Electronics

Noah is at the age where I think he is starting to know what items are toys and what items are not. Because of this he always seems to want what he shouldn't have. Anytime we are out eating, he would rather have the napkins or anything else on the table besides his toys. When we are home and he sees the computer, he will reach and whine if he sees it open. He loves hitting the keys, he doesn't even really pay attention to the screen that much. It's amazing at how young he is and how much he likes technology, you name it computers, cell phones, and remotes. He has loved them all.

He was playing with my phone and it rang so I took it away to answer it, this is what happened, he wasn't very happy!

Gave it back to him when I was done, happy again

Happy to get the remote now

Daddy and Ranch

The other night I left Matthew at the table with Noah while I cleaned the kitchen up. He decided to let Noah play with the Ranch bottle without thinking about what may be around the cap. As you can see there was plenty of Ranch on the outside of the bottle which then got on my son's face. Matthew started laughing and this is what I saw. (by the way Noah didn't seem to mind otherwise I wouldn't have taken the time to take these pics, he really enjoyed chewing on the bottle)!

Noah's 6 month pictures

Yah! Noah's pictures are done. To look at them go to steffenharris.com, then proofing, click on the album titled Noah and then the password is noah. I like a lot of them, but I will have to narrow it down to my favorites and figure out where I am going to put the ones I want. Ever since Noah was born I have needed a lot more space for pictures on the walls.

Busy day

Wow! What a productive day today has been. If every day could be like today I might actually run out of things to do. I haven't been this productive since before Noah was born and boy does it feel good! My list of to-do's has been unending for quite some today and today I started to really tackle it. I started in the hall closet last week and finally finished it. I took everything out and cleaned the floors and all the trim. I use this closet for a lot of things, extra wallflower refills, light bulbs, extra everything like shampoos, hand soaps, candles, you name it. Then I also put all of my cleaning supplies in here as well. It's always hard to find them. since they are all over and on shelves. So I bought some canvas baskets, for all of my extra supplies and then some clear tubs for the cleaning supplies. I figured this way I could just pull the tub out to get out what I wanted instead of having to root all over the shelf for it. After I put it back together today I thought of a better idea I might have to try later. I was thinking about getting something like a shower caddy (will have to look and see if it will work) to put all of the main cleaning supplies in then I could take it with me around the house when I clean, dust and do bathrooms. That would be super handy.

Here is the closet before

and after

Ahh, I love a good, clean and organized closet!

After that was done, I cleaned out under the sink and reorganized it and got some nifty shelves for all the stuff, then I took everything out of the bottom of Matthew's and my bedrooms closets. Boy was that floor dirty from all of our shoes. I cleaned the inside of the closet including the trim and then put everything back in neatly! Then in our room I moved all the furniture and cleaned under everything. It was quite gross. We have hardwood floors in our rooms so dust sure does collect under everything. I just feel better knowing the floors are clean underneath. It's embarassing at how bad I let them get. I also did the same thing in Noah's room. So now I know at least a couple of rooms are decently clean. It's such a great feeling! Now if I can clean the rest of the house like that!

Great Deals

I don't know if anyone else follows Money Saving Mom on facebook but I started to a couple weeks ago. Sometimes it's annoying because she takes up half of your news feeds on some days and a lot of times I don't use any of her deals she finds. However today I noticed 2 that I was really excited about and I thought they were great.

Here are the links to each 1 the first one is a year subscription to Woman's Day for $5.00 (33 cents a magazine if you do the math) . Not my favorite magazine but I have bought it a couple times in the last year or two because of the recipes or the crafting ideas. They have some good stuff, especially around the holidays!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002V0CJKQ?ie=UTF8&tag=monsavmom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002V0CJKQ

The 2nd one was a free year subscription to Mable's Meals. Each week you get your meal emailed to you along with a shopping list. I know there are a ton of these out there, and don't know how good this one is but I figured since it's free I will try it. Here is the link,

http://www.thedealscoop.com/2010/07/free-52-week-subscription-to-mables.html

Now in order not to get charged for the following year you do have to cancel. But there will a reminder email to let you know. I'm really excited about this. More than anything I hate trying to figure out what to have throughout the week. So now hopefully this will help!

