We love Christmas!

Christmastime is here! (cue Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack)
Everyone said that Christmas with a toddler would be fun and it is true!! The first thing Noah asks for every morning is to turn the lights on the Christmas tree and he loves Christmas music. Yup, he's my kid alright. :) The first time we read a Christmas book his response when I read, "Merry Christmas!" was "woo-hoo!" (I promise I did not prompt him at all! :)
I have been reading so much about Christmas being so commercial and overdone and all the activities associated adding so much stress to your life. Number 1, it only becomes those things if you let it. And Number 2, I WANT my kid to remember Christmas as a big deal, to have memories and traditions as far back as he can remember. Maybe some big, over the top, and unnecessary things that mean lots of work for mommy, but you know what, it is worth it. (I love this post from one of my favorite blogs.) I believe that God is a fan of celebration and traditions and memories, for OUR benefit. Read Leviticus. And I believe those are some of the most powerful tools to use with our children to teach them about God.
If you know me, you know it has been Christmastime around here far before this week. I listen to Christmas music pretty much all year, and starting on Halloween it all comes out. The tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving (and stays up until I feel like taking it down or my husband makes me :). And I loooooove the Advent season and Advent calendars and all that good stuff. However, I know my kid and I know he would not be able to handle an advent calendar where he only got to open one door a day and wait for the rest, so I decided to do a "Christmas box." I put a card with a picture of a Christmas-y activity on it each day, along with a magnetic piece or a finger puppet of a character in the Christmas story. One of his favorite parts is when Mary and Joseph discover there is no room in the inn. He ran around all day yelling "Room, no room!" You never know what they will pick up on!Some of his favorite activities have been:

putting up a little tree in his roomThis is definitely the favorite. We have undecorated and redecorated that tree many times this month! (It was the tree I had in my room growing up!) For a few days he carried around one ornament of each color pretty much everywhere. Lucy likes to steal them off the tree and ends up knocking the tree over, to which Noah says, "Uh-oh! No, meow-meow!" (But of course then he knocks it over himself and thinks its funny...toddlers. :)

making Christmas play-dough
some Christmas art projects
pretending to be a shepherd and finding baby Jesus hidden around the roomThis was such a hit because I let him carry around a big stick. Boys and sticks...

So I know this post is cutting it close, but does anyone have any toddler Christmas ideas to share? Please pass them on if you do!!

Happy Christmas-ing!

Noah's Very Happy 2nd Birthday!

We have a two year old here!! And so much to celebrate! At his two year old check up our doctor said, "look at him; I can't believe he is a 28 weeker." (For the record, he is barely on the charts for weight and smack dab in the middle for height.) And two is the magic number where they stop adjusting his age. He's just two. (Although I think it will probably take a little longer for my brain. When people ask when his birthday is my first thought is often March instead of December.)
We woke him up on his birthday with special birthday balloons and he LOVED it. He carried those balloons around everywhere for the rest of the day.Then we had birthday pancakes and opened presents and played and had a fun family day. (We also got pictures taken, but Mommy enjoyed that more than Noah...)
On Saturday we had a "Very Hungry Caterpillar" birthday party!Noah excelled at all things birthday party.
Opening and playing with presents:



(Grandmas and Grandpas sure give good presents! He loves them all.)

Blowing out his birthday candle:
Eating the birthday cupcake (well, at least the frosting):
He was sooo excited to have TWO grandpas and TWO grandmas there! (He is spoiled, I mean loved, just a little bit. :)

We love our two year old!! Happy Birthday, Noah!

And thank you to all of you who have loved and prayed and celebrated with us these two years!

Birthday Boy!!

Our little boy is 2!!!

Happy Birthday, Noah!!! We love you!!!

Miracle Buddies

Found this unfinished post that definitely deserves to be finished. I'll skip the "I'm so behind on blogging" speech and simply point out that these pictures are from August. We'll just say I was saving them for Prematurity Awareness Month. . .
Because one of the highlights of our summer was a trip to Fargo. Yes; its true. Because it wasn't for anything medically related, it was to see Noah's best NICU buddy Stella and her family!! We hadn't gotten to see each other since she went home from the NICU and it was soooooo awesome to get to spend some time with them. We went to a park and watched these two play and interact and run all over that started out their lives in isollettes with oxygen and PICC lines and more than I care to think about. Such big miracles and so much cuteness crammed into two little people! (If you followed us on CaringBridge, this is the Stella that we mentioned a few times. The one that was 12 ounces when she was born. No, that's not a typo; the girl was 12 ounces. And now she is a happy healthy toddler.)
It doesn't get much cuter than this:


This is the "before" picture:
And this is why we love the NICU:

World Prematurity Day

Today is Prematurity Awareness Day! I have my purple on! (That is the official color for prematurity awareness, I guess because it is the March of Dimes logo color.) And I have to post about something! I wrote out our story last year, which was actually extremely therapeutic for me, so I'll go a different route this year. (I have a couple ideas bouncing around in my head, we'll see what ends up on the page...)
Guess what? I am including a picture. :) For a long time I skipped over this one when it came to printing or posting pictures, because it has a big ol' ventilator screen and a nurses head taking up most of the picture. But you know what? That is the NICU. That is what it was like the first time I held my baby: dependent on equipment and highly trained professionals. And then I realized something else about this picture that I can't believe I didn't notice before: Noah is looking up at me (or at least trying to). Even with equipment and a little body that isn't supposed to have to be working on its own yet and a mommy who wishes her body would have worked how it was supposed to and everything else that comes with prematurity, there is that love and bond between mother and child that nothing can take away. (Now I cry pretty much every time I look at it.)


