Oh man, this cracks me up. Especially the last 10 seconds or so. It's short and sweet, and no sound required:
Dave took those sprinkler photos that I posted yesterday, so I didn't get to see this in action till later. In the first part of the video, he's trying to fill the little green eggshell toy with water. Fairly successfully, I might add.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
What is he DOING?
Crazy little Noah, drinking from the sprinkler!
He seems to be growing up so fast these days. I'm still in the habit of using the word "baby" around him, but these days every time that word comes out of my mouth, it hits me that he's not much of a baby anymore at all. It's amazing how clearly he thinks and how well he understands... I just still can't understand 99.9% of what he's talking about. Today he brought my shoes to me. I didn't think too much of it because he likes to play with our shoes. But then he went and stood by the back door. Nobody had mentioned going outside, but he knew what he wanted, and he knew mommy needed shoes for that!
He also seems to be growing up fast in more measurable ways. Between two recent doctor's appointments not even a month apart, he grew nearly two full inches. I know teenagers can sprout like that over a summer, but for my little guy... wow! And my arms are swearing up and down that he has put on several pounds in the last couple of days. Tomorrow I should try to weigh and measure him to find out why his clothes keep shrinking and why my elbows are whimpering. I think it might be time to start measuring HEIGHT instead of length, with marks on the wall and everything. How exciting!!!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Hamilton's Pool
We went to Hamilton's Pool this weekend with my sister's family. It's a natural spring-fed pool where an underground river caved in. The trail down from the parking lot is rocky and steep (especially carrying an extra 22 lb tub-o-giggles), but the hike was worth it. We all had a lot of fun and ended up staying longer than we thought Noah would let us. Noah's favorite part was throwing rocks into the water. Here are a couple of photos:
He looks like he's falling in, but he's really throwing rocks:
Those tiny dots on the boulder are Noah's cousins, who swam to the other side of the pool:
We hiked around the grotto (on the left of the photo above). This might have been a good family photo, except for the expression on Noah's face!
The trail around the back side of the pool gets really narrow. The rock right behind Dave is so close to the wall that you have to lean over and walk sideways to get past. That was challenging to get Noah through!
We also hiked down to the nearby river. Here's Noah and Dave watching the little fish swim by:
He looks like he's falling in, but he's really throwing rocks:
Those tiny dots on the boulder are Noah's cousins, who swam to the other side of the pool:
We hiked around the grotto (on the left of the photo above). This might have been a good family photo, except for the expression on Noah's face!
The trail around the back side of the pool gets really narrow. The rock right behind Dave is so close to the wall that you have to lean over and walk sideways to get past. That was challenging to get Noah through!
We also hiked down to the nearby river. Here's Noah and Dave watching the little fish swim by:
Friday, July 18, 2008
A Very Important Job
Ever since he's been toddling about with confidence and purpose, Noah has been throwing away his own dirty diapers. (Yes, I wrap them up tight so there's no "dirty" peeking out!) He treats it like the most important job in the world, and he's quite proud of his new responsibility. The funny part is, the whole thing was his idea. I vaguely remember one day when he stood up from a diaper change, picked up the diaper and walked away with it, so I showed him where the trashcan in the laundry room was. Then I remember one time when one of his grandmas thought he was playing with a "nasty old diaper" and wanted to take it away, and I slowly realized that he wanted to throw it away. So she tried to lead him to the kitchen trash, but NO, he wanted to go to the laundry room! These days it's every diaper every time. Wednesday I changed him right before we both laid down for a nap together, so I tossed the wrapped-up diaper to the floor at the foot of the bed. First thing Noah did when he woke up? Spotted that diaper and carried it across the house. Yesterday I caught him patiently waiting at the laundry room door, which I had closed earlier, diaper in hand. This morning he had a diaper so heavy (thank you, Huggies Overnites!) that it literally took both hands -- he kept dropping it because he didn't believe it was that heavy. Funny stuff.
Of course, along with the convenience of having my very own diaper-trasher, I now have the extra mom duty of checking that trashcan for stray socks and other dirty laundry. It seems he's training for his second job as laundry sorter, and unfortunately, the dirty laundry hamper is right next to the trash can.
Given that he's also been acting as a human vacuum cleaner since he could crawl (Oh, Noah, you found a treasure! Now hand it to mommy before you put it in your mouth), I think we've got a pretty talented little helper over here. Now why doesn't my house look cleaner than it does?