Toothbrushes

For some reason Noah loves to watch people brush their teeth. I don't know why but it fascinates him. Every morning he just loves to watch his dad brush but this particular morning he tried to grab the brush for himself. I just thought it was too cute!!


Once he realized he couldn't reach it, he opted for dad's shirt. I guess eating that he decided was just as good.

Almost

On Wednesday night Noah went to sleep about 8:30 and slept until about 6:30. That's right, 6:30! That was a first I woke up about 3 and realized he hadn't woke up yet. I was so surprised and of course had to go in and check on him. He was still breathing and looked so sweet sleeping on his side. I went back to bed and enjoyed the silence.

Many of you know everytime something good changes about Noah and I talk about it. I can count on it changing back right away. It always seems like it happens that way. Well of course last night I was hoping for a repeat of the night before. I went to bed after 11 and was already awakened at 12:30 by little man Jones. He a lot of times makes it to at least 1:30 before waking up, but no not last night. Well after Wednesday night I knew he could go all night since he had done it and we have been weining him off slowly so I decided that he wasn't getting any more formula at night. I decided that if he wanted something he could have water. So when he woke up I tried turning on his sound machine and giving him his pacifier. When that put him into a full out scream I tried a little water. He took a little and went back to sleep pretty easy. Then about 2:45 he was up again and this time we fought back and forth until about 4:30 when I finally gave up and put him in bed with us. I was so tired I couldn't keep going in there anymore and since Matthew had to work I didn't want him screaming all night.

Anyways, now I know its possible I just have to figure out how to get him to do this all night thing again. It was so wonderful getting to sleep. It was ashame that I had hives because I was still up for awhile anyway. Some day we will all sleep through the night. I look forward to that so much!

Monday Playing

On Monday, Noah and I spent the day at home. I attempted to finish up some baking that I had started while he was napping, by putting him in his walker. I was busy dipping cake balls when I looked over at him. He had walked himself over to the high chair to get to the straps. He absolutely loves straps, his car seat, stroller, anything with straps. For some reason they are the best thing to suck on. Well I quickly grabbed the camera and got his attention I just love this look that he has on his face like " uhh I didn't realize you were watching me, mom"

Before he knows I saw him

Being such a big boy, sitting and playing on the floor

Which one should I play with??

Bathtime

I still just cannot believe how big my little boy is starting to seem. Tonight I let him sit in the bathtub for awhile before laying him down. He was just so cute sitting in the water. He still hasn't completely realized the fun of splashing yet. I did it for him some and he liked that. He does it every once in awhile but I'm not sure if he means to. Here are some pictures from bathtime tonight.



I was having some fun with his hair. I tried to do it spikey, not my favorite look though.

Here he is with is smoothed over to the side, much better. He just looks so sweet with his hair this way!

My sitting big boy!!

What a night!

Sorry this post is a little messed up.. Should have put the text first. They will all make sense after!


Noah finally taking his nap after pictures

The adorable jeans I found at The Children's Place. I love them.. They look just like big boy jeans. The picture isn't as good but they are a little darker, have a faded look, and have some wear and tear to them, just like his dad's.

The romper that would have been in the pictures had it not been too big! Bummer!


Special Edition diapers I found at Target

Tonight we had planned to get Noah's 6 month pictures taken. I had planned to go to Champaign for the day which probably was a bad idea since we were already starting Noah's day off different. Well he got all off schedule and I knew he was tired so I tried to put him down about 4 so he could get a little nap in before the pictures. Well that failed.. He laid in there for about 40 minutes, rolling around, talking and than was done being in there. I got him out since it was picture time in about 15 minutes anyway. I hurry up and fed him some carrots so he wouldn't be hungry and thought we would be okay. Wrong! He was a crankster and never wanted to be left sitting alone. I had so many ideas and things that I wanted in mind and had some outfits planned and it just seemed like everything went wrong.

