Easter 2012

This year, the Easter Bunny gave each boy a wind-up construction vehicle

(driven by a rabbit and a chick, respectively);

a light-up spinning wand;

and a big old hunk of chocolate, of course!

He/she also left this note in each basket.

I love the explicit mention of a 6-egg maximum.

Off they went, searching high...

 

 and low...

for their soccer/foot-/basket-/baseball eggs.

They were eggs-pert hunters!*

Also very proud of themselves.

Mommy and Bridget were recovering from some nasty colds,

but they loved watching the boys have so much fun.

Happy Easter 2012!!

*Sleep deprivation brings out the bad puns. Mea culpa.

Preschool for Everyone!

On the first day that felt like fall, Will and Finn got into their warm gear

and got ready for school.

Of course, because Finn is my second kid, I forgot to prepare him

for dropping Will off at preschool.

When we got back into the car, Finn gestured toward Will's empty carseat

and said, "Where Will? Where Will?"

Oops.

The first two days of Finny's drop-off playgroup confused him.

His (wonderful) teacher--he plays with four other toddlers in her home two mornings a week--

said he was crying off and on.

But by day three, he had begun his current routine:

cries in protest for 15-30 seconds when I leave, then he's "perfect" throughout the morning.

He's happily eating lunch when I come to pick him up, and he's never in a hurry to get home.

Will and Finn with Connor (far left) and Jack (far right)

Will has been loving his new preschool from day one. Just loving it.

It's a much more relaxed environment than his previous one,

and he barely acknowledges me when I leave, although he greets me excitedly when I return.

with Connor

I'm learning that Will's a typical boy in many ways.

Although he's extremely chatty, he talks way more about his toys and projects

than his friends at school--whereas the moms of his female classmates have told me 

they've heard a lot about Will from their kids.

"I'm the best convertible driver IN THE WORLD!" he proclaimed.

 These pictures are obviously not of Will at preschool, but they reflect how socially at-ease he's become.

I think Finny has a lot to do with his development--he really notices other kids now, and you can tell he thinks about how he's treating them. Sometimes his experience as a big brother makes him feistier and more physical than his friends (and I) would like, so it's not all sweetness and light. 

But...it's still a whole lot of that, too.

All in a Month's Work

You know when you have "Call so-and-so!" on your list, and then as the days tick by with no time for phone calls there is SO MUCH MORE to tell so-and-so, and you try to keep track of it all, and then you have to block out more and more time for this supposed phone-based catch-up session, and before you know it, it's been a month? Or more? That's what happened on this here blog.

First, I didn't want to jinx anything by discussing the sale of our condo. Real-estate-wise, how have we been burned? Let me count the ways:

-new construction home delayed by two weeks, then a month, then another month, and finally doesn't come through *plus* we have to do battle with the builder to get any money back for our upgrades

-rushed condo purchase leads to...interesting...upstairs neighbors, a far-less-than-ideal location in a busy intersection

-the whole thing about the economy tanking and our not being able to sell said condo for anywhere near what we paid

-our first buyers for the condo, five months after it goes on the market, back out post-"under agreement" for no reason at all, before the home inspection's even happened

And those are just the biggies. So you can forgive us for being closed-mouthed when it looked like we might actually, honest-to-goodness get out of our place once and for all.

But it happened. We closed on November 29 and moved in with my parents. And (Mom, Dad, I love you, thank you for being so wonderful, but) that's pretty rough on a 30-year-old with a husband and two young kids. There are trade-offs, and the good of escaping a home we KNEW we wanted to escape CERTAINLY outweighs any bad that accompanies this temporary situation. I won't get into all the pros and cons, but please believe me when I say, for all the short-term perils of a crowded house and six conflicting schedules, I'm vastly grateful to have the opportunity to conduct a house hunt that is Thorough and Thoughtful rather than Rushed and Desperate.

