Isaiah at 18 Months

Isaiah was 18 months on March 22, so I wanted to record a few things about him at this moment in time.

-He's 25lbs and just shy of 32 inches tall.

-He still only has 8 teeth.  His molars have been huge bruised "marbles" under his gums for MONTHS, but just now one is actually cutting through so that part of it is through the gums.  The other ones are still just bruises.

-He gets up between 2 and 4 times a night to nurse.  It's just recently he started sometimes getting up only 2 times.  I love those nights.  But I usually end up laying awake for 2 or 3 hours anyway.

-We cosleep, and we love it and have no plans to stop.

-He doesn't talk much, but he does say Mama, Dada, Noah, more, no, yah, ball, block, Papa, Nana, baby, bird, moo, cheep, and maybe a few other things.

-He likes to build now, not just destroy.

-His "lovey" is a panda that Noah built him at Build-A-Bear, named "Pandy".  He ADORES Pandy, which is especially cute because Noah made him for him. I don't think I have a picture of it, unfortunately.

-He hasn't been sick that many times.  4 or 5 times total, one of them being right now (we all have a cold except Justin).

-He's a super smiley, friendly baby, but he is not easy.  He is pretty high maintenance and requires a lot of attention.  But he's a toddler, so yeah.  I expect that.

-I've always said that 12-18 months is my least favourite age (for so many reasons), and literally just in the 1.5 weeks before Isaiah turned 18 months he suddenly got a little easier.  Up until that point he still wanted to be held or worn every second, even while I was cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, etc.  Right before turning 18 months he suddenly preferred to play than to be worn.  Nothing else got easier, really, but that made a HUGE difference.

-He is a MAJOR STINKER.

-He loves to strut around like a peacock on the dining room table.

-He's not a "good eater" even though he always wants to eat.  He just doesn't actually ingest a whole lot, and he's rather picky.  He still gets about 95% of his nutrition from breastmilk, which is fine.  It's healthier than most things he could eat anyway.

-In the tub he is constantly doing this (don't mind the old lady tiles):

-He continues to be a hitter, scratcher, pincher, and biter. He's always done these things, ever since he was an infant. It's usually not even malicious, but it HURTS! We are just finally starting to make some headway with the whole "Be gentle, be gentle" and petting things instead of hitting. And finally when we say "No biting! Just kissing." He will kiss whatever he was about to bite. Up until now those things didn't work. And interestingly, if he's hitting or biting and we just say "No hitting!" or "No biting!" it will make him do it even more. Every single time.

Trying to bite for no reason:

Still trying to bite...

A split second before I yelled "ISAIAH NOOO!!" and he smashed Noah on the head with the old diaper sprayer:

-He's a HUGE gym rat, and pretty much his favourite place to be is in our garage gym.

In short, he's "challenging", but he's a pretty awesome kid!  We like him :)

Train Table!

You may remember that at the beginning of potty training we promised Noah a train table once he started pooping on the potty.  This seemed like a great reward, since Noah could not be any more obsessed with trains!  When we started potty training, the train table we wanted to get was on sale.  I kind of thought the poop thing might take awhile, so we didn't buy it at the time.

And then it took like 3 days and Noah was 100% potty trained (except for while sleeping, although he only pees in his nap diaper like once a week, and he's had a fair number of completely dry overnight diapers as well).

The problem was, the train table was no longer on sale.  And as thrilled as I was to have Noah potty trained, I did not want to pay $225 for a train table.  I also did not want the crummy train table that went on sale right after the good one went off sale.  It only cost $65, but it was basically a figure 8 track on a small table.  Too boring.

Last Friday I was heading into town to cash a cheque, and I thought I would quickly check the Toys R Us flyer to see if they had the train table that we were waiting for on sale.

They did!  And they even had it in espresso, which they don't normally carry, so it matches the rest of the furniture in my living room.

Honestly, this thing is so massive that I think I would actually be hating it if it were in natural wool. I'm not a hater of natural wood, but it wouldn't match anything in my living room.

In the interest of keeping things real, I should admit that this train table has not been that neat since I took this picture. Noah really enjoys making his trains crash off the tracks, so he's constantly taking things apart. 

 He has spent hours with it everyday. He's had it for almost a full week, but every morning when he walks into the living room he gasps, smiles, and says "Whoa, what I GET?! It's a train table!"

Onto the pictures.

Being introduced to the table after getting up from his nap... (we had spent the two + hours before his nap putting it together with him in the room (wow, that makes things more difficult), and then the 45 minutes he was sleeping we finally finished):

Smiling as he discovers the different noises the table makes:

In the mornings the sun comes through one of our windows and shines right onto a spot that Noah frequently finds himself in while he's playing with the train table.  So one morning he requested his sunglasses:

He frequently sings Thomas the Train songs to himself as he plays:

Checking out the roundhouse:

This is what I got when I asked him to smile:

I have to admit that having this giant train table in the middle of my living room is not totally okay with me.  I look forward to the day when Noah would actually want to go downstairs by himself to play with it.  Alas, that day is not now, so in the middle of the living room it will stay.

I am really happy with the purchase, though.  It's took bad it took a good month after he was fully potty trained for us to finally be able to reward him!