First I had him in a white button up and the cutest baby jeans. Well we tried taking a few pictures and it just wasn't working so I thought if maybe we took his clothes off he might be happier so we took him down to his diaper and then that outfit never got put back on since I didn't want to make him any more mad. Well then I had got this adorable outfit from Baby Gap.. I love love love it, well it was 6-12 months, which Noah wears a bunch of, well this particular outfit was way too big so it just looked dumb. So we took that off and on the spur of the moment I picked out another outfit instead which wasn't my favorite necessarily just something I picked up quickly. Then I also had got these special edition printed diapers from Target just for pictures. They are about twice as expensive so he would never wear these on a daily basis. Once again, even in that he wouldn't cooperate so we didn't get many poses where you could see the diapers.

All in all I have learned a few lessons.. Stay home on pictures days so Noah can stay on his schedule and I can control his naps better. Second have your vocal chords ready because Matthew and I really had to pull out all the happy tricks. I have never fake sneezed or made animal noises more than I did tonight.

Sitting and Trees

Lately I have been really trying to practice sitting up with Noah. The other day I had sat him on the floor and put his boppy around his back while he played so that way in case he fell, he would fall on it. Well after the first time he did it, he thought it was fun. So every time I sat him back up, he would fall back right away. Needless to say we didn't get much practice in since it quickly became a game instead. Other days though like today he has been doing really well. He loves his changing table for some reason, always has since he was first born. It has been strange.

He also loves trees. We have lots of trees in our yard in the front and back so a lot of times you will catch him just staring outside at the trees. Today as I had him on the changer for a diaper change I pulled up the blinds so he could see outside, which I do a lot when he is laying down but today I thought I would see if he sat up good on there. He loved it. He just kept smiling and watched the trees move. After awhile it didn't look like he was looking at the trees anymore and I realized there is a crazy plant right outside his window that is pretty tall so it came almost up to it and he was looking at that instead. It's not just trees though I think he likes green things in general. He loves watching the weather and baseball on TV. At first I thought okay we have a future nature man, baseball player or weatherman (all 3 very different things, but then I found the common denominator, the color green).

Ahh How I love a clean vehicle

This pictures just doesn't do it justice. Our Highlander is now so clean, I could drive around all day! I am so thankful that our insurance paid to get it detailed, I now don't worry about little glass pieces being around and the beer smell is gone! Our vehicle is now cleaner than when we got it. Matthew didn't think they would do the outside but they did it as well and he was quite impressed with the tires. It's funny how I am super excited about the inside and he is in love with how the tires look. I still haven't taken out the paper that is on the drivers side mat. I'm just not ready for the mat to start getting dirty yet. I know its silly, but I hate cleaning out cars and I can never get the carpets all the way cleaned so how it looks now is not obtainable for me to do on my own. We have never bought a car from a dealer so all of our cars have never started out this clean so for us its been very exciting!

Noah Sleeping

I just love watching Noah sleep. I think it is so cute! The first picture is how he always used to be everytime you looked in, on his back a little sprawled out with the burp cloth nearby. However now that he is moving around a lot I have loved to see him sleep even more. He has been falling asleep on his side a lot. The picture where he is on his belly he fought going to sleep on this one. He isn't a fan of being on his belly, so I was really surprised when I looked in the other day and he never rolled back over and that he finally relaxed on his belly. So many people say you don't want them to start moving because than you have really got to watch out, but I still am always anxious of the next step. I know that if he is never on his belly he won't crawl for a long time and I want him to do that because I know he will love it. He gets so frustrated when he can't reach things that he wants to get. No matter how he falls asleep though one thing hasn't changed, he usually always has his pacifier and his burp cloth. I know a burp cloth, I have tried to get him to like something cute, but he always goes back to these. At least he isn't picky about what color so every day or multiple times a day I can get him a new one so I can wash it if it gets gross.

