Oh-Bla-Di

: : We’re big fans of Playmobil around here and Ava was gifted a few sets for her birthday.  We don’t have this one, though, and that’s maybe a total fail.  Be sure to read the customer reviews.  Hysterical.

: : from the back of the van, gesturing to a man on a motorcycle

Ava: “Mommy, see that guy?  He’s a bad, bad guy.”

Mommy: “He’s a bad guy?  How do you know he’s a bad guy?”

Ava: “See that thing on his head?  That makes him very bad.”

Guess she doesn’t really approve of motorcycle helmets.

: : Noah is laughing!  It’s the cutest sound ever.  He did it for the first time yesterday and it was so very sweet.  He’s such a happy kid!  Love, love that baby boy.

: : Oh, the rollercoaster of living with a three year old.  One minute she’s talking your head off telling you neat things and the next she’s flipping out about goodness knows what.  Sometimes it’s frustrating, but sometimes it’s just downright funny.  Especially in a video viewed a few weeks later.  

: : We swapped child care with the Hoffmans this weekend so that the adults could do Christmas shopping together for the kiddos.  Such a wonderful thing to get to actually go choose a gift, rather than to order online or to shop solo.  I think it’s a new tradition in the making!

: : I have jury duty on Wednesday.  Half hoping that I really do have to go and that they’re really inefficient so that I get to spend hours sitting in a waiting room somewhere reading Harry Potter.  Of course, more than willing to do my civic duty also.  

Since Halloween, this house has been busy. It’s hard to believe that it’s the middle of November already but, I swear, I wrote the last post, blinked and now we’re here. In the interest of catching up on the last two weeks…here’s a little list of ten.

1. To get things started right, how about this charmer of a guy? He smiles on demand these days and we’re just dangerously close to laughter.

2. It’s hard to believe, but Noah will be three months old in a week and a half. He’s turning into a really fun baby too. He’s really interested in faces and expressions these days. When he wants to play, he’s going to coo and smile at you until you play too. The mobile above his changing table is airplanes and he loves that thing. If we bat it and make it dance, he gets ridiculously excited. Legs kick, fists flail and he almost laughs. Love that.

3. Noah will be three months old in a week and a half, but Ava will be three years old in one week. How is that even possible? I can’t believe that she’s gotten so big. The time has flown by.

4. Three seems so big to me. Maybe that’s why we thought that a big girl bike was just thing for such a day. Matt’s been hard at work refurbishing our Craigslist find (couldn’t see spending hundreds on a bike that will soon be outgrown) and it’s all done and ready to go. Can’t show the whole thing until the big reveal, but here’s a sneak peek.

5. Last week was Veterans Day and, while we spent the actual holiday having a jammies and TV kind of day, the day before was super busy. Matt did drop off and pick up of the kiddos so that I could orchestrate the first-ever Veterans Day celebration at UNLV. I am totally jazzed with how it turned out, the response, and the momentum the Rebel VETS program is gaining. One of my favorite things about the day was the team of people who helped me (at 0730…a big deal for non-military types!) line the quad with over 400 flags.

6. Saturday, we attended Aviation Nation 2010…the annual airshow at Nellis Air Force Base. The weather was so much better than last year and we only went for the fast fliers this year. We had a blast! Noah slept the whole time we were there…like a good Air Force baby the jet noise didn’t even faze him. During the Thunderbirds show, Ava kept saying that she wanted to get down from Matt’s shoulders so that she could go “hop in the jet.” I’m thinking Matt’s going to end up getting checked out in little airplanes sooner than we’d originally thought.

7. Today on the way to school, Ava was reenacting one of her favorite scenes from Peep & the Big Wide World. She told me she was going to show her friends how to do the scene when she got to school. I acknowledged her in a sort of offhand way. She was serious. The second we walked into her classroom she called for the attention of her friends and then did her little bit. When that went unacknowledged, she started over. Apparently this lasted a while since Ms. Jewel said her feelings were a little hurt that her friends were running instead of listening to her on the playground.

8. My good friend and fellow Bond girl, Carrie, has been ill for nearly a month with something that the doctors can’t quite diagnose. We’re very worried about her but are really hopeful they’ll find a remedy soon. Wish we could be in Florida to help and visit. Send her good thoughts, please.

9. I’m working some extra hours this week to be able to take all next week off, so Matt’s been pitching in extra around here. Sometimes that means he’s got to multitask. Star Trek movies on Netflix, a baby in the laundry basket and folding diapers is how he rolls.

10. With all the other activity around here, we’re getting geared up for a birthday party, Thanksgiving and an anniversary next week. It’s going to be super-duper busy, but I’m so looking forward to all the family, food, and fun coming our way next week. Can’t wait!

Here are five fun things for Friday.

Fun Thing #1:

Ava and I have become addicted to a new-to-us music group called Rabbit.  You should go give it a listen.  It’s happy, it’s peppy, it makes a 30 mile commute a sort of fun thing to do.  My favorite is Ladybug.  This album is awesome because Ava will even let me sing along with it.  

Fun Thing #2:

At the same time we discovered Rabbit, Ava and I also started digging a kids’ album called Do Fun Stuff, Vol. 1.  Rabbit does several of the songs on this compilation, too.  Seriously fun, not annoying kids music.  Ava’s favorite is “Potty Time”!  She knows all the words and sings along.  It’s the second song on the album…she only listens to the first song because I make her wait to get to “Potty Time.”

