Sneaux Day!

I woke up and got ready like any typical day. I got in my car and did my usual Starbucks run before dropping Noah off at my mom's. Then all of a sudden I thought I started seeing snow...not just little specs but actual SNOW! I called Clint (who was actually home from work b/c he had the stomach flu, poor guy) for him to confirm my crazy thoughts and that I wasn't crazy. I just couldn't believe it was SNOWING! Of course...I didn't have my camera ON me. Thankfully when I got to my parents my dad had his camera out and snapped a picture of Noah and I. I then began going to work, but honestly it was quite icy/slippery and I had no idea how to drive in this weather. I called work to tell them I was running late due to the weather and they told me to enjoy the snow! Score!

I then went back and got Noah and went back home. I put him in the warmest clothes I could find (which wasn't much at all) and we braved outside. I got a few cute snapshots of him. I then made 2 little snowmen...which actually turned out to look like little birds in my opinion. Oh well.

Anyway, it was a GREAT surprise this season! However, I hope history doesn't repeat itself. The last time it snowed was the Christmas before Katrina....

Kicking off the season

This past weekend was a great jump start to the holiday season. On Friday night we went to Celebration in the Oaks. It was a lot of fun. Noah really liked the "Cajun Night Before Christmas" story. The lights would jump and appear to tell the story. It was cute. It was very cold though!!! I was so nervous Noah wasn't warm enough, but he was fine.

Saturday morning we went to our annual family outing to a holiday tea. This year we went to the tea at the Monteleone Hotel. A lion named "Monte" was there...get it? It was really cute. They ofcourse had delicious scones to much on along with other yummy things such as chocolate covered strawberries. Many holiday characters were there such as Frosty, Rudolph, a fairy princess, and ofcourse Santa and Mrs.Clause. Noah would just stare at the characters, thankfully he wasn't afraid of them. It was a really good time, I can't believe next year he will be all over the place walking at the tea! Scary to think about!

That night we went to Christmas on the Bayou at Cabrini. As usual, it was fun. It's a tradition I've always attended since high school (or atleast tried to attend). Angela and Ashlee were there and I also got to see a few old teachers. It's always great going back to Cabrini. I especially liked hearing the Crescent Cradle doing the living nativity scene. It was so adorable!!! I loved hearing all the little kids sing. Noah then saw Santa and he was less than impressed. Like earlier in the day he wouldn't look at the camera but just stared at Santa or the other characters. Oh well. Maybe I can get a good shot of him with Santa in Disney World.

Dadadadada.....

Noah is now a little babbling machine. It's very cute to hear him respond to our voices or just to hear his sweet little tone. His favorite thing to say is "Dada". Now of course the first few months it was adorable. Now...that is the majority of what he says. Every once in a while I think I hear a "yeah". He can't say anything for dear old Momma. Such a man to keep me waiting, right?
Maybe one day he will remember that "Momma" was the one on bed rest for weeks and actually delivered him on the day that I was supposed to be rocking out to Michael Buble. I swear when Noah is older and my heart throb Michael Buble is doing the casino circuit, he owes me tickets...make that INCREDIBLE tickets.

Jumperoo

Ahh the jumperoo...how I love thee. Noah has LOVED his jumperoo since he was around 2 months. We still use it to this day. It has been a true life saver to free your hands to do things and he really enjoys it. The weight limit on the jumperoo is 25lbs. I was so afraid that Noah would be pushing 25lbs at this point in the game. However, he isn't! Hooray, I still have the jumperoo for a few more months!

9 Months....

Noah is now 9 months. I can't believe it! At his appointment he was 22lbs 5oz and 29 inches. He is growing like a little weed, but slowing down quite a bit also. He is now very active and is a crawling beast! He is quite the daredevil also. It scares the crap out of me! His favorite thing is to pull up on chairs lately.

We have let him be more "free" in our den/kitchen lately. He has suddenly discovered Uneaux's food. He actually flipped the whole bowl over on Sunday. I picked him up and went to change him and noticed he had something in his mouth...he had a piece of the dog's food! AH! I reached in and got it out...but who knows if he ate some. Either way he is fine and well.

Noah had to get 4 shots and he took them like a champ. The only problem we had was that he woke up 2x during the night, and again last night. He was doing great for a while with sleeping all night...so hopefully we can bounce back soon. I was really enjoying my Zzzz's.

Gobble Gobble..

Thanksgiving has now come and gone! Wow, time is literally passing before my eyes! This year we celebrated Thanksgiving with Clint's mom. It was great that she let us come by literally the DAY of!! We had plans to go to my sisters in Mississippi. However, there was a bad stomach bug going around so we decided to pass since Noah is still oh so little.

Noah really enjoyed everything he tasted on Thanksgiving! He really liked the turkey, green bean casserole and sweet potatoes! Honestly...Noah likes just about anything! He wore the cutest little turkey overalls and a turkey headband...or as Clint's mom called it his "turkey ears".

This year I am so thankful for having my little man! He is so much fun and every month I say "OH I wish he stayed this age forever". I can't wait to see him grow up and learn everything.

We went on down...

to the Audubon Zoo! We took Noah to the zoo a few weekends ago and it was really fun. The weather was perfect! Well...perfect to me. It was chilly and I love the cold weather! As soon as we got there the elephants were doing a show, it was really cute. I think Noah enjoyed looking more at the other kids than the elephants.

Noah's favorite part was the "embraceable zoo"...which many of us now as the petting zoo. They had some crazy goats in there! However, Noah is fearless. He goes up to anything and pets it...which makes me nervous! One goat looked incredibly mean! Maybe he will be a future vet?

We visited the spider monkeys, and they were my favorite. One of the monkeys was hanging by his tail on a rope and catching grapes. He never missed. There was this other monkey on the ground. He was a bit "special"...you know why he wasn't hanging from his tail. He ran back and forth waving his hands in the air for a grape hoping his friend from above would miss. Well that never happend but the trainer would throw him some and he would miss it every time. It was histerical!!
All in all it was a great day! We can't wait to go back again. It was a lot of fun.

ZzZz...WAHHH...ZzzzZ

Noah has slept in his crib since he was only a few weeks old. We never "co-slept" with him and he actually was never soothed by even cuddling in the bed with me. Of course we had times where he didn't sleep through the night, but he never rejected going down for bed in his crib.

Well starting on Sunday night when we put him down he started screaming crying, so we said...well lets give it a few minutes. Minutes went by and he still didn't settle down. This turned into a constant pick him up...put him down every 20-40 minutes till about 5AM. It was very tiring and exhausting. We tried everything from rocking him...feeding him...and NOTHING worked except for Clint and I holding him.

Clint and I both hoped that maybe it was just an off night. So, Monday night came along. SAME thing happened. We put him down fast asleep...then he started crying. SO we did the same thing but eventually caved in and just let him sleep on me most of the night in a reclining chair.

Tonight I was dreading the worst....we are both honestly exhausted and dreaded Noah's bed time. We put him down at 9 after our routine (bath, bottle, bed). The same thing happened, he screamed. I did a lot of research and read that if you let him cry it out for 15 minutes, then go in if he is still screaming and try to soothe him for a minute, then repeat. We started this at 9 and in 15 minute intervals I went in and tried to soothe him. It's so sad because as soon as I enter his room his little arms reach out for me and as soon as I pick him up, he stops crying. Well at 10, when we were at this now for an hour, I just caved in and held him. After holding him for a good ten minutes Clint then put him in bed and.....he didn't scream!!! YAY!!! Hopefully we broke this habit! It's now 12:15 and he is still asleep....shh!

Adventures In Eating

Noah isn't a picky eater, and has never fussed over anything we have given him. He has mastered all the stage 2 foods, so we moved onto the stage 3. He did perfectly fine with it! For those that don't know, stage 3 have chunks of food in it (like the vegetable chicken dinner may have chunks of carrots in it). I've read that some babies have trouble transitioning to stage 3's since they are thickier and chunkier but Noah had zero problems. He is such a great eater!

He has also started to eat some of our "table food". Over the weekend Noah had some pancakes and he loved them! And for those wondering, no I didn't put syrup on them. He is doing great with picking up cheerios/puffs and bringing it to his mouth and eating it. I can't get over how much he is growing and changing everyday!!

