Update on our Mr. Noah

Noah is just over 15 months now, and he is fun.  Every day I say to Ryan, "Aren't we so lucky?  Isn't he the best?"  I just can't get enough of him.

He had a "word explosion" this past month and is talking up a storm.  He says about 35 words--all the basics like cracker, milk, shoes, ball, book, apple, baby, go, bread...the list goes on.  The other night, we were coming inside our apartment, and he pointed up at the sky and said, "Moon!"  I was shocked.  It is so fun when he busts out a new word that I didn't realize he knows.  I love it when he says, "Hi!" in a very friendly voice whenever he sees someone new, even Baby Jade (as if she could understand him).  Or sometimes, if I am holding him and talking to a friend for a long time, he gets tired of all the gab and starts waving at the other person and saying, "Bye!"  It's his polite way of saying, "I'm done--please leave now."

He still says "whoa" at appropriate moments, and it cracks me up.  Sometimes I have rowdy outbursts of song and dance--often when Noah is eating peacefully in his high chair--and whenever I suddenly burst into loud song with crazy dance moves, Noah responds, totally deadpan, "Whoa."  It is perfect.

His newest favorite word is "Callum."  He says it more like "Cow-m."  The other day, he heard me telling Ryan a story about my nephew, and when I said "Callum," Noah looked up from his toy and said, "Cow-m?  Cow-m?  Cow-m?" and ran for the front door.  I guess he thought his cousin was coming over to play.

Speaking of Cal, Sarah and I made them matching glow-in-the-dark Halloween shoes (you can probably imagine that this was Sarah's idea), and the boys loved them.

We wanted to get some pics of them in their Halloween shoes and sweatshirts, but getting a good photo of a three-year-old and a one-year old together is easier said than done.  This is how that went:

Ha!  We did manage to get this shot of them--though neither boy is smiling, I think they look like hipsters.  Cute boys.

Noah is a little parrot.  He imitates words, but he also imitates sounds, such as singing and sighing.  I never realized how often I must make long, belabored sighs of stress throughout the day.  Now that I have my parrot, whenever I let out a tired sigh, he does too.  Sometimes he'll even sigh and say, "Okay..." at the end, like he's gearing up to do something difficult like clean the kitchen. :)  It reminds me that I shouldn't take my life too seriously.

Noah developed a crush this past month--not on a cute little girl from church, as you might suspect--no, on someone even "hotter."  Literally.  He seems to have fallen in love with his space heater.  We recently put a space heater in his room to combat the plunging winter temperatures, and he is enamored with it.  He tries to carry it around with him everywhere he goes.  A few weeks ago, whenever we put him to bed, he would scream for a few minutes before settling down to sleep.  Though he always fights naps, he doesn't usually fight bedtime, so I couldn't figure out what the problem was.  I peeked into his room one night when he was carrying on, and I saw that he was standing in his crib, reaching dramatically toward the space heater, and sobbing.  He wanted his buddy to come to bed with him.  I've learned that I have to hide the space heater from his view to avoid this tantrum before bed.  Too funny.

Here is a video of Noah trying to lift his space heater.  His grunts of exertion, as well as Ryan's coaching that "It's all in the legs," had me laughing through the whole thing.  I also love how he tries to walk away from it, but he just can't bring himself to.

He has started to like playing independently for short spans of time.  Sometimes he will be playing in his room, and I will go peek to make sure everything is okay, and when he sees me, he runs over to the door and shuts it in my face, like "Give me my space, Mom!"  It is lovely to have a few minutes to myself every day, but he is also at an age where he is into everything, so I constantly have to check to make sure he isn't up to no good.  Fortunately, he almost always gives himself away when he is getting into trouble because I can hear him saying "No! No! No!" from the other room.

"No! No! No!  I shouldn't be getting into Mom's canned goods!"

He has become obsessed with electrical outlets.  He can plug things in, such as his beloved space heater, and I have to be very vigilant about always making sure the guards are on all of the plugs in the house.

I love my little rascal.  I know I said this last month, but this is my favorite age yet.  Being a mom to a toddler is so much fun.  Especially when I can dress mine up as a newsie for church: