Our Big Boy

I stole this picture from my sister in laws blog, she took this of Noah when she was here for Thanksgiving. I absolutely love this picture of Noah, he looks SO grown up! Don't you agree?

The Festival of Lights

Last Monday for Family Home Evening, James, Noah, and I went to the Festival of Lights in Spanish Fork. For about a month or so, when I would take James to work, we would pass by a billboard for the Festival of Lights, and every time we would pass it, I would tell James how I really wanted to go to that! It started Thanksgiving and I think it goes till the 1st of January.

It's $5 per car to get in and you can drive through the lights as many times as you want, I think. James and I drove through the lights twice and since people drive SUPER slowly, I took Noah out of his car seat so he could stand in my lap and that way he could see the lights better. Noah stared at the lights wide-eyed and opened mouth almost the entire first round of the lights.
When we drove up to pay, they told us to turn to a certain radio station for Christmas music if we wanted. We had the Christmas music playing the whole time, but not until Noah got use to the lights did he start dancing. He loved dancing to Jingle Bell rock, it was so funny! He LOVED looking at the lights and so did James and I. These pictures do NOT give the lights the justice they deserve.
It was so fun to do something that got us in the Holiday Spirit! We got home and put Noah to bed and then James and I had some peppermint ice cream while we watched The Office. I love the Holidays!

Birthday PARTY

Since the last post wasn't very fun or happy, due to Noah's tests, I thought I would post again with pictures from Noah's 9 month birthday party.

I made a delicious rainbow chip (wanna be funfetti) cake for Noah's 9 month birthday. James and I sang him Happy Birthday and we were the only two guests at his party. Poor guy, I reassued him that at his 1 year birthday, there would be more guests besides his mom and dad.

I forgot to take pictures of Noah in front of his cake before I lite the candles though. I didn't want James's arms in all the pictures and I really didn't think Noah would go after the cake so I told James to let go of him and I assured him that Noah won't go after the cake with burning candles.But, Noah DID try to grab at the cake with burning candles and James's said "NO!!" and then Noah cried. On his BIRTHDAY.
Dad and Noah blew out the birthday candles together. More so Dad than Noah.
"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to."
"You would cry to if it happened to you."

I got excited because I thought Noah started to cheer up and I would get some cute pictures of him smiling with his birthday cake!
But then Noah said "SIKE!!"

We didn't get any smiles, but at least James and I really enjoyed the cake.

Noah is a VERY happy and smiliey 9 month old, regardless what these pictures portray. Noah is crawling all over the place (since 7 months) and pulling himself up on everything (since 7 months) but he is even more active with these things now! He will even let go and stand for a few seconds. The other day, he took his first step. I don't think he will be walking for a few more months, but he definitely stood on his own and took a step towards me and then reached out for me to hold on to. He refuses to eat baby food, especially if we try to feed him off of a spoon. He loves to eat table foods and whatever we are eating. His most recent new food that he loves is a lightly toasted bagel and he is still a big fan of cheddar cheee and cheerios. We LOVE him SO much and James is already saying how much he will miss him when he leaves for training.

9 Months (back on the 24th)

3/4 of a year
...
9 months in me...9 months out
...
closer to 1 than 0

Our baby boy is rapidly slipping away and changing into our pre-toddler boy. We went and got these professional pictures done of Noah the other day and I just love them! We decided to let Noah have his favorite bear in the pictures with him and I think it added the perfect touch. We have gotten professional pictures of him at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and in 3 more months we will also do it at 12 months.
I can't seem to find the papers from the doctor that tells Noah's stats, but this is what I can remember:

Weight: 15 pounds 9 ounces 0.67% tile
Length: 27. something inches 26% tile
Head Circumference: I want to say 44 cm but I'm not sure... 27% tile

Noah's doctor was not very pleased with his weight and is now calling him "underweight." I had just taken him to the doctor for a weight check eleven days before and he weighed 15 pounds 7 1/2 ounces. Noah's doctor, Dr. Hacking, told me to start giving him vanilla ice cream, macaroni and cheese, and to keep adding oil in his bottles all for more calories. Well, after eleven days of doing that, he still only gained one and a half ounces. Dr. Hacking thought that maybe Noah's body had a problem with absorbing the nutrients from his food and that that's why he is underweight. Dr. Hacking wrote out an order for me to take Noah up to the Primary Children's Hospital to have some tests done to make sure he didn't have two diseases that could possibly be the cause of his smallness. I can't remember one of the name of the diseases he thought Noah had, but I know one of them is called Cystic Fibrosis.