So Excited

I am so excited about today! We got our Highlander earlier this year and when we got it I wanted it detailed so even though it was used it would look new to us. Matthew didn't really think it was necessary so we never did it. We cleaned it good ourselves but you can just never get it as good as the pros since they have all the tools needed to get in all the little spaces and the ability to shampoo all the floors and seats.

Well on our last trip we had the wonderful breakdown and then the beer can through the back window which was a huge inconvienence but it has turned out much better for us than we ever thought it would be. The new transfer case was paid for by someone else, which we are so grateful. We ended up turning in the back windshield to our insurance and because of that, we got our towing bill and the detailing of the vehicle paid for. Awesome! So out of everything we just had to pay for the $250 glass deductible, which was great compared to what everything could have cost us! So it has been a couple weeks since the incident and has taken awhile to get everything fixed, but after today, my car will not longer smell like beer and have beer splatters all over, it will be cleaner than ever! I am stoked!

Also I got to use our new shower his morning for the first time. For the last 2 months our bathroom has been under a complete renovation and has been unusable. So we have been using our half bath for a toilet and sink and our wonderful block shower in the basement to take showers. It's not the prettiest thing. I have killed many spiders while showering the last 2 months. The bathroom still isn't finished but its getting closer and closer. I will post pictures once we get it finished. Hoepfully not too much longer.

Also I was so excited for Noah to be able to use the bath. We haven't had one for him so he has been using his little tub in the sink. He has outgrown it awhile ago but we didn't have any other option. On vacations he got to use real tubs and loved kicking around so I was really anxious for him to have his own.

Oh and for a side note, curved shower rods are great. We got one for our bathroom after my mom had one and I love it. It makes your shower feel so much different and a lot more spacious even though its not!

There is one more good thing that happened this week, I think our refrigerator is finally fixed for good. For the last 1 1/2 it has been going out, then working a few days than working again. We have had someone come out twice and they thought they fixed it each time. Then a couple days later it would be off again. It was really annoying because it has caused us to waste so many groceries and it's hard to make meals every night without a fridge. Well yesterday someone came out and we think fixed it for good this time. So last night I made a menu for the week and then after Noah went to bed went grocery shopping. So now we should be set, and our life should feel a little more normal from here on out. It has been such a crazy couple months, so I'm definetly ready for normal again!!

Popsicle Fun

Katie had a popsicle that Noah kept trying to grab. She let him grab it and we couldn't believe how long he held onto it. Those things are cold especially when you hold them for awhile. It didn't seem to both him though. After he held it for awhile we put the plastic in his mouth. He sure made a face but I think he just didn't like the feel of it, I don't think he actually got a taste.

6 month Well-baby Check Up

This morning we went to the doctor for Noah's 6 month check up. I was ready for this appointment to be here since Noah has been having some eating issues. However I wasn't looking forward to his shots. I absolutely hate when he has to get them, its such torture for the moms. Today he weighed an even 20lbs and he was almost 27 inches long. His height is in the 69th percentile and his weight is in the 87th percentile. They said his height and weight were good. He may be an over achiever but they are in balance with each other and not too different. They said everything else looked great and he is developing very well.. Yeah!! Good to know. It's hard as a first time mom to not compare to how your kids are as to others but its good to remember that they all do things at their own pace and develop at different rates.

About the eating issues. For awhile now he has been eating a little bit of his bottle and then crying then eating a little bit more and crying. He didn't do it at all feedings just some of them but we couldn't figure out why. We started some food in the meantime since he acted hungry and we figured he would be but just wouldn't take his bottles. I started to do some research to see if other people had run into any similar problems around his age and a bunch of people said there child had acid reflux and did the same thing. I have noticed before that he burps a lot and it sounds like a liquid one but nothing comes out. My thinking is, is that he swallows it back down which hurts his stomach more. He does spit up some but not at every feeding. I kept this in mind to talk to the doctor about at this visit to see what she thought.

