I know, I know....(UPDATED W/ PICS!)

It's been too long since I posted! I must admit, when Noah's down for his naps (my usual post time) I'm either snoozing along with him, or trying to get something else done that I just didn't have the energy to do before. :) Well, he's napping now, and I realized it was time to post. We've been busy, busy, busy lately. We've been gone every week in July! Not always for the whole week, last week we were only gone one night (but 3 days!) but other weeks it's been for several nights. We actually leave early Wednesday for a week long trip up north...yay!!

I can't believe how big Noah is. It seems like he's doing something new everyday! He's definitely a boy...loves to climb, run, play, get dirty, and is very daring. He's recently started using a fork to feed himself (such a big boy :)) and has pretty much decided that baby food is for, well, babies. I still try and sneak some in, but he much prefers food that he can feed himself.

His vocabulary is ever growing, too. He attempts new words frequently, but many times I'm the only one who understands what he is saying. He has recently started calling his little girl friend, Sienna, "Nena". He also says, banana, apple, night-night, and of course the others that he has been saying for awhile.

His top two teeth FINALLY broke through last week. :) Many of his younger friends were waiting for him to catch up. :)

He still loves the water (especially splashing in the water at bath time). We have to try and keep him sitting down as much as possible. He'd walk, slip and slide the whole time if he could!

While we were up in the mountains last week, he tried his very first ice cream sandwich. He absolutely loved it (surprise, surprise!) And when he was all done:
He needed something to wash it down with:

Thanks, mom! That was delicious:

Noah loved riding on daddy's shoulders...the world looks so different up there:

My little baby looked like such a big boy with his hoody and jeans on!

We visited Hylke's family on Saturday. His aunt and uncle are visiting from the Netherlands. We had a wonderful visit and look forward to seeing them again in a couple weeks. Noah loves his new cousin, Olivia. He just had to give her some kisses:

Isn't she such a doll:

I'm feeling well. Nothing too interesting to report. I'm really blessed that my pregnancies are fairly easy. Besides the fatigue and occasional nausea, I'm doing great. (and who doesn't experience atleast a bit of both? :))

Well, I'm off to pack for our trip!

Animal sounds, words and signs

We've been reading several books about animals lately and Noah has loved every minute of it. We've read some of them so many times that he "reads" the book to us. Well, I guess he doesn't quite read the book to us, but he looks at what animal is on the page, says the name of the animal and then flips the page. So far he knows:
Dog: Woof, Woof
Cat: Maaw (high pitched voice)
Cow: Mooooooooooooooooo
Chicken: ba, ba, ba (bok, bok, bok)
Sheep: baaaaaaa
Pig: hmmm...he attemps a snort...it's pretty cute

He's also really started trying to say some new words. We visited our friends Mark, Amber and baby Joel, this week and he knew all of their names:

Amber: baber or bamber
Mark: Mar
Joel: Doe and Doel

He's also been using his signs so much. I'm really glad that I spent time teaching him the signs. There was a period of time when I wondered if it would really work, but for a couple months he's been using them...he's been consistently using them for the past month or so. Here are the signs he uses most:

Please
Thank You
Milk
All Done
More
Eat
Water

I may introduce a couple more, but these work well for now. Yesterday our friend Mark was watching Joel and Noah so that Amber and I could visit our friends and their new baby. Mark called and said that Noah was using all of these signs at lunch and he had no idea what they meant! Hehe.

One Year Pictures

Sorry I didn't post these earlier!

Reading

Noah loves to read books. This past week we (Noah and I) visited some good friends while Hylke was at summer camp and one thing that we did a lot of was read books. Noah got everyone involved! If I was done reading a book, he'd grab another and take it to someone else. I love that he enjoys books; reading is something that we'll continue to make an important part of our day!

I'm back....

Sorry that it has taken me so long to post. I don't really have much time now (I'm trying to pack for our long weekend to my parent's house) but I thought I'd post a couple of pics for you. We will be out of town for the next week and a half, I'll try and post some while we're gone, and certainly when we get home.

Can I just say how much I love Trader Joes?? I LOVE TRADER JOES! First, their prices are outstanding (for the most part) the quality is excellent, the food is fresh and healthier than much of what you may find in another grocery store. Our TJ's is right next to Von's; I'm able to get what I need from Von's that I can't get from TJ's and take advantage of the double coupons that Von's offers. Anyway, one of my new favorites from TJ's (and I've found it other places, but at TJ's first) is this:

My parents actually introduced me to this cereal, and I just love it. Want to try something new, and yummy??? Go get yourself a box!

