april fun

we've had a busy april around here, especially our sweet 14 month old!  in addition to our continued search for a new house, keeping up with crazy work schedules, celebrating two family birthdays and easter, and generally maintaining some sort of routine, noah kept us entertained and hit many new milestones this month. the biggest one was....walking!

shortly after my last post noah decided he was willing to try walking more and more frequently, and by Easter noah was walking short distances across the living rooms and down hallways.  then, of course, one day he just decided that walking was faster and better than crawling and that was it, and he hasn't looked back since!  it's been so much fun to watch him toddle all around the house and explore his new-found freedom.  and, despite everyone's warnings, i don't feel like walking has really helped him be "into everything" anymore than he already was.  however, one of the other new things that noah learned this month was how to open drawers.  he was already proficient at opening cabinets and could do a fair job of rearranging the contents in our kitchen and bathrooms, which never made too much of a mess.  drawers are a whole other thing, though!  i realized this when noah opened an office drawer the other day and promptly began rearranging our highlighters, markers, pens and pencils -- eek! he now gets frustrated when we prevent him from opening a drawer, because he knows what fun lies inside.  fortunately, he hasn't yet figured out how to open highlighters or markers, so the messes that he makes are limited to things being strewn about the ground or "reorganized" in the drawer.

other noah favorites this month include trips to half-price books and/or barnes and noble.  noah has become increasingly more interested with books and will now spend time pulling his books off the shelves and flipping through the pages.  it's no wonder he enjoys book stores so much!  because of (or maybe the reason he has) his love of books, we read to him before nap time and bed time, and now try to keep a few books in his crib for him to look through before he falls asleep and when he wakes up.  it's adorable to hear him talking through the pages after naptimes or for a few minutes before he ultimately cuddles up with lovey and passes out :)
noah is also communicating more and more, which is wonderful to see and hear.  he understands so much now that we have to be careful when mentioning certain things: outside, yogurt, bread, cars...to name a few.  he also continues to love lexi, but has now expanded his interest to include all dogs and will happily point them out when we see them on walks, in other peoples' cars, or in books.  this is usually accompanied by a "wff, wff" sound that he makes to indicate their barking.  so sweet! with his expanding vocabulary i don't know that i can even remember now all the words he says (i'll have to start making a list between posts), but the most common are "car," "cup," "outside," "daddy," "mommy," "bird," "yogurt," "bread," "that," and "see."  i know there are more, so maybe i will update this list a little later.  there are several words he understands, too, including things like: stroller, water, milk, books, crib, phone, rock, stick, eat, belt (he enjoys dragging his dad's belt around the house like he has a tail), and "lexi's bed" (which he *loves* to crawl all over, flop on, and then consequently, be covered in dog hair).

he continues to love all things with wheels, especially cars that he can push around the house, and anything outside.  in fact, i can usually use playing outside as a barometer for his attitude. if noah is acting cranky and distractions aren't working inside: head outside.  if this fixes the problem, we just needed a change of scenery.  if he continues to be fussy outside, he's either a) hungry or b) sleepy.  ah, if only life continued to be so simple ;)
in other news, we did celebrate ray and sarah's birthdays this month with a party at my parents' house and got to enjoy the company of family and eat some tasty food.  the rest of the month was mostly spent juggling time at home and at work, searching for houses (a seemingly never-ending process), and doing some much-needed yard work.  we planted some new shrubs in the back yard and spruced up with some hanging flower baskets for color.  we would have done this much sooner, but by this time last year i had a 2 month old, matt was settling into a new full-time job, and i had returned to working two jobs myself!  no wonder we didn't have time!

april 2012

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