Then Randi had heard from someone at her work earlier in the week that her baby did the same thing and they had to switch them from the powder formula to the liquid ready to feed. I didn't have anything to lose, I just wanted to help him because he acted like something was bothering him and cried like he was hurting. I would do anything to help him. Of course the liquid is more expensive but if it helps it would be worth it to us. So this last week we got the liquid and have been trying it the last 2 days and it seems to be better. He has been eating alot more without crying. But today I talked to the doctor about how we switched and just what he was doing and without telling her I was thinking about acid reflux she said it sounds like that. She suggested we try Zantac for a month to see if it helps with those sypmtoms. So tomorrow we will go back to powder formula with the zantac and see if that helps. I'm hoping for good results of course because if this has been half of his problem and I can fix it I would love to. I hate for him to be on any kinds of medicine but I also hate for him to be in a pain. It's a win/lose situation. All in all I just want what's best for him, like any other parent. I will update as soon as we come to a conclusion but I'm hoping we have got it figured out by 1 of the 2 methods.

For his nighttime feedings, I knew they would ask and they haven't gotten any better since the 4 month check up. The week before we went to his 4 month he started just getting up once at night to eat. So at that time they had told me to start weining him off of that by going down an oz every couple nights. Well then he got sick and so we let him eat whenever. Then we went on a couple trips and those messed him up. Each night while we were gone he would be up 3 and 4 times a night. Then when we got back it took awhile to get him back into his routine and we had it down to 2 feedings again. Last week one night when he woke up a 2nd time I stayed up with him for about an hour trying to get him back to sleep without eating and finally I did. Now he has a cold again and isn't sleeping well so hopefully this will pass soon and we will start to get down to 1 feeding quickly and then really work with the last one. I can't imagine sleeping 8 hours without getting woke up, or even 7. I think it would be quite heavenly. I look forward to that night!

Swimming

Just relaxing and having fun, love this expression!!

Aunt Randi had to wet his hair so it would go over to the side, she just loves it that way for some reason..

This afternoon I took Noah swimming out at dad's pool with Aunt Randi and one of her friends and her 2 children. The last time we put Noah in water besides at bathtime was in the ocean and that was a little stressful for me. I much prefer pools for them at this age. I figured he would be okay in the water today but he liked it more than I thought. We weren't in too long because nothing entertains him that long and he was ready for a nap anyway. We made it about 20 minutes though and he was happy for all of that. At first when I put him in his little water floaty, he wanted to sit up and lean on the front of it. He kept trying to kick his feet. It was cute, it was like he was trying to swim already. We will have to go out there more often and maybe he will start to last longer each time. He wasn't a big splasher though which surprised me since he is always moving his arms. He just leaned forward so he couldn't reach the water in front of him anyway.

Gain, Awww!

I know this is completely random, but I love this detergent. Sometimes you know how you can smell peoples detergent without even getting that close to them, or you can smell it in their house when they are doing laundry. Well I have done that many times, but I just never knew what detergent it was. When we were in Tybee Island this last month we had bought some detergent to wash clothes while we were there. I had just picked up something that came in a small size and was on sale, not really being too picky about what it was. Well I picked this detergent up.. In orignal scent, I never get orignal scent in anything but since there were a lot of people who would be using it, I didn't want something too fragrant or a smell others wouldn't like. Well once I did laundry and smelled the clothes afterwards I realized this is the detergent smell that I have always liked! So anyways I didn't need detergent yet, but I picked some up for myself this week. I did all the laundry we had and washed our sheets with it yesterday. Freshly washed sheets are wonderful, but especially in this stuff!! If you haven't tried it I recommend it, it smells wonderful. As far as I can tell so far, it cleans well too!

Noah Playing

I love watching Noah when he plays. He makes the cutest faces. He has this look of determination that cracks me up. Then he will get so excited and wave his arms like crazy. Then every so often he will look up at you, to make sure you are still watching him.. He sure is an active little boy! We are going to be introuble when he starts moving.

Green Beans

One day while I was at work Randi was watching Noah and some of my family was over. We had some fresh green beans out on the counter. They thought it woudl be funny to give him one to see what he would do. He wasn't quite sure what to think at first. He played with it, licked and of course like everything these days, he tried to eat it. Here are few pictures they caught