Fun Thing #3:

We’ve had super good luck with Craigslist in the last two weeks.  We scored a bike for Ava’s birthday for $10 and a double jogger stroller for $50.  The bike is going to get a fresh coat of paint, a new seat, a bell and a basket this weekend.  The jogger was the key element to a very fun walk the kiddos and I took earlier this week.  Hooray for turning others’ old stuff into our new fun stuff!

Fun Thing #4:

Ava can spell her name.  She did that for me for the first time last night.  And, now, she can write it too!  She learned that within five minutes of spelling it for me.  So, so proud of our smart girl.

Fun Thing #5:

The boy, he talks.  And smiles.

We’re really in the new, post-baby schedule now.  Ava’s school hours have been cut back to just 25 a week, so that means that Fridays are no longer the solo-Mommy, get-projects-done days of yore.  But, I do have a little time during naps to post an update, so here it is…in list form, of course.

1.  Noah goes to his first day of school on Monday.  I’m both sad and totally ok with the idea.  He’ll be there for five hours, four days a week…same as Ava.  The hours he’s at school will include two naps and about an hour and a half of awake time.  I’m sad to miss that hour and a half, since I know it’ll become oh so important over the next several months, but I feel ok with these hours because we’re basically paying for him to have a safe place to sleep while I go to work.  Remind me of this next week.

2.  Noah can go to school and that means that he’s six weeks old.  Seriously, where did six weeks go?  Can’t believe it’s gone so quickly.  I remember that amount of time taking so much longer when Ava was a newborn.  He’s getting so much bigger and so much more active.  He even talks to us sometimes!  He laughs in his sleep all the time, but we haven’t seen any awake laughs since he was a week old.  Can’t wait to hear that again.

3.  We finally got photos printed from the first few weeks of being a family of four.  I’ve hung them up in all the places I’ve been planning for them to be for months.  It’s so nice to see the faces of all the people I love as I walk around doing chores and stuff.  My last maternity leave project was to create some more space for photos since we have more faces and more photos we love.  I just finished this project (about 10 minutes ago) so this maybe the fastest completion-to-blog project ever.  Best part of the project is that it was completely free!  It’s not so bad to not be able to afford expensive artwork when you’ve got such priceless people to look at instead.

4.  Speaking of priceless people, on Wednesday night, I made chili-mac for dinner.  It was pretty good considering that five minutes before I started cooking I had no idea what I was going to make.  Anyway, Ava was having none of it.  So, I made her sit at the table until she ate the small portion I pushed to the side of her plate.  An hour and a half later, she still hadn’t eaten any.  She had, however, conducted several circle time sessions with her imaginary students.  Can’t punish a kid with an overactive imagination by leaving her alone.  She just makes up friends!

“Ava, what does a three-year-old look like?”

5.  Matt’s been at work until at least 6:30 every night this week, but he was home a couple of mornings to help out with that end of the deal.  Can’t decide which I prefer – help in the morning, especially after a fairly sleepless night, or help in the evening after a long afternoon with the kiddos?  If I’m really honest, I’d have to say that I want both.  It would be awesome to actually see him in the morning and still know that the kids will see him before going to bed at night.  Maybe at the next job…

And a bonus #6…

While I was upstairs feeding Noah just now, Ava was down the hall settling in to a nap by singing to herself.  Someone rang the doorbell and set Libby off.  Being trapped under a tiny human, there wasn’t a thing I could do about any of it.  Ava’s response to the barking?  She started howling.  Yay for Fridays!

Happy weekend, everyone!

So, we’re two weeks in to this two kids thing and it’s going pretty ok so far. Of course, we’ve had lots of help in the form of delivered meals and visiting grandparents, but Noah’s also been a pretty chill kiddo. Since Noah’s hit a milestone that requires a doctor’s visit (so many of those in our future!), I thought it might be time for a little list to share all about him.

At two weeks, Noah…

*Is a champion eater. No issues and that has made all the difference in my frustration levels. Feeding was the most challenging part of the first two weeks with Ava, and I’m so grateful that we’ve been able to work this important function out so quickly.

*Definitely looks like he’s gained a good bit of weight…and, we found out at his appointment today that he has!  Noah weighed in at 8lbs, 12 oz, and was 21.25 in.  Baby boy is getting big!

*Is staying awake for longer stretches during the day. Doozy’s now able to keep his eyes (which we think are going to be blue) open for hour long stretches two or three times a day. We try to make sure one of those hours is between 7pm and 9pm.

*Goes to bed at 9pm and usually wakes up to be fed between 2am and 3am. Glorious. It’s not even so bad that he’s usually up at 6am, since that’s when we get up with Ava anyway.

*Is getting more comfortable with the idea that his arms are attached to his body and, sometimes, they flail around. He sleeps in a Woombie at night (thanks for the tip, Sara!) which seems to keep him very happy, but he’s getting better at sleeping unswaddled during the day.

*Has giggled at us….twice! Noah is very ticklish and will laugh when tickled. He also smiles quite a bit. And, yes, I’m certain it’s not just gas.

*Sleeps right through his sister’s hooting and hollering, but also doesn’t seem to mind her Eskimo kisses and affection when he’s awake.

To sum it up, we sure love our little guy and we’re excited that he’s growing so well and so happily!  Looking forward to sharing more again soon!