Road Trip

Last Friday night we decided to get out of town in honor of Kyle's spring break. We had plans to be in Vegas the next day for Louie's football game, and we thought as long as we were going that far, we might as well go somewhere farther. Kentucky sounded like fun, so we threw together some bags and headed east on Saturday. When we left, we didn't even have directions to get there, but after a few phone calls (thanks Ryan), we figured it out. The trip was incredible. Both Kyle and I love traveling, and little Noah seems to have inherited that. He was amazing during the 30 hour car ride. He kept busy playing (stickers, coloring, reading),
taking in all the beautiful scenery and pondering the meaning of life,
and sleeping, of course.

Also we couldn't have made it without a portable DVD player and his favorite movies Happy Feet and Cars.

When we stopped for breaks, he would get out and run around,

and then get back into his car seat without a single complaint.

We drove all through the night on Saturday and then most of Sunday night too. That was pretty intense! We pulled over to sleep on the side of the road for an hour on Saturday, and other than that, we just caffeinated ourselves and hoped for the best.

(Kari taught me this trick)

If we did not have to stop so many times to pee, we would have definitely made the trip in under 30 hours. Next time we're all going to wear diapers like Noah.

We wanted to surprise my family, so they had no idea we were coming. We just showed up at their house at 4:00 in the morning on Monday. The look on their faces was priceless! Grandma just about had a coronary. Whoever went and woke her up said "there is kind of an emergency, I need you to come out here" so you can imagine what she looked like when she came out to the family room, and then when she saw us standing there. It is so nice going home to Kentucky, we are definitely surrounded by a lot of love there. And as always we enjoyed our time with the Piepers. The drive to them was worth it and we'll do it again sometime!

Unfortunately in our packing frenzy we left the camera battery charger at home, so we didn't get many pictures. The scenery was beautiful! But now at least I have pictures in my head to go with all the states we saw (12 in all). There really are some beautiful places in the US. The deserts of Arizona and New Mexico were surprisingly beautiful. We drove through golden fields in Texas and saw some crazy dairy farms. Oklahoma had some nice green farmland scattered throughout, but watch out for those toll roads and police officers. Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois all had lots of forestland and open fields. Kentucky's skeletons of trees broken in the ice storm were pretty wild. I slept through Kansas. Colorado's mountains, with all their wildlife, were amazing. And even coming home we were impressed with the sights right here in St. George, Utah.

I have always wanted to travel the world, but during this trip I realized that there is enough to see right around here. So until I'm rich and able to take my world travels, I will be content with cross country car trips.

Getting our kicks on Route 66

Groceries and Stickers

2 things I did with Noah recently brought me back to my childhood.

1. I used to love playing grocery store with empty food boxes on makeshift shelves. I wasn't sure if Noah is too young to enjoy the same thing, but I thought I'd give it a try, since we are always looking for new things to keep us busy during the day (You can only play Play-dough so many times!). I set them up some old food boxes and cartons in our spare room, nothing fancy, but it doesn't take much to satisfy little kids. I gave Noah a big plastic laundry bin to use as a shopping cart and an old wallet with old gift cards, and he went to town. His favorite part was swiping his debit card and putting in his pin number into the computer.

This is a picture of Noah doing his shopping--he's all a blur, going from one item to the next, throwing things into his cart and talking on the cell phone the whole time. He's learned from the best. :)


2. We were playing with some smiley face stickers. Noah likes stickers but his fingers are still so small and his fine motor skills aren't quite there yet, so he has a hard time getting little stickers off the page and getting them to stick in the right places. But today he found a new place for stickers and it was funny enough that he managed to get his little fingers going.

(I made the picture small so as not to frighten anyone...)

It reminded me of a funny story from my childhood. My mom was taking a nap one evening and some of us kids thought it would be funny to stick little happy face stickers on her face while she was knocked out. After her nap she got up and went to the store and kept getting all these smiles from people, and she was just so impressed with how overly friendly and happy everyone was at wal-mart that day. When she got home she realized that she had smiley face stickers all over her face, and maybe that was the explanation for all those smiles. I just love what that says about motherhood--some days you roll off the couch and jump in the car without so much as a glance in the mirror, and for all you know, you could have smiley face stickers (or worse!) plastered to your face. I went ahead and took off the stickers from my face pretty soon after Noah moved on to other activities, because I do have a trip to Wal-mart planned today, and I don't need the extra smiles or attention!

a little bathroom humor

I just had to add this. But don't read on if poop stories aren't your thing. (Sorry.) We have put Noah on the toilet a couple of times. I promise we aren't trying to be over-achiever parents, we just do it for fun--it's amazing what entertains you as a parent! (But also, I will admit that even the littlest exposure to the big toilet makes the thought of 2 diapered children seem slightly less frightening! Two more months until double diaper duty.) So when we put Noah on the big potty, he does this funny thing: he clenches his teeth and pushes. Yesterday he even squeezed out a little gas, and seemed proud of himself. Today though, he pushed, and when nothing happened, he said: "Stuck!" Good word choice.
Oh and on a related note, Kyle and Noah were home alone together, and Kyle couldn't find where I had stashed the last bag of diapers. He couldn't get me to answer my phone, and so he just let Noah run around the house naked. You can imagine what happened next. Noah came up to Kyle with something brown on his hand, and led Kyle to something brown on the floor. We were just lucky that he is moving past the runny baby poop stage. How funny to be a baby and think it's okay to use the bathroom wherever you are. I'm glad we grow out of that.

