Noah and Mommy Adventures Part One

On Tuesday morning (Sept 21), I opened the back door to let Noah outside to play and was greeted by lovely, sticky heat! Yuck, I hate humidity.  What to do with a poor little Noah who just wants to run and play outside again.  Since John was working for the next two days and we had no plans at all, I decided to have a two day spur of the moment, Noah and Mommy adventure days.  So on Tuesday morning, we went to play at the new indoor bounce place in Chandler called, The Play Factory.  Noah had a blast and so did I.  He was kind of hesitant at first, but then when he got comfortable, he was unstoppable. It was fun to see him having so much fun and amazing to see how big he is getting climbing up the huge (I mean huge it was at least 25 feet tall) slide and going down without mommy or daddy.  He just loved it and I loved being able to watch him laugh and play.  Here are a few pictures of my crazy dare devil boy.

Noah the fearless.  

The tiny little green speck is my Noah.  

Noah asleep after too much fun.

After a nice long nap, we went over to Sandy's house, our wonderful next door neighbor, to thank her for all the wonderful gifts from her trip to Hawaii, included a very cute little outfit for Noah, which he modeled for her.  Then it was off to Target to check out the new Halloween decorations and have some Icee's and popcorn.  

Popcorn and Pumpkins, it's a perfect day. 

Not liking the witch at all.  

Part two coming soon.... 

Pirate's Life For My Noah Bear!

Okay, this is old news, but I had a friend who asked to see the pictures of Noah's "boy" cave as John calls it so I thought, lets get it on the blog for the memories.  So here is the story of the boy/pirate ship room/closet.  The chair below was given to us as a gift from my brother and sister in law.

Being the over active / caffeinated person that I am I thought, "What can I do with this chair?" Answer: Make a pirate room for Noah under the stairs, of course. Note: sane normal people would said, "What a nice chair, I shall put it next to the couch and it will be wonderful." Duly noted that I am not sane.  Here is a before picture of the room/closet.

Now a little bit of an explanation before the after pictures.  When you look at the room, the idea is for it to look like a pirate ship that you are sitting in.  The flags are the sails, the mast is in the middle of the closet and the brown on bottom is the boat.  I added parrots that are the red, orange, yellow, green blue and purple so Noah and I could work on our colors.  Noah and I painted the ship portion together (then we replaced the carpet) and we had the light installed by our wonderful handy man, Steve. Oh, and the chair that started this whole thing, well every pirate captain needs a captain's chair.
And here are the after pictures.

I know, I am crazy, but Noah loves it and thats all that matters to me, we had lots of fun painting together too, although, unless you are planning to replace the carpet, I recommend not letting the two year old "help" with the painting.  When Noah first saw his room completed he said"arrrghhh".  Love you much Captain Noah!

Fall is that you?

First Walk of the Fall. 

When you live in the desert southwest or as my sister calls it, the seventh circle of hell, fall's arrival is marked differently than in other more sane places to live.  I always look for the mornings and evenings to become cooler (when I say cooler, I mean it's 90 instead of 115, but it feels cool to this desert rat).  We can go to the park and play in the mornings and go on walks in the afternoons.  My beloved pumpkin spice lattes arrive at Starbucks and the Halloween decorations adorn the stores.  In my own way, I cheer fall on by decorating the house for fall faithfully every Labor Day.  When I finish decorating, I always say, fall is here (even if I am lying and I usually am).

However, I am thrilled to write that I think fall has arrived and not a day too soon.  I have delayed posting this, but after two perfectly wonderful mornings filled with playing in our yard and at the parks and two evening walks, I am ready to say we have made it for another year.  I always feel as if I had made it thru a long, sweaty and stinky journey when the fall arrives, I feel like a champion, I have made it yet again, summer has not won.  Maybe this is how someone feels after a long cold winter, I am not sure, I just know about scorching, burning summers.  I have always said we have reverse winters here, when the rest of the nation is suffering we are kicking back in shorts wondering why we ever thought about living anywhere but here, and when the rest of the nation is kicking back saying this is perfect, we are enduring heat that literally leaves you wondering if your brains just got cooked on the way to the grocery store.  

