Here comes Santa Claus....

Noah is sooooooo excited about Christmas and Santa this year. He asks every single day when Santa is coming. He was THRILLED to get to sit on his lap and looked perplexed as to why so many kids were crying at the concept :) He was actually so excited about it he ran ahead of everyone in line and hopped on his lap when we weren't even watching! He immediately asked him where the reindeer were. Here are a few pre-Christmas pictures including the Santa pics.



Noah decorating a tree for the first time. In the end he had hung 42 (i counted) ornaments on the very bottom 3 branches. The tree almost fell over but he was so proud of himself!




















Baby's first Christmas Santa photo?!

Waiting for Ryan

36 weeks and counting.
Waiting for "Baby Ryan" to arrive. We can't wait to see him!

"Before you were conceived, I wanted you
Before you were born, I loved you
Before you were here an hour, I would give my life for you.
This is the miracle of life." ~ Maureen Hawkins

Fall Fun

The Fall is one of our busiest but favorite times of the year. All the football watching parties, park playdates and weekend entertaining with close friends makes for a very exciting time. Not to mention that every weekend had at least 1-2 birthday parties to attend since all of Noah's closest buddies have birthdays around the same time as him. Whew! It's been a busy few weeks. Here are a few glimpses of what we've been up to...


All dressed up for school picture day



What a ham! Oh and by the way the picture on the left happens to be one of the lone pictures of Noah where I think he resembles me as a child....otherwise I was just the "incubator" and he is ALL DAVID. :)



Watching the Auburn-GA game over at Michael's house, which is also a "divided household" like ours. They are Auburn-GA like we are FL-GA. Yes, we are raising very confused children but at least they are all cheering for SEC schools...



Fun times at East Cobb Park with Michael



More fun at the park



Sadly one of our closest friends/neighbors moved away to the other side of Atlanta this fall. This was our first excursion to visit the Kowalyczec's at their new house. Noah sure does miss his friend Logan.





Landon, Aiden, Logan and Noah at Logan's new house



Noah really enjoyed jumping in the piles of leaves this year. He looks soooo old in this picture!






We belong to a monthly supper club with 6 other families. We all have boys the exact same age and they have been growing up together from the very beginning. What a great way to start (hopefully) a lifetime of friendships between 7 families. There have been a few younger siblings (And a few girls thankfully!) added to the mix but here are the original 6 boys (except for Logan who was missing that night due to having H1N1 flu, the poor guy!) Noah, Aiden, Landon, Michael, George and Zachary are all in this picture.



The supper club mommies (except for Logan's mommy Gisela):
Melissa, Laurie, Preggo (me), Tacy, Kim and Michelle

Happy Halloween!

I had all intentions of taking Noah to another fun pumpkin patch this year but seeing as how I felt like a big pumpkin myself (a big pumpkin with major back pain) I never got around to it. Then the weekend of Halloween I came down with a terrible cold virus ( I was of course certain it was the dreaded H1N1/swine flu but luckily it was not) so it was all I could do to get Noah dressed up for school, dressed up for trick-or-treating and give away all the candy. He was "Superman" at his school Halloween party and then he was an adorable monkey for trick-or-treating. Despite the freezing rain on Halloween night, he still had a blast trick or treating with David. Being from Florida I can't remember a single Halloween when it was cold or rainy! Oh well. He didn't seem to notice. He was sooooo excited about all the candy and so polite to everyone at their door. We got lots of compliments which of course made us proud. He carried his bag of candy around all week and never even ate any of it without asking for permission. How's that for a 3 year old????

A cherished moment

Sometimes a simple 30-second interaction or conversation with your child can really make your whole week. My conversation with Noah last night while I was rocking him and reading his bedtime stories:

Me: "You know, Noah, you make Mommy soooooo happy."

Noah: "Yeah, I do. I make you happy"......(long pause) then he said "Mommy, you make Noah really happy too....I love you!" and then he looked up and gave me the biggest, sweetest kiss I've ever gotten.


Seriously...is there ANYTHING in life better than a moment like that?

Out of a toddler's mouth...

It seems like nearly everyday, like most toddlers, Noah says something to us that strikes us as so funny or entertaining. I realize that while these are fresh in my mind now I am bound to eventually forget all of his cute phrases and expressions. So while I was thinking about it I wanted to create a short post with as many of them in here as I can remember at the moment so they are documented for us later. I'm sure he'll get a kick out of reading it some day!

These are what I can remember...in no particular order:

“It’s dark outside, Daddy....It’s time for you to tickle me!”

Me: “Noah do you want Daddy to bring you anything from Chick-Fil-A?”
Noah” “Ummmmm, no thank you mommy. It’s dark outside. Time for me to go night- night. Maybe tomorrow though…”

“My knees just don’t work anymore…I can’t make it up the stairs”

“Oh no! That’s too bad!!!!”

“Oh, sorry! ‘cuse me…I made a stinky burp”

“Mommy, I put my ‘lot of need-that’s’ in your purse…..”
******(background explanation: He has 3 dozen cloth burp cloths that my mom hand painted for him as a baby and they are his security blankies...he always has a few with him and when he was barely 2 years old he started calling them his "need thats" and we always tell him "you sure do have a lot of need thats")


“Mommy, wake up, open your eyes....you need to drink some coffee!!!!”

Noah: “Knock knock”
Me: “Who’s there?”
Noah: “Me, Noah Nelson, Noah James!”
(no matter what we do we can't convince him to say his name in the right order!)


“Mommy, is your tummy getting bigger? My tummy getting bigger too!”

After getting his flu-mist nasal spray (in lieu of a flu shot) he said “Ok I’m ready for my band-aid now!”

And...my all time favorite:
“Baby Ryan! Go to time-out!!!” (he yelled this to my belly after I exclaimed that the baby had kicked me one night!)

Noah's new "Big Boy" Room

Since we were needing to evict Noah from his nursery to make room for Baby Ryan we wanted to make sure Noah would have a room he would love. Since he would be getting the biggest secondary bedroom upstairs we went for twin over full bunkbeds and we chose a sports theme. We had so much fun coming up with the ideas for this room and David worked sooooooo hard to make the room perfect. He did an awesome job. Here are the before and after pictures. Noah loves his room and shows everyone who comes over to visit.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Noah!

Where does the time go? It seems like I just had a 3 week old, now I have a great, big 3 year old boy! He was so excited about his birthday party, especially since in the previous 4 weeks he had been to about 7-8 additional birthday parties for his little friends (seriously!) We had his party at "The Coffee Park" which is a cute cafe with a play area for kids and they specialize in children's parties. It was a construction theme (check out the awesome construction cake!)and there were about 22 kids there! It was a ton of fun and less work for me than having it at our house. Always a good thing when 7 months pregnant!