Noah's 1st cold and Halloween

Early last week Noah began to have a real stuffy nose. He then started to run a low fever, so I decided to take him to the doctor. For Halloween we planned on going to Missisippi, but that changed once Noah got sick. The doctor basically said it's a cold and to watch it and hopes that it isn't the beginning of an ear infection. He still has a pretty bad stuffy nose and a cough.

So for Halloween we stayed home. Earlier that day Clint won a costume contest at work. Their was a cash prize. Since we had to stay in since Noah was sick we decided to get take out PF Changs. Thankfully we already had a lot of pictures of Noah in his costume from Boo at the Zoo and our pictures at Sears.

Boo at the Zoo!

This past weekend we took Noah to Boo at the Zoo with all of his cousins. I've never been and I'm glad we took Noah. It was great to see all the kids dressed up on costumes, and some adults too! For kids more RJ and Georgia's age they had games where you could win prizes, a place to trick or treat and a ghost train.

They also had a haunted house, it had a scary side and a not scary side. Well we all went on the scary side (minus the babies they stayed with Monique). RJ didn't know we were doing the "scary" side and I have never seen the look of terror more in his face! He was screaming as loud as he could and was honestly scared out of his wits. Hopefully...he won't remember this and still go on Pirates, Haunted Mansion, etc. when we go to Disney World for Christmas. All in all it was great fun! We waited about 35 minutes for the ghost train...and wow was it hard to hold Noah that whole time! I'm sure he is 20lbs now. I had to place him on my shoulders because he just got too heavy to hold! I doubt he will be standing/walking by Christmas...so it shall be a good time waiting in lines with him at Disney World!

Pumpkin Patch Fun

This past weekend we took a drive across the lake to visit Clint's mom. While we were over there, we went to the pumpkin patch at the farmers market. The weather was nice and I hoped to get some great pictures. Well, for the 1st time in Noah's life he wasn't cooperative! He has such light eyes, I really think it made him upset. I didn't get many pictures, but I got a few cute ones I suppose! Clint's mom got Noah his 1st pumpkin! Stay tuned for pictures of that!

Vanessa Lauren Wolff Scholarship Fund

Last night Angela, Ann, Jenna and I had our fundraiser for Vanessa. For those of you who don't know her story please visit http://www.vanessawolff.com/. After many ideas thrown out there we finally decided on the scholarship. We hope to raise enough money to provide a scholarship to a student at Cabrini who writes an outstanding essay on drunk driving.

Things turned out great last night. It was great to see Vanessa's parents and see all of our hard work come together. I am so proud of our classmates who came together for this. I know Vanessa is looking down on us and smiling.

I'll sleep when I'm dead!

Noah has nights when he sleeps all through the night...where other nights he can be up every 2 hours. We go to bed every night wondering what type of night it will be. Recently Noah has woken up the past 2 nights. Sunday night it was around 11:30, so I wasn't fully in the hardcore sleep mode. The worst is when he wakes up at 4AM, when we wake up around 6. Talk about bummer.

Now that I think about it...I never understood the term "sleep while you can". You get a lot of the "OH you just WAIT" advice from moms when you are pregnant. I just took it all in and now I really understand the lack of sleep. I thought the all nighters I pulled in college would be similar...or if I was up all night with insomnia or ill..but nothing compares!

The first few weeks of Noah's life were VERY tiring. He was up every 2 hours, and the first few weeks I had an alarm set to wake him up JUST to feed him because he wasn't gaining enough. The days were long, sleep was non exsistent and I couldn't live if I didn't have a loaded caffeine drink daily from Starbucks.

A Swinging Time!

This past Sunday we were in search for a baby swing for Noah at a park. We first ventured to the Lakefront. Unfortunately, none of their playgrounds had baby swings. So we then drove to City Park. We found some swings!!! However, they were near a big group that were obviously having a family reunion. You know the type, the matching shirts, balloons, the whole nine yards. We decided that we didn't want to intrude, and to try another venue. We then went to Pontiff Playground...or Metairie Playground for those who may not know the new name. We found baby swings! Yay!

Noah loved the swings! He had a great time. We definetly need to go back and let him swing again. It was a breezy day and he love the cool air on his face. Here are some pictures.

But, everyone else is doing it!

So I decided to do a blog. Everyone else seems to have one, so I jumped on the bandwagon. I'll use this site to put updates about Noah and whats going on. To see Noah's pictures, please continue to go to our shutterfly account.