though he'd be dressed as a lion, he was not going to roar for anyone. Not sure where that came from, but he stuck with it and we didn't hear a roar from him at all!

When we first got to the fall festival, he didn't want to wear the head-piece of the costume, so he wore his winter hat. But he finally came around and wore it for a little bit. On Halloween, he surprised me how much he actually liked trick-or-treating. He was shy with the neighbors, but really, really excited about the candy!

Destin!

We just got home from a week in Destin. It was Noah's first trip to the beach and it was truly one of the best family vacations we've had. I wasn't sure how he would like the sand and the waves, but he took to it so quickly!

We had a few buckets and shovels for building sand castles and of course, Noah enjoyed stomping down the sand castles as much as he liked building them. But he does that with our lego's at home so that wasn't a big surprise.

The weather was perfect (not too hot) so we really didn't do much besides spend time at the beach. I knew Noah would warm up to the ocean if he just got in the water and gave it a chance, but he really surprised us with an adventurous streak right away. He would have run out into the water all by himself if we'd had let him! One of his favorite things was when David would take him out into slightly deeper water and then David would bend down so the water seemed really deep and then when the waves came, they'd pop out of the water and out of the way of the wave crashing. I think Noah could have done that for hours!

Here are just a few of the many pictures from the trip...

Atlanta

David had a work trip to Atlanta earlier this month, so Noah and I tagged along. Except for the air conditioning going out in our car, we had a great time! We saw a bunch of different kinds of trains, which Noah loved, and we also went to the Georgia Aquarium. We didn't have a lot of time at the aquarium, but what we saw was really impressive.

Family Visit

Several weeks ago, we had a great visit with Dave's family. They were all in town for the weekend and Noah especially loved spending time with his cousins!

Friday night we went to Dave & Busters, which was like a mini-casino for Noah. He was mesmerized by the noise, the lights, and all the kiddie games where you just keep putting your tokens in the slot hoping that they reach the right train car (or truck or a number of different-themed machines) in order to win some tickets. Remind me to keep him away from Chuckie Cheese and all those places really designed to reel in the kids!






We spent Saturday at a local water park. Noah had a great time in the big, shallow pool and spending some time with cousin Jaden.

A Busy Week

We had many busy days here in Nashville last week! It's been hot, so we've tried to stay inside for the most part, but here are some of our adventures from the past few days...

We spent one early morning at the zoo. All Noah wanted to do was ride the carousel, but after a few times, I'm usually a little queasy. We rode it 3 times on this visit and here he is on our first spin that morning, riding the jaguar.


On Saturday, we saw the live show, Thomas and Friends. The show was definitely geared towards toddlers and Noah had a great time! (I'll leave the critique from David and I out of it.) He was excited to see Thomas, Percy and James and couldn't have cared less about any storyline. Anytime one of the trains left the stage, he immediately wanted to know where they were and when they were coming back. Since the show, he's been inseparable with the few Thomas toys we have so we know it made quite an impression!



So we've had a pile of gravel in our yard ever since the work has been done on our house. We've kept it with the intent of spreading it on our gravel driveway, but Noah always wants to load up his wagon full of it and just likes to generally play in the big, dusty pile. We finally had some time this weekend to go out and spread the gravel in the driveway (that is, David found the time to do the work and I found the time to watch and be moral support). Noah used his wagon and a garden trowel, which has become his own shovel that no one else can use and he gets out anytime David gets out the real shovels. He was so excited to be of help and wouldn't admit how hot and sweaty he was!

4th of July Weekend

We had a great, long weekend. We picked blueberries and blackberries on Friday and again, Noah wasn't interested at all. I'll keep the hope that someday he'll at least enjoy being out on those farms!

I think the highlight of Noah's weekend was our pet-sitting for a neighbor. We had Baxter here at our house from Friday night through Sunday afternoon and Noah was so excited! We've known Baxter for years and he is now starting to show some signs of aging, so thankfully they would just kind of follow each other around and Noah didn't try to get too rough with him.

The only frustrating part for Noah was the number of naps Baxter would take each day. But when Baxter was up and ready to interact, Noah was thrilled! All weekend, Noah would say things like "Guess who I found in the living room?" or "Look who that is!" as if he had forgotten that Baxter was in our house. I know Noah was sad to see Baxter go on Sunday, but thankfully, we get to see Baxter a lot since he's a neighbor!

Here are some random shots of the two of them...