Hilarity

Noah has officially become a walker. He took 10 steps today at daycare. He walks with his hands above his head, like a little monkey.

Additionally, Noah is completely hilarious. I never want to work anymore because he is so fun to hang out with.

Examples:

1. He can tell jokes. The other day he looked at Grant and I and yelled "BA" then started cracking up. He also will laugh at burps and farts. Typical guy.

2. He is obsessed with produce, in particular apples and oranges. It has gotten so that I can't take him into the produce aisle in grocery stores because he has to be given something to hold. But then he bites off chunks of apple or orange rind and I have to pry his mouth open in the middle of the store with him screaming his head off. I generally find this embarrassing, which is why I try to avoid the aisle. He is also able to recognize, and will crawl to a spaghetti squash if prompted.

3. He loves watching airplanes, helicopters and buses. He also loves watching people mowing lawns and using leaf blowers. If Grant or I aren't watching any of these things with him, he will point and grunt to bring them to our attention.

4. One of Noah's toys is a spinning wheel that has letters and animals on it. It also sings the ABC song. Whenever I sing Noah the ABCs, he will crawl and find this toy and spin it to make it sing. This is amazing to me because the tune of the ABCs is different on the toy (a jazzier kind of version) compared to the traditional way that I sing it, but he is able to associate the two anyway. I can barely believe it, but I have tested this several times. So much fun!

Noah's first steps

We have been in Seattle scoping out where we might be living come January. While there, Noah practiced taking his first steps (around Sept. 17). His balance is been getting better and he had been standing solo increasingly well just before we left. Noah definitely wants to walk and is exceedingly proud of himself when he does it. The end of this video is pretty representative of how Noah 'walks' in that it is more of a step and a lunging fall. To date the most he's done is 3 consecutive steps. It is difficult to define whether he is actually walking. One of our friends claimed that in order for him to consider his own kid a walker, he needed to take 5 consecutive directional steps. I feel that that bar is too high. But we'll just say that Noah took his first steps but is not quite a toddler.

Ferberizing

We caved and Ferberized Noah. It was an awesome decision. We clearly fall into the category of parents that desire to be a 'No Cry' family, but clearly are a Ferber family. Noah cries for 10-30 minutes going to bed and he usually wakes up 1-2 times per night and cries for an additional 10-15 minutes. I actually don't feel this is too bad, maybe because this way I get more than 5 hours of continuous sleep at a time. Any guilt I had about doing this has quickly gone away with each additional hour of sleep I obtain. Selfish perhaps, but necessary, and I will definitely do this with my next kid!

First major illness as a mom

I am just getting over having Strep throat. It really knocked me out. I was out of work for nearly a week and Grant did nearly all Noah-related duties because I didn't want to get Noah sick (though I actually think I got it from him as what adult randomly gets Strep throat?).

Moms really can't get sick. It is no good. It was breaking my heart not playing or cuddling Noah. And he wanted me to carry him so badly and would stand up holding my legs and reach up for me. It was terrible. I still was breastfeeding, but I would wear a mask, which he found to be hilarious, so that was really the only contact I got with my little boy.

Additionally, I feel that Noah is kind of a sickly kid, so I really can't be missing a week of work being sick myself. I am having serious guilt about working because between job interviews, Noah being sick, and me being counter-sick I haven't worked a full week in a while. Not good.

The silver lining in all of this is that Grant did a great job as primary parent. Grant and Noah really bonded while I was sick and are extra good buddies now. Cute.

Noah's blocks

Noah's favorite toy are these wooden alphabet blocks.

We keep the blocks in a wooden storage tray that we slide under his crib. There isn't any reason to keep them there except that is where I first put them when he was too little to play with them and then I kind of forgot about them for a long time. But now Noah knows that is where his blocks are kept, so first thing in the morning when we put him on the floor to play he'll crawl over to the crib and pull his blocks out. It's so cute. Even when we went to Maine and were gone for nearly a week, when we got back in the middle of the night, Noah went straight for the blocks storage place.

I am trying to get him to say "blocks" as his first non-mama or dada word. Currently he'll hold up a block and say "Ba," which I can imagine is meaningful, though admittedly he'll say that syllable at any random point in time. In my defense, though, my mother interpreted the "Ba" syllable as meaning: book, butterfly, balloon, and several other words starting with the letter b when my brother was a baby. I'm going to keep pretending that he means it.

Noah and Grandpa video

Grandpa Randy and Uncle Tyler were in California last weekend for a baseball tournament in Compton. We drove up and watched a little bit of Tyler's game on Saturday, then Grandpa came down to Corona del Mar while Tyler and his team went to Knott's Berry.

Noah really, really loves Uncle Tyler, and he kept preferentially crawling to him, which was making Grandpa jealous. However, Noah really loves Grandpa too, as you can see from this video. I think the feeling is mutual.

New Noah video