As for the whole idea of awareness... I am aware of prematurity every day. Every time I look at Noah and realize there is nothing about him that shows that he was a preemie. Every time I see that teeny tiny diaper that was too big for him that I have framed to remind us how far he has come, and that teeny tiny hat that doesn't even fit his stuffed animals. Every time I see the scars on his hands and feet from being poked and prodded. Every time I feel myself getting frustrated at some toddler antics and then think, "get over it; he is alive to do those antics." Every time I am overwhelmed with how much I love this little person and how much better he makes my life.
There are two things that always comes to my mind when I think of "raising awareness" about prematurity. One is that prematurity can affect anyone. Chances are you know someone besides me that has been affected my it. And chances are they didn't do anything that caused it. Prematurity isn't picky. Healthy people making good choices are affected by it. It stinks, but that's the way it is. The other thing that I always think about is what I think every pregnant woman needs to truly get in her head, and that is to go to all of your prenatal appointments and if something feels off to you, go get it checked. Even if your friend says that's how they felt and everything turned out fine, if something feels off to you GO TO THE DOCTOR. "Better safe than sorry" is a true statement, just ask my son. Okay, I'm done.
Today is the first worldwide prematurity day, which is kind of cool. The worldwide idea brings a couple other things to mind. One is how many countries do not have state of the art level 3 NICU's to save those precious lives. Unfortunately prematurity doesn't take that into account either. On the more self-centered side, I think about how Noah and I could have been affected by that fact. For awhile we had our sights set on going overseas for missions, and although I am really not a fan of the "what if" game, it hasn't escaped my thinking that if we had gone that route and ended up in some remote village or less developed country and a pregnancy had gone how it did, I probably wouldn't be alive right now.
I am so thankful for our little boy and our little family and every day we have together. Prematurity isn't how we wanted to start our family's story, but it will always be an important part of that story. And so I will keep wearing purple on November 17 and sharing our story.
"We need to fight because babies shouldn't have to."

I have my reasons

I am fully aware that I am slightly obsessive in the picture taking department. I am happy to be the crazy mom with a camera. I pretty much have my son brainwashed already, who says "cheese!" whenever he sees a camera, and even my hubby is coming around and not minding so much when I stick a camera in his face. :)
I have my reasons. Pictures are memories, and memories are very important to me. (Although I know and sometimes have to remind myself that you also need to put down the camera and be part of the memories in the first place.) Often when I look at a picture I remember taking the picture and so what the picture is of is a stronger memory. Make sense? It does in my world.
I have lots of uses for them too. My husband has told me that I can't plaster our faces all over the walls, but there's no better decoration to me than a picture of my family. (Maybe if I do it slowly he won't really notice... love you, honey! :) Noah loves to look at pictures of us and grandpas and grandmas and things we have done. I like making "books" out of them.
Another thing that I love is getting to give pictures to kids at church or camp or things like that. Especially those who don't have that many photographs. I handed some out at the end of VBS this year and loved seeing the reactions. The younger ones ran around carrying them and showing them to anyone who would look shouting "it's me!"
Today I had some to give to our Sunday School kids from various things over the past couple months. One of them looked through them and said, "these are good memories that I will keep forever." This is an 8 year old boy who has two sisters that walk to church every week on their own, live with their grandma and whoever else happens to be crashing at the house (last I heard it was 8, which meant the kids lost their bedroom) because their dad is in jail and their mom is who knows where and shows up every once in a while. Those kids deserve as many good memories as they can get.
And those are my reasons. Let the memory capturing continue.

22 months old--2 away from 2!

I don't know if anyone actually checks this regularly, but I apologize for the lack of posting if you do! Life has been pretty crazy lately, and blogging just didn't make it high enough on the to-do list. (Which is a bummer, because I do enjoy it...)
Anyway, it is time for another Noah update! 22 months old!! (That is almost two. A book I was reading pointed out that is half way to four. For some reason thinking about it that way made me cry...)
-We haven't been to the doctor in so long I don't know how much he officially weighs, but by our measurements on our growth chart he is up to 32 inches tall. A few people have commented he is tall in the past couple days.
-He definitely doesn't look like a baby at all any more! And over the past few months he has gone from looking less like a toddler and more like a little boy.
-I didn't sit down and count how many words he uses before I started writing this, but it is getting up there. He still uses lots of signs too and rarely gets frustrated from not being able to communicate. One of the many huge blessing of being a stay at home mom is that I know what pretty much every little gesture and inflection means because we spend so much time together. -His most used words are "daddy" and "mama" (seriously, we are talking hundreds of times a day here) and he loves to say his name now: "O-ah". (He can say the n sound in "no" but his name is always "o-ah." Why is that? :)
-Answers questions very enthusiastically with "yeeeaaah!" or "yup! yup! yup!" It is ridiculously cute. (Or "no" and "nope" of course.)
-He is learning colors and calls pretty much everything "boo." But he usually finds blue, orange, and yellow correctly if you ask him.
-Counts to two.
-Asks to hold pretty much everything, including but not limited to: bugs, any animal, airplanes, the moon, and babies. :)
-Says (signs, actually) "please" and "thank you", often without being asked. He is actually learning things I am teaching; hooray!
-Still loves cars, actually any vehicle, and his new favorite thing is tools. He loves to have the coffee table tipped over and "fix" it with his tools. It holds the record for the activity he has done the longest. :)
-Still loves to snuggle.
-Still loves to play as crazy and fast as possible.
-Loves it when we pray and says "aaaaaa-men."
-Claps and says "yay!" whenever a song is done, especially when it is daddy playing guitar.
-Loves to "help" with whatever we are doing.
I love my 22 month old!