Noah's First Year

Noah is now one year old. We celebrated his birthday last week with a big party with friends and family. The party had a jungle theme, since his room is decorated that way, and he always holds his stuffed lion when he goes to bed. You should see the excitement on his face when he is in his crib and you give him his lion. Angie made a cupcake cake of a lion. The cake looked amazing and was delicious. We had more food than we knew what to do with, and it was a great time.

It is amazing to think that my son is now a year old. Every day is a new discovery. He certainly has a lot of personality. He really is becoming less of a baby and more of a boy.

Noah had his one-year checkup this week, and he remains off the charts in height and pretty close to the top in weight. As we expected, he’s going to be a big guy.

In child development news, Noah has been crawling for about three months now. It began as an “army crawl,” but has progressed to a full crawl. He enjoys crawling, and he can’t stay in one place for a long period of time. He is always on the move. At first, he liked to go into his bedroom and pull every book off of the bookshelf. He later got over that, and now he is all about taking every toy out of the closet. He will stand on his own from time to time, and likes to climb up people when they are seated.

Noah loves cabinets, as well as anything with a knob or button. We have had to latch the cabinets shut, except for a couple of cabinets with pots and pans. When he gets tired, he really wants to get in the cabinets, and gets upset if you take him away from there. We have to keep the bathroom closed, because Noah will immediately crawl there and take everything out of the drawers.

Noah learned a couple of signs recently. A while back, he learned the sign for “more,” and he took off with it. Around the same time, we taught him to clap, so now he claps for “more” when he’s eating. Well, he didn’t stop there. Now, he claps when he wants a drink, and he claps when he wants you to read a book to him. The sign for “more” turned into a general request for anything.

Another new sign recently learned is “eat.” Normally, you put your fingers to a point and point to your mouth. His version is to tilt his head and then put the palm of his hand on his mouth. When it’s time to eat, we say “Do you want to eat?” and he does that sign. Then, I can pick him up without him getting upset, because we all know that he is always excited to eat.

We read to Noah as often as we can, and it must catch on. Now, he has a few favorite books. When he finds a favorite book, he will show it to one of us and yell some one-syllable sound. This means we need to read to him. Often, when we are in the middle of a book, he will find another book and immediately want the next one to be read. (Once again, he can’t sit still.)

Babbling is still constant. He often yells out “da-da-da-da” or “dee-dee-dee-dee,” as well as “nah-nah-nah.” He learned something this week that is pretty funny; whenever either of us is on the phone, he will wait until we hang up and then yell three or four syllables very loudly. One of my favorite things that he does now is yell “Ayyyyyy” whenever I come home from work. It reminds me of the Fonz.

It gets harder to list every single thing that Noah does, because he is always changing. The first year was a blast, and I look forward to more great times ahead.

Our Baby Shower

Angie had her baby shower back on January 17. It turned out very well, and we'd like to thank everybody for all of the books, all of the gifts, and the great food. Special thanks to Sherry and Nicky for organizing the event, Dad for preparing the soup, and our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and friends for helping out. The pictures can be seen on Sherry's Facebook page.

If you see Angie, ask her what she thought of the fruit salad.

Thank you all for a great baby shower, and our little guy will be here before you know it!

The First Nursery Photos

Angie and I have worked hard over our holiday break to get the nursery put together. Here are a few photos. More will come as the nursery progresses.

Here's the crib and the dresser. The crib was pretty easy to put together; the dresser, not so much. They both look nice, though.

On the other side of the room are the changing table and the rocker. These were some lucky finds; the changing table came courtesy of my sister-in-law, Jill, and we bought the rocker when One Way had its church sale.

We also bought new curtains for each of the windows.

Here's the closet. The boy already has more toys than he needs. This is what happens when Angie's siblings couldn't wait to unload some unneeded toys. We are very thankful, however, to have so much. We don't plan on washing the clothes for a while, hence why the clothes are in a big pile.

Here's his bookcase. He also isn't hurting for books. The train on the top is a piggy bank train, where we can write in his name, height, weight, birthday, favorite food, etc. Next to it is a teddy bear from the Chicago Symphony. Both were wonderful gifts from my brother Danny and his fiance, Marianne. On the right is Woofers, a bear we made at Build-a-Bear when we were in St. Louis this past fall.

Finally, here's a closeup of the dresser. The ultrasound picture is on the left. That frame was a gift from Betty, a co-worker at my side job at the M.E. Barber Company. The picture book and piggy bank came from my parents, and my parents and grandparents combined to save over $120 in quarters to put in it. I gave Angie the elephant photo frame for Christmas, with a note saying "Insert baby picture here" in it.

It was hard work, but a lot of fun, to put it together. Now comes the waiting. We're pretty excited to see him come!