Of course, along with the convenience of having my very own diaper-trasher, I now have the extra mom duty of checking that trashcan for stray socks and other dirty laundry. It seems he's training for his second job as laundry sorter, and unfortunately, the dirty laundry hamper is right next to the trash can.
Given that he's also been acting as a human vacuum cleaner since he could crawl (Oh, Noah, you found a treasure! Now hand it to mommy before you put it in your mouth), I think we've got a pretty talented little helper over here. Now why doesn't my house look cleaner than it does?
The Big Read
I used to devour books like a starving bookworm. Other than Harry Potter, it's been an embarrassingly long while since I made time for a good book. But a friend of mine posted this, and I had fun remembering all the great books I used to read (and some that I was forced, err... encouraged, to read in school). There were quite a few that I feel like I probably read, but I don't remember for sure. That just goes to show how much I used to read, that I couldn't keep track of what I'd read and what I hadn't. Or maybe it goes to show what a spotty swiss-cheese memory I have. But I digress...
According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list. How many have you read? Look at the list: Bold those you have read. Italicize those you intend to read. Underline the books you LOVE. (and Carol, don't mark the ones you don't remember whether you might have read them once upon a time).
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7.
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29.
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The
74. Notes From A
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87.
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
I scream, you scream, we all scream for...
... popsicles?
Noah hasn't been feeling well for the last several days, and he's been eating poorly. So I had the bright idea to make him some smoothie popsicles with yogurt and bananas and blueberries. He thought it was pretty cool, but he had a hard time holding it himself. So either I held it for him, or he gripped it by the cold part. In the end, I think more melted onto his hands than into his mouth before he got bored with it. But it got me thinking, is there a better* popsicle mold for toddlers out there? Leave me a comment if you have suggestions -- I'm all ears. This mold is just the standard issue from Target that I picked up yesterday when inspiration hit.
For the record, he guzzled down quite a bit of non-frozen smoothie after he gave up on the frozen one, and that was enough to whet his appetite for some real food. Success!
*For Noah right now, this mold is too big, the pop is too top-heavy, and the stick is too small.
Noah hasn't been feeling well for the last several days, and he's been eating poorly. So I had the bright idea to make him some smoothie popsicles with yogurt and bananas and blueberries. He thought it was pretty cool, but he had a hard time holding it himself. So either I held it for him, or he gripped it by the cold part. In the end, I think more melted onto his hands than into his mouth before he got bored with it. But it got me thinking, is there a better* popsicle mold for toddlers out there? Leave me a comment if you have suggestions -- I'm all ears. This mold is just the standard issue from Target that I picked up yesterday when inspiration hit.
For the record, he guzzled down quite a bit of non-frozen smoothie after he gave up on the frozen one, and that was enough to whet his appetite for some real food. Success!
*For Noah right now, this mold is too big, the pop is too top-heavy, and the stick is too small.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Simply Irresistable
Noah got to work him charm last night in a big way. Thank goodness for cute sleeping angel babies!
Four of us set out in the Prius yesterday to go to dinner and Home Depot, us plus Noah and Dave's mom. When we stopped to pick up the dry cleaning, the car's "OH NO!" lights came on, the same ones we saw when we nearly ran out of gas, the ones that let you know that if you turn the power off, you can't turn the car back on again until the dealer resets it, the ones that the only information in the owner's manual says to turn off the car and call the dealership immediately. It's a hybrid thing. Since we were halfway between home and the dealership, and we knew we were about to be stranded, we decided to drive to Toyota. There we found out that the hybrid guy was gone for the evening, the rental car company was closed for the evening, the courtesy van was not available, no they don't have loaner cars, and that we should "call a friend to come pick us up." Why is it at these kind of moments that you realize you don't have as many friends as you think you do?
Did I mention that Noah was asleep in his carseat?
So while Dave was busy extricating the carseat from the car and calling his best work buddies, I took my sleeping angel around to the sales floor. I was on a mission to find someone who (a) looked like they had some authority, (b) looked to be in a good mood, and (c) looked like a dad. I didn't have to look too far. He even had baby photos framed on his desk. With all 22 pounds of Noah sacked out on my shoulder, and my voice a little shaky with the adrenaline that comes with being a mommy stranded with her baby, I carefully approached him. "Excuse me, do you have a sec? I've got an interesting situation. Ya see, my husband and I are actually in the market for a Rav4 (100% true), and have been talking about test driving them when we get a chance. And coincidentally, our Prius just stranded us here in the service department this evening, we've got a sleeping baby, and we can't find a ride home. Is there any chance you could set us up with an extended test drive overnight so we can get home?"