stuck

A couple weeks ago Noah found a new word. We were playing with play-dough (as we do now four times a day), and he was trying to dump the play-dough out of the play-dough can. He kept shaking it, but nothing would come out, and then he looked at me urgently and said: "Stuck!" He must have heard me say it enough times that he picked it up himself. And he's started applying it to things beyond play-dough. Actually he probably over-applies it, but anyway, it is funny. He says "stuck" when he can't get out of his highchair, when he can't get a toy out of his toybox, when I change his diaper and hold him down so he can't escape,... My favorite time was when he wanted me to come play with him, but was having a hard time convincing me, because I was busy doing something at our desk. He started pushing on my butt and yelled in frustration: "STUCK!"
Which brings me to Noah's other little thing. He wants me to go everywhere with him. During the day when we are home together, all day long, I follow him around like I'm his shadow. To get me to go with him, he always holds out his hand expectantly, and will keep it there as long as he needs to until I get up and take his hand and walk with him wherever it is he wants to go. He says something while his holds out his hand that sounds like it might be "come on Mom" or at least just "Ma ma mom." Half the time he doesn't have anywhere in particular that he wants to go, he will just wander aimlessly from room to room, towing me along. Almost like he is testing me, he will sit down in the middle of the hallway and wait for me to sit down, and as soon as I lower my pregnant body down to the ground, then he is up again, and pulling me on to the next stop. The fact that he wants to go everywhere holding hands with me is so sweet. During my lazy moments when I don't particularly want to wander around the house and would prefer to be stationary on the couch, I remind myself that this is just a little fleeting stage Noah is going through, and I think that when this stage passes, he will probably be Mr. Independence, and someday he will even get to be too cool for mom. That thought leaves me feeling a little pathetic, so I choose to get off the couch, and let him lead me around by the hand wherever he wants to go, happily.

Photo shoot #2

We just took Noah pictures again a few weeks ago. Grandma was in town so we let her get in on some of the fun. One look at her face tells you how much she loved being here and seeing Noah again. Have you ever seen someone so happy?

Faces

Recently we were having fun talking about faces.

"pin the face parts on the face" Studying pictures of different expressions.

He's becoming more aware of facial expressions and emotions. The sad and angry faces I showed him made him uncomfortable. He loves looking at the happy and silly faces, but he isn't a fan of the negative emotion pictures. Tonight he was over at Grammy's house, and she was reading a book with him. There was a page in the book where a little girl is crying hysterically because she dropped her ice cream cone. When Noah saw the girl, he started crying. Shanna tried it again later when I was there, and the same thing happened, he went hysterical when we got to the page with the sad little girl. It took him about 5 minutes to calm down after that little episode!

His little outbursts of expression are usually fun though. I love to see him develop and learn new feelings and expressions. He does a sleepy face, laughing face, and funny face, but he has become really fond of making what we call the "surprised face."

He will do it on command, but it is especially endearing when he does it on his own, at random or appropriate times. The other day I was gone, and Noah was home with Kyle. Noah was digging through Kyle's wallet for fun, and when he found a picture of me, he turned to Kyle and made the surprised face and said "Mama!" (I am just proud he has finally started using my name instead of calling me Dada.) I was coloring something for Noah the other day and I didn't want him to see it until I was done, so I covered it up and said: "Noah, you can't look, this is a surprise!" and immediately he busted out the surprised face. He made me laugh, and so I gave in and gave him the surprise right then. He also does the surprised face if he hears the garage door open when Kyle comes home from work. And usually the face is accompanied by a dramatic gasp. You just have to see it in person to really appreciate it. But here's another picture to give you the idea.
If you wonder why he looks pretty ghastly in this one, it's because he is sick (Both he and kyle have been out of commission with the flu the last couple of days). What a little trooper.

But still I love his happy face the best.

Farmer Noah

Noah has developed this horse obsession since we have lived in Ivins. We share our neighborhood with some horses. It makes our walks a lot more exciting, not to mention our drives. It's a piece of cake to get Noah into the car--All we have to say is: "do you want to go see the horses?" and he answers with a firm "yeah" and a nod of the head, then drops anything that he was busy with and makes a beeline for the door, making the horse noise as he goes. However, his love for horses has gotten slightly offensive. When you ask him a question like: "Do you want to go pick up Dada from work?" or "Do you want to go see Grammy?" his answer is the horse noise, like he could care less about whoever else is involved, as long as the horses are part of the plan. We look at horse pictures on the computer, give Noah horsey rides, read farm books, sing horse songs, go on wagon rides to see the horses, sculpt clay horses, and draw horse pictures. I think we're raising a farmer.




Pictures from one of our wagon rides:
(first picture included to humor those wondering about my size these days)