But it's over again for another year.  Yes, its still hot, as I write this its 100 degrees outside, but the evenings and the mornings are ours again to stroll and play outside and soon we will recapture the entire day and the heat will be but a steamy and searing memory. 

This morning, Noah and I took stock of our poor, neglected and overgrown garden.  I looked at my forgotten friends that have endured the heat without any extra TLC from this gardener.  I let my garden go as I was too tired of the heat to weed, nurture or fertilize them. I am surprised what survived and even flourished without any attention, except the occasional watering.  I have bell peppers, hot peppers, a watermelon or two and basil coming out of my ears.  I am too depressed or embarrassed to post pictures of the sad state of my garden, but now that fall is here, I have plans to weed, plant, mow, hedge and in general make a big, sloppy and muddy mess out of myself, John and Noah in the process of getting the garden back to a lovely and wonderful spot.  I will post pictures of the process, mud and all.  Maybe when it's back in tip top shape I will post pictures of the before, but not until it looks better.  Welcome back fall, my old friend! Lets go outside and play! 

Noah contemplates fall's arrival.

Here I go...

Well, this is my first blog post. I never thought that my life was very interesting, but I have been trying to keep track of all Noah's milestones. However, I have not been doing a very good job, so I decided to try blogging. Someday I hope that Noah will read these blogs and see how we spent our days together, how much fun we had and how blessed and lucky I was to be his mom and be able to stay home with him and watch him learn and grow.

One of the things that I want to remember is our nightly bed time routine. Every night around 6 or 6:30 we head upstairs to take a bath. After bath time we listen to some music on the Apple for about 15 minutes and have some milk. Noah's current favorites are anything by Norah Jones, Upside Down by Jack Johnson and Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones (thanks John=). After listening to music, we go into Noah's room, finish his milk, brush his teeth and then he wants to hear a story about Buzz and a story about Lightning McQueen. I have made up so many stories about Buzz and Lightning and sometimes I get bored and the stories go a little bit weird, like the one when Buzz went to Trader Joe's or when Norah Jones, Mick Jagger, Jack Johnson, Lightning and Buzz went to outer space to fight Zurg (if you don't know who Zurg is then you don't have a boy).

Then we do prayers and then I sing a song or two of Noah's choice. His current favorites are Baby Mine from Dumbo and the Winnie the Pooh song. He was on a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star kick for a couple weeks and I think I sang that about four thousand times so I am glad he changed up the rotation for me.

Then he goes into the crib. He started climbing out of the crib about a month ago. Since its a sleigh bed crib we flipped the crib around and moved it into a corner so he couldn't climb out the back or the front, so its working okay for now. The following must be in the crib for him to go to sleep (Noah if you are reading this 20 years from now, this is not a lie).

1. At least two blankets and one must be his blue Pottery Barn blanket.

2. One full sized pillow to lay on.

3. Mickey Mouse.

4. Both of his Dozy the Dolphins (one sings, the other one no longer sings due to numerous drops, beatings and extra Noah loving)

5. The Buzz Lightyear that talks (I remove him once he is asleep and if I forget its always strange to wake up to Buzz yelling , "Halt I order you to Halt!" at 3AM).

6. Now this is very strange, his bath book open to the page with the yellow submarine, no joke.

7. At least two bopshees (Noah's name for pacifiers).

8. His fish aquarium which attaches to the crib.

9. His CD player must also be playing the Ocean Waves CD.

10. His night light must be on, the overhead fan on full blast and the personal fan must be pointed at him on full blast.

I kiss him good night and he usually drifts off to sleep after a few calls out to mommy and daddy for an extra hug or kiss or song. For a long time I rocked him to sleep and it was very hard to get him into our current routine, because he was not used to be able to go to sleep without me or John rocking him. I am really glad that we changed his routine but I do miss having my little baby fall asleep in my arms. As I write this he is sleeping peacefully amid dolphins and blankets and I wouldn't change a thing about my funny little boy who makes me laugh and wonder what he will think of next.