And the first words out of the good man's mouth were, "I think we can take care of you." The next were "how old is your little boy?" Very shortly after that he was asking, "exactly what model were you guys interested in?"
That's the story of how we traded our Prius in for a Rav4. Don't get me wrong, I still love my Prius, but this one is NEW, and SHINY, and FREE!!!! They "fixed" our car today, but they still don't know what went wrong*, so they want to keep it for observation. I think we have to give the Rav back at some point. Darn.
*Yes, we had a full tank of gas this time! Maybe the best explanation is the car's shock that WE were at a dry cleaners!
Four of us set out in the Prius yesterday to go to dinner and Home Depot, us plus Noah and Dave's mom. When we stopped to pick up the dry cleaning, the car's "OH NO!" lights came on, the same ones we saw when we nearly ran out of gas, the ones that let you know that if you turn the power off, you can't turn the car back on again until the dealer resets it, the ones that the only information in the owner's manual says to turn off the car and call the dealership immediately. It's a hybrid thing. Since we were halfway between home and the dealership, and we knew we were about to be stranded, we decided to drive to Toyota. There we found out that the hybrid guy was gone for the evening, the rental car company was closed for the evening, the courtesy van was not available, no they don't have loaner cars, and that we should "call a friend to come pick us up." Why is it at these kind of moments that you realize you don't have as many friends as you think you do?
Did I mention that Noah was asleep in his carseat?
So while Dave was busy extricating the carseat from the car and calling his best work buddies, I took my sleeping angel around to the sales floor. I was on a mission to find someone who (a) looked like they had some authority, (b) looked to be in a good mood, and (c) looked like a dad. I didn't have to look too far. He even had baby photos framed on his desk. With all 22 pounds of Noah sacked out on my shoulder, and my voice a little shaky with the adrenaline that comes with being a mommy stranded with her baby, I carefully approached him. "Excuse me, do you have a sec? I've got an interesting situation. Ya see, my husband and I are actually in the market for a Rav4 (100% true), and have been talking about test driving them when we get a chance. And coincidentally, our Prius just stranded us here in the service department this evening, we've got a sleeping baby, and we can't find a ride home. Is there any chance you could set us up with an extended test drive overnight so we can get home?"
And the first words out of the good man's mouth were, "I think we can take care of you." The next were "how old is your little boy?" Very shortly after that he was asking, "exactly what model were you guys interested in?"
That's the story of how we traded our Prius in for a Rav4. Don't get me wrong, I still love my Prius, but this one is NEW, and SHINY, and FREE!!!! They "fixed" our car today, but they still don't know what went wrong*, so they want to keep it for observation. I think we have to give the Rav back at some point. Darn.
*Yes, we had a full tank of gas this time! Maybe the best explanation is the car's shock that WE were at a dry cleaners!
Friday, July 4, 2008
Flashback
Happy 4th of July!
You know you're a mom when ... you spend more time looking at your son's expressions than watching the sky during his first fireworks show.
We hadn't really planned on taking him to see the fireworks, but then since he wasn't sleeping anyway, we took him outside to see what we could see. Noah enjoyed the bright colors, and we were far enough away that they weren't too booming. He stared in awe, and kept pointing when they were over. I think he liked them!
Here's a photo from one year ago, and today, in the very same shirt. What a difference a year makes!
You know you're a mom when ... you spend more time looking at your son's expressions than watching the sky during his first fireworks show.
We hadn't really planned on taking him to see the fireworks, but then since he wasn't sleeping anyway, we took him outside to see what we could see. Noah enjoyed the bright colors, and we were far enough away that they weren't too booming. He stared in awe, and kept pointing when they were over. I think he liked them!
Here's a photo from one year ago, and today, in the very same shirt. What a difference a year makes!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The tortoise and the hare.
Noah just turned on his warp speed mode today.
Ok, not really that fast, but we saw a friend this weekend whose baby is three weeks younger and she walked about three times faster than Noah. Literally. Noah is very deliberate, for lack of a better word. Until today. Today it's off to the races (though she would still definitely win).
Here's a photo of Noah and his speedy friend Miranda. It was hard to catch them both in the same frame.
Ok, not really that fast, but we saw a friend this weekend whose baby is three weeks younger and she walked about three times faster than Noah. Literally. Noah is very deliberate, for lack of a better word. Until today. Today it's off to the races (though she would still definitely win).
Here's a photo of Noah and his speedy friend Miranda. It was hard to catch them both in the same frame.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)