A Fun Friday

We were supposed to have a playdate all morning today, but found out at 9am that Noah's little friend Ethan had a fever.  I made the mistake of telling Noah that Ethan was coming over around 7am (when he wasn't due to arrive until 10).  Normally I don't tell him someone is coming until 5-10 minutes before they're supposed to arrive, because Noah loves having visitors and he'll just wait by the door for them for a long time, or constantly ask when they're coming.  I follow the same routine if we're going anywhere, too, otherwise he's following me around as I'm trying to finish getting things together just begging to leave right away.

Anyway, since I had built up Noah's expectations about the day, I had to replace the playdate with something fun.  Strawberry picking it was!

This was actually our second time going strawberry picking.  We went with my Mom last Tuesday as well.  Noah loves strawberry picking.

I hadn't gotten around to posting the pictures from our last trip, and I didn't take any this time, so I'll post the pictures from the first trip to illustrate:

The weather was much cooler last time!  Today it was over 90 degrees... definitely no hoodies!

Noah does pick some berries off the bushes, but his main activity while strawberry picking is picking the strawberries out of my container and putting them into his.

Showing me his strawberries:

So, back to today.  After strawberry picking we came home and each ate a big bowl of strawberries.  Then we went swimming for an hour and a half.

Today was a big day for Noah - he is now swimming all around the pool all on his own!  Wearing a life jacket, of course, but without holding onto my hands or anything.  He will swim the 18 feet across the pool totally independently.  And man, he is incredibly proud of himself.  It's completely adorable. (Obviously I have no pictures of this, since I was alone with him and was in the pool).

Even after an hour and a half of exerting himself while swimming, he only slept for half an hour.  After waking up at 6:30 am (and going to bed at 9pm), and not going down for his nap until 1:45.  The kid is super human.

Since he woke up from his nap early, we were able to bring the van to Justin at work so he could bring some stuff home (we had van shenanigans today), so that he wouldn't have to drive home and then drive back to work with the van.

After that we ran some errands, played with the hose, and then went swimming for another hour and a half.  Noah demonstrated his swimming skills for his Dad once he was done training his client.

We came inside for a little while, and then decided to go out for dinner.  I have been really tired today, so not having to cook was a nice treat for me!

After getting home Noah wanted to blow bubbles for awhile, so we headed to the back deck:

It looks like he got some sun, despite me applying SPF 60 to him twice today.

Blowing bubbles... His mouth looks like that because he basically makes the "Fffffff" sound in order to blow the air out.  It's hilarious, but pretty effective.

Looking longingly at the pool... apparently 3 hours of swimming in one day wasn't enough for him:

Waiting to pop Daddy's bubble:

Thinking it's pretty funny:

We had a full, busy, fun day, despite our cancelled playdate.  I am thoroughly enjoying my last summer with just Noah, and he really seems to be, too!  Normally I love the idea of summer but end up staying inside a lot because of the heat and humidity.  This summer, with the pool, we are able to have a lot of fun outside!  I am so glad we put the pool in last year, despite the expense and some of the annoyances.  It has seriously improved our quality of life... I'm really not sure what Noah and I would fill our time with on these hot summer days if we couldn't go out to the backyard and go swimming!

Fun in the Spring Sun

(I've been awake since 5:45am.  I couldn't get back to sleep because I'm too nervous/excited about my ultrasound this afternoon.  I'll be glad when it's over!  Because of the early wake up, I decided to get a blog post done before Noah wakes up.)

Besides that one incredibly hot day a couple of weeks ago, the weather here has not been very summer-like.  The temperatures most days are in the teens (I always have to look up conversions since the majority of my readers are American... that's in the 50's or low 60's, fyi).  However, when it is sunny, our backyard is a lot warmer than any temperature reading you'd find online.  For one thing, the little town where I live is almost always 5 degrees warmer than the city where our parents live 20 minutes away.  They have the lake, which cools them down.  And then our backyard is usually at least a few degrees warmer than our front yard, simply because it's so sheltered.  This is exactly why I wanted a pool, by the way.  In summertime our backyard is absolutely unbearable.  In fact, our whole town is pretty much unbearable.  But my backyard is worse.

I digress.  The point is that despite the still coolish temps we've been getting, our sheltered backyard has allowed us to pretend it's already summer!  And boy, have we been busy pretending!

The water was 57 degrees this day, but that didn't stop Noah!

This picture slays me:

I love the way he blows bubbles:

"Look at my bubbles!!":

"I wanna feel it...":

"It's cold!":

On another day I decided to bust out a kiddie pool, as I'm not too fond of going in frigid water (although it is up to 64 degrees now!):

Noah still thought it was pretty cold:

Those last two are iPod pictures, hence the poorer quality.

Anyway, days like we've been having are one of my very favourite parts of being a stay at home mom.  Having no "schedule" I have to follow, going outside when Noah wants to go outside, running around in the grass in bare feet because we had no shoes by the back door, getting about 10 sunburns already by May 11 (man that sun has been strong!)... I am loving life lately!  I am looking forward to a long summer growing our baby and hanging out with the most awesome toddler ever created.  Cherishing my last days as a Mom of One.