Here are a couple pics of our sweet Noah. I have to warn you, one of this pictures may be a bit shocking, but I'll explain.

First, daddy had fun pulling Noah around in the laundry basket this morning:

Noah and I have had so much fun at our Mommy and Me swim class. Noah loves the water, and now loves going under the water. He jumps off the side of the pool to me (and goes under) and even dives down for toys (with mama, of course). He's had so much fun seeing his friend Sienna (two weeks younger) every day the past two weeks! Today Sienna and her mommy invited me and Noah over for dinner after our swim class; we had so much fun. We decided to give the kiddos a bath and get them all ready for bed, but since I hadn't planned on going anywhere after the class, I didn't have any jammies for Noah. Sienna so kindly lent Noah some jammies....don't tell daddy:It sure beat having to wake him up to change his clothes when we got home. :) I'm curious what Hylke's reaction will be when he sees Noah in the morning...haha.

More later!

Some of my favorite things

Well, some of Noah's. Here are some of Noah's favorites:

1. Dogs- Noah loves dogs and if we are with a dog he will go around saying, "dog" the rest of the day. He knows what a dog says ("ruff, ruff") and will follow the dog around wherever it goes. He doesn't mind being licked all over, and doesn't really care if they bark. In fact, if we're inside and hear a dog bark, Noah immediately looks at the window and says, "dog!". The only trouble we now have is that any animal is a dog. He has said "cat" a time or two, but dog is definitely the animal of choice. We were watching a horse the other day and Noah looked at me with his big brown eyes and said, "DOG!"

2. Balls- Noah also loves balls. One of the reason I had lots of different balls at his party is that he just loves balls. He will carry them, throw them, lay on them, and play with them. Again, if he spots a ball, even in the distance, he will let everyone know that there's a ball around. A couple days ago I was in the grocery store getting an onion, as soon as I grabbed it Noah looked at it and said, "ball". No, sweetie, not everything round is a ball...but that's ok. :)

3. Other kids- Noah loves his friends. He gets excited when we are with other kids and he can't wait to get down to play. I'm trying to teach him how to be gentle (especially with the girls) but it's a work in progress. We've had so much fun playing with Rachel and Luke the past couple of days. We're going to go swimming with them after naptime.

4. Food- Noah loves anything and everything! I'm so glad that he's not a picky eater. I'm trying to expose him to as many different foods as possible, even if I don't like it. He just tried PB this week (dr. ok'd it at his 1 year) and he loves it! He absolutely LOOOVES yogurt and enjoys helping daddy eat his every morning. He also likes peas, greenbeans, sweet potatoes, cheese, cottage cheese, turkey, watermelon, banana....I could go on and on!

5. Sleep- Noah is a great sleeper. We have had our weeks for sure (teething isn't very fun) but for the most part he sleeps very well. He takes great naps and doesn't fuss at bedtime...just turns over and goes to sleep. We're trying to get him to stay up just a bit later now that it's light out longer...but he's usally in bed between 6:30 and 7pm.

6. Ma ma and Da Da- Noah loves his mommy and daddy. We have soooo much fun with him. He's getting such a fun, sweet little personality. I love to see it developing more and more each day. He knows when he's being funny and loves to laugh at himself. He loves laughing at his mommy and especially his daddy.

7. Songs- Noah loves to sing songs with us. Recently he's being doing some hand motions to, Itsy-bitsy Spider. As soon as I start to sing it, he does the hand motions for "down came the rain". He also knows a dutch song, "Klap eens in je handjes" In the song you clap your hands and then put them on your head and then you rock your head from side to side. It is so cute watching him do it. We did it with him for awhile and then one time I was singing and he did it by himself. He even knew when to go from clapping to having his hands on his head....wow, I'm such a proud mommy. :)

8. Water- Noah loves to swim and loves taking baths. We've been out in the pool several times a week. He likes to sit on the side and "jump" to me on 3.

What do YOUR little ones like??

Our little walker

Noah is officially a walker! He's actually been walking for a couple weeks now, I just haven't posted a video. At the beginning of May he started taking more and more steps together; by the week of May 11, he was taking 12-15 steps and it just progressed from there. We have so much fun with him walking, though we have faced a couple of challenges. The main challenge is that when he wants down, he wants down! He wants to walk around and explore everything himself!! Sometimes he's good about holding our hand, but if he wants to go explore something different, he'll let us know. :) Here's a short video of our walker.