Then, the kids' "new things" kept piling up and changing. Will went from saying "Cranbezzies" to "Cranberries" and I didn't cry because at least he still says "Peamup and jelly," and that's about the cutest thing that's ever happened, maybe to anyone. My big boy has been in his big-boy bed for four months now, and he has never had one iota of angst regarding that transition. He HAS been working through a cough for the last month and a half, which means when he partially wakes up in the middle of the night, Dave and I completely wake up. We've recently begun addressing this problem (for us) with something called Wal-Zyr (for him), a Walgreens-brand antihistamine approved for 2-year-olds. It's been fabulous, as has my discovery of Walgreens. Hey, did you all know there's a place that sells the same stuff as CVS but has, like, great coupons and Jingle Bucks on top of already low prices and steep sales? You probably all did, but as my turn as a bargain shopper is relatively new, I had not known. (My mom got concerned when she realized I was suddenly all about the coupons--I had to reassure her that it was, in fact, my classic What's The Point of Doing Anything Without Going Whole Hog? routine and not the more worrisome We're Broke So I'm Off to Fight that Lady in Line for the Last Bottle of 99-Cent Apple Juice life crisis.)

Back to Will! He's as verbal and as gargantuan as ever. We just ordered size 10.5 double-wide sneakers for him. If you don't have a two-year-old, trust me when I say that's RIDICULOUS. He says things like, "I'm tempted to see everything!" and "Finny, you're such a cute little munchkin!" In other words (ha), he parrots us all the time, but also seems to know what he's saying. It always takes me aback when he paraphrases something I've said, as if he needs to make it his own, or just comes up with something spontaneously--lately it's been on-the-spot songs narrating his thought process, like when we were at his bestie Connor's house and he sang, "I want to hold--hold--hold--Con-nor's hand--hand--hand." I didn't have the heart to tell him it was bordering on copyright infringement and the remaining Beatles would surely sue if they caught wind of his plagiarism.

And Finny? Finny walks, runs, pivots, swivels, bends, lunges, squats, and generally runs me ragged. I can't believe I used to sit on my playroom floor and despair while Will toddled around me and Finny lay sleeping on my lap. THOSE WERE INDEED THE DAYS.

Finn also continues to sign, tries to talk--he can half-say a lot of words when prompted. Much like Will at (almost) eleven months, nothing is safe around that boy. He is, however, less of the Dismantling and Reassembling variety than his older brother--Finn's more a "Let's hurl this ball/block/4-pack of paper towels as far and as hard as I possibly can. Over and over and over," sort of guy. His new game is to kiss me repeatedly, with a wagging tongue and an open, drooly mouth. It would be positively disgusting if he had one less dimple and stubbier lashes and eyes with no twinkle, and if he was missing that guttural, joyful chuckle that punctuates our days. Instead, that sloppy French kiss is out-of-this-world adorable, and I'm constantly squeezing him and then pulling back to ask for "Kisses?" He even makes a "MWAH" noise. He's crazy cute, demands an audience, grunts heartily when he needs something, beats his chest as he circles the house, smiles at everyone, snuggles us all, and LOVES his Cheerios and his mozzarella. Purees are, like, SO three months ago, says his expression when Chicken and Summer Vegetables are on the menu.

And see? This post is already ages long, and I still have covered maybe .0000003% of everything that's happened since last I wrote here. I still have to put up pictures of Thanksgiving and tell you about the many wonders of the boys' Mary Poppins-esque babysitter. For tonight, I'll leave you with these:

My sweet and exhausting boys. And also Bulldog the bulldog.

Big Boy Bed

The twin bed was delivered yesterday, and Will was very excited to try it out. We'd gotten him psyched up by purchasing a set of sheets with the very same Curious George design as the one on his favorite crib sheet. We let him sleep with a pillow cloaked in the George pillowcase two nights ago, and we kept reminding him that his "cozy big boy bed" was coming! You get to sleep in a bed just like Mommy and Daddy! And so on and so forth.

Will took a while falling asleep last night; he was silent, but Dave stayed in there with him, sensing his alertness to this novel sleeping situation. He was awakened at six-thirty or so by some rumbling truck noises (argh) but went back to sleep with me until seven-fifteen, when he blearily remarked, "Clock says seven. Time-a-get-up."

