*Playing with the hairdryer. While Mommy is getting ready, Noah gets in the bathroom drawer and pulls out the hairdryer. He then drags it around the house waving the hairdryer at people in his path while making the hairdryer noise "Chhhhhh".
*Saying hi to the baby. When someone says "Say hi to the baby," Noah goes up to Mommy's belly and blows raspberries or gives kisses. This has been a nice distraction technique since we've been weaning. When he is thirsty and comes to Mom for milk, we quickly tell him to say hi to the baby, and instantly he forgets his original objective.
*Running from the law. He usually uses his little waddle to get from one place to the next, but sometimes he picks up the pace. Usually it is in this scenario: Mommy and Daddy are in the den preoccupied with something other than Noah. He sees it as an opportunity to get into trouble. So he "sneaks" out of the room, to do one of two things: play with the decorations in the front room that are off limits, or crawl upstairs where he thinks he can roam free unsupervised. When we notice that he is attempting to escape our supervision, one of us gets off the couch to bring him back. Usually he is watching over his shoulder for us, and when he sees us coming after him, he laughs and breaks into his high speed run, which kind of resembles that powerwalk that women sometimes do to lose weight. It is very entertaining, so sometimes I let him escape just so I can see his little run.
*Brushing his teeth. When he sees Mommy or Daddy doing it, he demands with grunts until he gets his toothbrush and proceeds to wander around the house with his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.
*Sweeping the floor. His birthday gift that has been the most frequently used: a little 3$ plastic broom from Grandma. It was hilarious how his eyes lit up when he saw his broom for the very first time. After every meal, we wipe down Noah and the highchair (and he likes to wash his highchair tray all by himself), and then Noah goes to the pantry to get his broom. He sweeps around his highchair and wherever else he sees the need. I think he might have inherited the Campbell cleanliness gene. We will certainly put that to good use in the years to come.
*Coloring. We constantly have crayons scattered all over the floor, and when Noah gets an artistic urge, he grabs one and his special notebook and goes to town. When he couldn't find his notebook, instead he used one of my cookbooks as his drawing pad. Probably in a year from now I won't react with the same enthusiasm, but for some reason when I saw all those scribbles in my cookbook, I felt very proud. His scribbles are so beautiful.
*Toy Circuit training. When it's playtime, Noah runs on an internal 60 second timer. Every minute or so he drops what he's doing and wanders to another toy and plays like crazy with that one until he moves on to the next one. He completes his toy circuit in about fifteen or twenty minutes, and then it's up to Mommy to entertain him. We are just lucky Grammy has so many toys here for Noah to play with.
*Kissing. He is so good at kissing people and things, especially cute little girls and his stuffed toy dogs. But he also is up for kissing his reflection and outside water spigots when he is feeling generous with his besos.
Noah is so much fun. It is amazing how babies just seem to get more and more fun all the time. Who knows what they will figure out next.