First Birthday Party (part two)

I'm using this post (and last) to journal some of what I did at Noah's party while it's still fresh in my mind. I'm sure I'll come back to it and make some hard copy notes so that I can remember what worked, at what didn't!

The Food:

We decided that grilling hamburgers and hot dogs would work the best for us. Our friend, Kirk, offered to be the main man at the grill. That helped free us up to mingle with friends and family. I had a table set aside with all the fixings and a separate table for chips, macaroni salad and watermelon. We ordered a Costco cake for everyone and Noah had his own special cake from Albertsons (a FREE first birthday cake) that he could dig into (and he DID)! The food worked great and we had plenty for everyone.

Noah's cake:

Noah enjoying his cake:

As you can imagine we had to give Noah a quick bath (in the sink :)) right away...he had frosting everywhere. I'm glad I decided to strip him down to his diaper, it saved his clothes from the impending mess...I don't think a bib would have protected him all that well.

Decorations:

This is where I had some fun with the monkey and banana theme. I had brown table covers, yellow tableware and brown/yellow napkins. On the table with the chips/watermelon and macaroni salad I had two inflatable monkeys, one on either side. I got these for $1.99 at Party America. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the decorations until after everyone had eaten...here's a picture of the table after some wear and tear:

On the round tables (that guests ate around) I had a bouquet of brown and yellow balloons tied down with a bunch of bananas. I loved that idea. It also worked well when the little ones needed a snack. I saw several kiddos eating bananas by the end!! I figured that I'll just make banana bread with the leftovers...a task for today, maybe. I was also able to find a Mylar balloon that was a bunch of bananas. I alternated having one of those in the bouquets.

I used a die-cut machine to cut several monkeys to hang from the patio cover...I forgot about them until it was too late! Anyone need some die-cut monkeys?? :) I'll save a few for Noah's scrapbook, but I have several left if anyone needs some.

The friends:

I had Noah right around the same time that several of my friends had their first (or second or third :)). In fact, there were 7 other babies Noah's age and 3 of them are within 2 weeks of Noah! Here are the faces of some of Noah's friends and family:

Noah and his cousin Lily:

Eva and her Mommy and Daddy:

Luke and Rachel some of Noah's favorite playmates:

Noah's cousin Ryleigh and friend Gracie:

Noah's friend Karis:
Noah's cousin Isabella:
Sweet Sienna:
Noah's buddy Mason:Noah's buddy Joel:

Check out this picture taken when Noah was 1 week old:


Yep, Noah, Joel and Mason!

First Birthday Party (part one)

Yesterday we celebrated Noah's first birthday with friends and family at his first birthday party. We had so much fun! I was a little nervous because Noah had been sick the past three days and unfortunately his naps yesterday were about 1/2 hour each. He usually takes 2 naps that are between 1 1/2 and 2 hours and occasionally a 45 catnap in the evening and he is in bed by 7 pm. Yesterday, he took 3 naps that were 1/2 hour and was obviously not feeling well. I now know the remedy for his infirmities...a big party with lots of balls and lots of friends!! As soon as he was outside he forgot how yucky he was feeling. He had some moments, but for the most part he did OUTSTANDING!!!

I decided to go with a monkey/banana themed party...it wasn't overly thematic, but I wanted there to have bits and pieces of monkeys here and there. I ordered some super cute monkey invitations from vista print; I highly recommend them. Here is a picture of the invitations:

We had the party at our friends house. They have such a beautiful, large backyard with plenty of shade space, a covered patio and lots of room for kids to run around. Since both sides of the family came out for Noah's party along with all his other little buddies from church and Temecula, we needed some space for kids. We had 2 inflatable basketball hoops for the bigger kids, but the little ones had just as much fun! I think my niece Isabella has a promising future in sports:

We also had a mini pool filled with ball pit balls...the kids had alot of fun with that, especially with the younger ones. As you can see, the big kids enjoyed it too:

Add a couple soccer and beach balls and the kids had a fun time keeping busy. Since we work with youth, we had most of this stuff right at our fingertips, one of the great benefits of JH ministry...:). Finally, we had a friend come and do balloon animals/flowers/swords/hats for the kids. Now that was a big hit!! The oldest kids were just under 5 and I would say that the 2 1/2-5 year olds had the most fun with this. Thanks again, Adam, for coming out!! We love you!

Part 2 will be posted in the next day or so....