Nap was more...daunting than bedtime. Will has always been a champion night sleeper and an inconsistent-at-absolute-best napper. (This is the opposite of news to most of you, I know.) He's been so smitten with his new bed, but the idea of putting him in an even LESS restrictive setting for his MORE troublesome time of day--I won't lie, it scared me down deep inside.

I told Dave it was time to cut out the gray area for naps and require Will to have "crib time" from one to three every afternoon, no matter what naps he'd taken before and/or refused to take once one o'clock rolled around. The emphasis was on the "crib" part of the phrase; I didn't want to have to bother with a kid getting up and hurling himself over the guardrail or coming out of his bedroom every other minute to see if I was still willing to put my foot down.

Luckily, Mamp swung by to see Will today after a few days' absence and read him some books in the new bed. I told Will a couple of times that he'd have to be asleep from one to three and asked him if he wanted to sleep in his bed or his crib, to which he firmly answered, "Bed."

I know, the suspense is killing you, no?

I sang him some songs, and when I put him in bed and cozied him up under the comforter, Will started to whimper.

"Bubba," I told him with the voice of someone who is desperate to turn over a new naptime leaf, "if you cry, I'll put you in your crib until three o'clock."

"Be in bed," he countered mournfully.

"Then you go to sleep, and I'll see you at three."

"Yeah."

And he's been asleep ever since.

Right Here Waiting

I have the cutest pictures (and video) of Finn, but I can't post them because the cable for our camera is stashed somewhere "out of the way" while we try to keep the house clean for showings. In the meantime, let me assure you that he is about as wonderful as they get, and if he would only cut out the sudden scream eruptions in the car I would never, ever be allowed to complain about him.

It must be something about going in atypical order from bottlefeeding to breastfeeding, but I surprisingly don't mind waking up in the middle of the night with Finn. We co-sleep, which gave me wicked anxiety dreams when we did it with Will and none at all so far with Finn, and the middle-of-the-night routine at fourteen weeks is so shockingly simple this time. We went from this:

-wake up

-panic briefly re: baby's whereabouts

-realize he is in my arms

-wake Dave up

-Dave warms the bottle and starts the feeding, while I...

-get out the pump parts and fill a new bottle for next time

-(not to mention all the daytime cleaning of bottle parts and measuring out supplementary formula and keeping track of how long the bottle had been in use, AAAAAAHHHH!)

to this:

-sort of wake up, but not really

-sling baby across body

-Dave continues to snore

-feed baby for 10 or 20 minutes, both of us dozing

-slide back down in bed, to sleep

Will and Dave went to New Jersey without us this weekend, leaving us behind because of the afore(much)mentioned car screaming, and I thought I'd be disappointed but also appreciative of some alone time with Finn. Instead, seven hours into the alone time, and all of Finn's giggles and smirks and dimples, even his joyful yodeling when I sing "Mighty Duke of York," have done little to remedy the melancholy I'm feeling because Will isn't by my side.

I miss his latest move, the one where I try to get him to do something silly and he chuckles and says, "Ma-mawwwwww," almost ruefully, like he's in on the joke. I miss his most recently adopted phrases, from "Big! Hug!" to "Blue car!" and "Mama drive," with the accompanying steering-wheel-maneuver hand gestures. And when I walked into the playroom shortly after they had gone, I almost burst into tears because it was so quiet, and his dump truck was going to sit unused for two whole days, and what is the point of this playroom if he's not here to use it?

(I know. He is gone for two days. As my dear friend Ceci reminded me, I can actually "sleep when the baby sleeps" this weekend, and even--gasp--go to the bathroom all by myself! It's just so tough to enjoy being home when my supersized chatterbox toddler isn't here to force me outside or tell me about the "BUS!" with "WHEELS!" and...I need to stop writing about this or I'll be near tears again.)

On a less sentimental note, did you guys know that 1-800-Contacts is actually awesome? I just never thought about using them before, and the other day when I realized I was down to my last pair but didn't have to go back to the eye doctor for another six months, I went online and ordered some and they came not two days later! And a year's supply was WAY cheaper than what I usually pay--and I got free shipping. Of course, when I had to call and ask them a question, I stood there for literally two minutes scanning the order form for their phone number.