Noah and I went up to the Primary Children's Hospital for two and a half of the worst hours ever to have a sweat chloride test done, a urine test, and a blood test. The blood test was the WORST. The nurse pricked him in both arms because she couldn't find the vein in the first one. I swear she dug around for 10 minutes in each arm trying to find the vein, all while I was holding Noah down, while he was screaming his head off. The next day, he had bruises on both arms, my poor baby!! The sweat chloride test was pretty awful too, they sent a weak electrical current through him for five minutes to stimulate sweating. He had a gauze pad on each arm and then they wrapped his arms up really tights in all kinds of bandages and then I had to wrap him up in lots of warm clothes and blankets and keep him that way for thirty minutes so he would sweat a lot. He ended up sweating enough on the gauze pads that we didn't have to do the electrical current again. The chloride sweat test was for Cystic Fibrosis. We got the results back 2 days later and he didn't have either one of the diseases Dr. Hacking thought he might have. Thanks goodness!! So, Noah is just small. Duh. I have explained to Dr. Hacking just how small I was my whole life and how small my husband is, but he never seems to remember that. I guess it's better to make sure though.

Thanksgiving

Wow, it has been a long time since I last posted something on time. For some reason things have felt busier ever since the week of Thanksgiving. Part of it is that Noah always wants my attention these days. When he's awake, I don't get too much done (unless he's eating). He usually naps for about two hours total now, so he's keeping me a lot busier than he used to. Plus, we haven't had the internet at our house until today!


Noah was sick the whole time that James's family was here for Thanksgiving. He wasn't sick with anything too bad, just a runny nose and a congested cough. We still had a lot of fun with them here and played around, went out to eat, jumped on the trampoline, threw snow balls and I got to meet my nephew Elijah for the first time (who is So adorable!) James's dad even helped me learn to fish in his brother's backyard.

On Wednesday we spent the day with James's dad's side of the family. We had an early thanksgiving at his Uncle Danny's house which was also a surprise birthday party for his grandma. We had so much fun, especially since Uncle Danny's house is so GIGANTIC.

Here are the babies with the present Elijah gave Noah for Christmas. It was SO fun getting to see Katie, who we hadn't seen in what seemed like forever! It was really nice getting to catch up and talk to each other about all sort of "mom things."Aunt Kelly wanted Noah to try on my shoes. I don't think Noah thought it was as fun as Kelly did.
Noah got this awesome toy from his Grandma Clingo, I know he loves it already! Noah's second cousin Issac is helping test it out. I think they had fun together until Issac started to not want to share the balls with Noah anymore. Luckily, Noah's not in that stage yet!
At the end, everyone wanted to get a picture of all the kids together. BUT my child would Not sit with the other kids and look at the camera. All Noah wanted to do was crawl towards the shoes to play with the laces. This was the best shot I got.
Oh Noah and his strings...
Thanksgiving day was spent at Jewell's house with James's mom and Aunt Ginny. James and I made this awesomely cool turkey gobbler. Jewell made enough food to feed an army and it was all VERY delicious.
Noah's hasn't been wanting to eat pureed baby foods very often for a while now, but he perked up when Jewell let him eat candied yams and mashed potatoes. YUM! I had brought a jar of baby food to give him while we were at Jewell's house, but he refused to eat it. All Noah seems to want lately is table foods. He's been eating most of what we eat as long as it's safe. He sure gets messy!

This is the face Noah has been making ALL the time lately, he scrunches it up like this and he looks so funny!
I kept breaking off pieces of my roll and putting it on his tray. I think Noah really enjoyed thanksgiving dinner.

Dance, Dance

Noah usually dances more than he does in this video, but he does it for a bit at the beginning. This video goes on for quite a while and is not that exciting. Watch just the beginning when he is dancing. SO cute!!

Play Time

That is my son playing barbies with his Aunt Kelly when we were still back in San Diego.

Doesn't he look like he's enjoying himself?
Everything still goes directly into his mouth.
Noah and I have attended playgroup a few times now and we have had a lot of fun! It's nice because the little boy in the picture, Parker, is only a week younger than Noah. Plus, it's really nice for me to get out of the house as well and chat with other moms.

"Look at this cool butterfly Parker!"
Noah's three favorite things are: stings, buttons, and zippers. He especially loves the strings from the hood of a jacket, those are his all time favorite and he throws a fit when we take them away from him. One of us usually ends up taking off our jacket and just giving it to him so he stops crying and then we are cold. What nice parents he has! The thing he is holding in this picture is one of my headbands that he LOVES to suck on.
Oooooh, yum.
The other week Noah and I had so much fun playing in his bedroom together. We got out the markers my dad got him and practiced writing together. My dad always gets Noah toys that are not age appropriate and my mom also laughs at the stuff he brings home to give Noah. However, we still had a good time with the markers and I've helped him a few times now draw pictures or write words.

