Learning too young....

At the store tonight, Noah was getting a little fussy at checkout, so I gave him my credit card to play with while waiting.  He immediately put it up to the card reader and tried to swipe it.

Apparently he's an observant little dude!

All Boy....

As Noah gets older, his personality is starting to show more.  We are increasingly seeing the differences between him and Abby at his age.  To sum it up, he's all boy.

At this age, we started telling Abby "no" when she would get in to things.  She would almost always listen the first time.  She would cry, but she would stop doing it.  Noah could care less.  He is getting in to EVERYTHING!  We were wayyyy spoiled with Abby, and just didn't know it.  Since she never really went through the crawling phase, she didn't get in to much stuff.  Noah is all over the house, and getting in everything, smashing his fingers in cabinets, putting his face in the toilet and dog food, pulling on wires, etc.  It's crazy.  I know it's typical kid stuff, but we're just not used to it.

When you tell him "no" he stops for a second, stares at you like "you talkin' to me??" and then keeps doing it.  So, you tell him no again, and again, and again.  This goes on for a couple minutes then we start pulling his hand away.  We do that another couple minutes and then we just have to move him away from it.

He also eat constantly!  He's always up for eating, and boy does he get cranky when he's hungry.

Noah is much more rugged than Abby ever was.  He'll bump his head, fall over, whatever, and just keep going.  This isn't to say he doesn't cry when he gets hurt, but it seems like his threshold is a lot higher than Abby's ever was.

He's definitely not as chatty as Abby was.  Abby already had quite a few words by this point.  Noah's kind of saying mama and dada when looking at us.  And I swear the other day he said "hi" but he doesn't say nearly as much as Abby did.

He's more independent than Abby was.  At this age, Abby had separation anxiety like crazy!  Noah likes to be around us, but he'll just follow you from room to room.  Abby would just sit there and cry.

He's also much more interested in the "inner workings" of toys.  Instead of playing with the toy as it's meant to be, he likes to flip them over and check out their wheels and such.  He's constantly knocking things over when trying to "investigate."

I'm sure as time goes on, we'll continue to see the differences in our kids!

Visit with Santa

Every year, one of the local mall's holds a private party for members of the media.  The first year it was a small party but it has grown every year. This year was the best by far. Our favorite part of the visit is Santa Claus. For weeks Abby has been telling that us that she shouldn't wouldn't cry when she saw Santa.  Her only request was that she sits next to Santa and Noah sit on his lap.

Waiting in line...

 She didn't cry but she was so shy she couldn't tell Santa what she wanted. Somehow Santa knew it was Abby's birthday that day so she was pretty psyched. One of the best parts of this event is we get free photos with Santa and can take pictures with our own camera.

 Neither kid cried, which is a success in our books.  Noah wasn't scared, but more intrigued as to who this crazy looking man was.

 Abby's reward, a sugar cookie, there was also balloon artists, cartoonists, and food, food and more food!

 Noah's reward.

So Curious

Now that Noah can crawl, he's become one curious little monster.  He's always following us around and watching what we're doing.  He is particularly fond of the bathroom on the main floor.

So the other day I was peeing.  I left the door cracked, not thinking anything of it.  In comes little man.  He raced over to the toilet, got between my legs, got his hands up on the toilet and pulled his head up.  He was so excited to see what I was doing.

We'll just say that it wasn't easy to get him away without making a mess.

Quotables: Smoking

On the way to see Santa tonight, Abby saw a car in front of us with a lot of smoke coming out of the tailpipe.  This lead to a 10 minute conversation about smoking.

This is how part of it took place, word for word:
Abby: "When my dolly was younger, she was smoking."
Peggy: "No way, did you tell her that smoking is bad?"
Abby: "Yes, I told her no smoking!"
**10 second pause**
Abby: "I raised my finger like this and said "no no no...no smoking."
Peggy: "Oh yeah?"
Abby: "She was smoking it up!"

Haha.  Where does she get this stuff from?

Big Boy

Just a week before he's 9 months old and he's starting to figure out this standing thing. He can't quite pull himself all the way up yet but once he's there he's getting braver everyday. He'll let go of the couch now and holding on he scoots his way down the cushions.

"How does this work"

 ""Check me out, I'm ready to go!"

 Down for the count... he's fine, gotta learn somehow. Time for more baby proofing!

Abby's 3rd Birthday Party

We had Abby's 3rd birthday last Saturday, a week before her actual birthday. She was a little confused as to why it wasn't her real birthday but didn't mind the attention and treats.

All Abby has talked about since her friend Charlotte's 3rd birthday is what kind of cake she wanted.... a caterpillar cake. As you may know Abby is a huge friend to all animals, especially bugs! So caterpillar cake we did. So we asked friends and family, to "creep, crawl or fly on over" as Abby turned 3!

Abby looked helping Daddy with the cake, I found the recipe and they went to work.

Didn't it turn out great? It was a huge hit. Abby loved it.

 Noah skipped the cake but spent some time bonding with his Godfather, Kai.

 She looks fine in this picture but within 24 hours of the party Abby spiked a fever of 102 and stayed that way for 2 days, ugh.

 Noah gets around, here he is with his Godmother, Nicole.

 Charlotte and Abby playing together.

 Cousin Lily did a great job making Noah laugh.

 Check out these two hammin' it up.

 Putting on her birthday pin.

 Noah really wanted to help open presents.

 I love how cute Charlotte is in this picture, like she's watching a great show.

The birthday girl and her family.

 Abby loves this card from Grandma and Grandpa, Ariel sings to her!

 This is great, they love each other so much.