Yep.

I was frustrated that I could not find the phone number for 1-800-CONTACTS. Let that one sink in.

So, in summary, I miss my firstborn and my mommy brain still reigns supreme over here. Have a great weekend!

Last-Minute Projects

The hardest thing about occupying my mind in this two-days-til-due-date limbo is that I have no idea how much longer I have before it's time to drop everything and give birth.

I have been in false or pre-labor for a day now, dilated to a centimer. Contractions have come and gone and other less savory signs of labor have made their appearance, but the whole process hasn't been kick-started. It was absolutely impossible for me to avoid the expectation that this labor would go just like Will's. Or, if it differed in any way, that I would go earlier. Well, here I am at 39 weeks, 5 days, and the last time I was that pregnant, I...wasn't. Will was born the morning of that day.

Yeah, yeah, "labor has its own clock" and all that. But what do I do while labor takes its sweet time in getting here?

1. Order "This book belongs to the Noon Family Library" stickers.
(They just got here today, and I'm intent on sticking them on every single one of Will's books after he wakes up from his nap.)

2. Drink raspberry leaf tea by the bucket.
(I guess it's supposed to strengthen your uterine muscles? Whatever, I just add honey and knock it back.)

3. Wash cloth diapers every day instead of every other--just in case!
(Maybe there is such a thing as being overprepared? A washed diaper never boils?)

4. Write and address birthday cards for the next few months so I don't have to worry about it while adjusting to two kids.
(So if your card comes signed by Joanna, Dave, Will and "Baby Noon," now you know why--it was written before he was born--and won't take it personally.)

5. Take baths. Relaxing sometimes brings on labor!

6. Go on long, uphill walks. Exercising sometimes brings on labor!

(Do you see how irritating these contradictions can be?)

7. Warn parents that, should labor be delayed another two/five/thirty-eight days, they will be required to assist you with all daily tasks because YOU JUST DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN TAKE IT ANYMORE.

8. Scavenge for more shows to DVR during late-night nursing sessions.

9. Flip through kids' clothing catalogues and sigh whenever you get to the baby girl outfits with ruffled bloomers and monogrammed collars.

10. Shred Dave's old documents from the '90s. Like his Sprint phone bills, which alerted me to the fact that Dave once owned a Sprint phone, something I didn't know because he switched to Verizon before we met, and yet he still has four years' worth of cell phone bills...taking up precious space in our office.

**I just realized that Dave and I would be the best Wife Swap ever, except we wouldn't swap with anyone--the show would just follow us arguing about hoarding old handwritten track meet results from high school (Dave's), then watch while I compulsively collect the mail and immediately sort it into Recycle, Shred and File piles. OK, that show might not actually be very interesting, but maybe the audience could write in and convince Dave that he doesn't need all those meet results? Or a Dining In receipt from 2002? Because that would be worth it.**

In Honor of the Holidays

Here are a few of Will's favorite things:

Retrieving Mama's shoes;

helpfully placing them on top of her feet.

Jumping on Dada's back;

demanding a ride by shouting "BAA!"

Finding our stash of extra keys;

attempting to unlock doors from the inside.

31 Years Ago Today

This guy was born. And although my own earthly debut was still two years away, somewhere in the pre-born universe, I'm sure I must have been smiling.

Maybe I should thank Dave for marrying me, but I sort of have a suspicion he did it as much for himself as for me. So instead, I'll thank his parents for raising Dave to be my favorite (grown-up) guy in the world.

And I WILL thank Dave for passing on his good-natured genes to this little boy:

And hopefully this one, too:

Chatty Charlie

Will's new favorite words (his own spin on them, of course):

TOWEL
CLOCK
TOE
CLOTHES
CLOSET
MORE

His new favorite signs:

-light
-food
-what?
-where?*

*When Dave saw Will signing"where," which consists of wagging your finger back and forth, he asked "Who kept saying NO to Will today?"

Will's new favorite things:

• any first birthday cards with dogs or Cookie Monster on the cover
• the lifelike stuffed beagle toy I purchased, of which Dave is afraid because "its eyes look possessed"
  
• flowers--specifically, sniffing them and saying "Ahhhhh"
• pulling all his clean clothes out of the closet and throwing them in his hamper
• pulling all our dirty clothes out of the hamper and onto the floor
• pulling our socks out of our drawers and then receiving applause for putting them "Back IN"

Will's new favorite book:

OK, this one is a story in itself. I went to the religious kids' book section to get some appropriate reading material to distract/engage Will at church. While perusing a couple of cute children's prayer books, Will grabbed a board book called "Jesus Loves Me" off the shelves and proceeded to tear off the corner with his teeth. It was what you would call a forced purchase.

However, the book is actually very cute. It features a bear family (mom, dad, baby bear), which is Will's favorite kind of family, picture-wise, and the illustrations are nicely drawn. There's a lot of repetition in the actual text of the book (can you guess what keeps getting repeated? Hint: it's in the title), but overall I think Will chose (chewed?) this book wisely.

THE END.

Confessions of a Shopaphobic

We've had a crazy couple of weeks around here, and it'll only get more hectic before things settle down. Zero free time on the weekends means grocery shopping on the weekdays...with the ten-month-old in tow.

I've shopped with Will before, but always with him in the Bjorn, which he's long since outgrown, or the stroller, in which case I have to limit my purchases to "whatever will fit in the basket beneath his seat." Read: one package of cheese, one loaf of bread. So last week I finally put Will in the shopping cart, after lots of hand-wringing about how he would surely get antsy after five or ten minutes and I'd have to dart out of there with only a gallon of milk in my free hand.

I was only worried because nobody had told me that shopping carts were designed specifically to entertain active children and are, in fact, MADE OF MAGIC.

Whenever Will got restless, I'd put my face up to his and race the cart down the aisle to elicit some gleeful giggles. And when he realized that all the fun noisemakers (cereal, pretzels, plastic packaging of any kind) were actually behind him, he simply swiveled around and played until it was checkout time.

It was worth the wait.

Mysteriously Looking Forward to January

It's finally summer in Boston!

Time for Will to crawl around with no pants on and sport a spiky

Dennis the Menace hairdo like his dad's:

And yet in our house, strangely, we find ourselves looking forward to January.

It makes no sense. It's cold in January! It's slushy, and we stay inside all day. It's past the holiday season. What could there possibly be to look forward to?

Oh, right. We get to meet our second baby sometime around January 18.

That must be it!

(New boy-or-girl poll to appear shortly--vote soon because we'll find out in a few weeks!)

Open Letter to Our Recent Visitors:

COME BACK!

We'll do anything you ask!

Aunt Joanna will keep her hair in a ponytail when we go on the Tall Ships!

We'll give Brianna some of William's teeth until she gets hers in again!

Will promises to look even more like Brendan as a baby!

(He also says he'll continue to make out with his reflection in the fridge.)

See? Look at this perfect angel!

Will claims he will never try to poke Brendan in the eye again.

Who else is as good as Jenna at pushing William in the swing?

Uncle Scott, you can snooze with Barbara the Bear anytime!

Everyone can camp out in the playroom again...

...and since you're cousins, Will doesn't even have to cover up in front of you!

Jenna could finish teaching a certain someone how to walk.

Will can finally figure out what that fascinating thing on Brendan's shirt is.


Uncle Dave already misses his nieces and nephew...

...and with the girls teaching Will how to read

and Brianna organizing his books,

Uncle Dave didn't have to lift a finger!

(We tried to convince this one to stay and be our nanny.)

The only consolation for your departure was the arrival of

the lovely Auntie Amy, also from New Jersey (because who isn't?):

William would like to say that he will get back in that empty diaper box if you'll hurry back.

Have you noticed that Will is smiling in all of these pictures?

It's like he knows how lucky he is to have this family and these friends.

Thanks for the wonderful visits! We miss you.