This is our beautiful picture we made. It is now hanging on our refrigerator.
This is how Noah's face and hands looked after we were done with the markers. Now the handles to his beautiful white dresser are covered in markers. I think he sucked on his hands a bit and then grabbed onto the handles and the markers rubbed off onto them. Thankfully for Noah's face, hands, and dresser, my dad bought washable markers. (Although, I still haven't taken the time to wash the marker off of his dresser.)
Noah is still in love with this chair and still likes to pull all kinds of crazy stunts on it. He loves to stand up on the chair and usually ends up tipping it over. It's sad though because most of the sounds don't work anymore. Probably because he uses it all the time!

Pumpkin Carving

This post is super late as well, but I had to put up all these cute pictures from Noah's first pumpkin carving experience. I know there are a ton of pictures, but I couldn't seem to leave any of them out. We carved pumpkins with my parents and sisters, well actually Colina was the only one who carved the pumpkin and the rest of us all sat around watching while eating apples with caramel. Mmmm!


We wanted to see if he would stick his hand in the pumpkin, but he wouldn't. I guess that's ok because my 20 year old sister won't even stick her hand in a pumpkin or even touch pumpkin guts.
He was very skeptical of the pumpkin guts at first.
Still skeptical...
"Uhhh, what is this mom??"
"Hmm, this feels weird"
"I guess this stuff is ok..."

He was very sticky afterward.
Mr. Pumpkin head.

A Halloween Penguin.

So, I know it is already Thanksgiving and this post is about Halloween, but better late than never right? I love Halloween and it is definitely one of my top two favorite holidays; the decorations, pumpkins, trick-or-treating, candy, and costumes. I took this picture of Noah on Halloween day and if you can't tell, his shirt say's "Got Candy?" I took quite a few pictures before I got one of him looking at the camera. He kept sticking the top of the pumpkin to the right in his mouth. Gross. We decided to dress Noah up as a penguin for Halloween this year and he looked absolutely adorable. I wanted to squish him the whole night, he was too cute. My dad said he saw this giant penguin stuffed animal at the mall and wanted to take Noah to get some pictures with it in his costume. It was a bummer though, because when we went Noah was tired, crabby, and it was impossible to get even one tiny smile out of him. However, he was amazed by the huge stuffed penguin.

My mom and I took Noah trick-or-treating around our neighborhood and he got lots of candy and treats. After trick-or-treating, Noah and I met James at the trick or trunk our home ward was putting on. Noah got even MORE candy there.

Noah loves his Aunt Kelly, even though he is not portraying that in this picture.

When we got back to James's parents house, we spread Noah's loot out all around him. He was checking everything out and even wanted to eat the candy. However, he was a VERY nice little boy and gave all his candy to his mom and dad.

Yummy smarties.

Yes, he even got an apple.


Happy Late Halloween!

HOLY 8 MONTHS!! (this past Saturday)

Well, it is happy too but HOLY COW! Our little baby is 8 months old. I can't believe how fast the time goes. He is entering the toddler stage very fast and it is so weird. I love it though and I love Noah so much. He's my little bud.

I made these lovely looking cupcakes for his birthday and they turned out tasting delicious.


I wanted to get a nice picture of him sitting on the kitchen table infront of his cupcakes, just like his five month birthday pictures, but this time he wouldn't just sit there and look at the camera. He was totally distracted by the cupcakes and he kept trying to grab one!


And then he tasted some of the frosting. Needless to say, we took the cupcakes away from him.

Noah loves table food now and stares anyone down when they have something he wants or whines until you give him some. His favorite foods are cheerios, cheese, banana bread, and ice water. He especially loves ice water out of a big person cup. He will stare longinly at my glass until I give him some.

This one makes me laugh!

Grandpa was holding a cupcake up high and this is Noah trying to reach for it. I can't wait to let him have some cake on his first birthday; only four more months.

Some of Noah's favorite things to do as a big eight month old are:

-playing/sucking on his red dino

-walk/run around in his walker

-chase after Bagel; both in his walker and crawling around

-grab onto handles of drawers and try to open them

-hold onto something and pull himself up

-play with his chair he got from his great grandparents

-eat cheerios

-play in the bath tub

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NO MAN!!