HUGE milestone!

This morning, right after Rudy left for school, Nola went to the door and said,

“Bye-bye, DaDa”

I almost passed out from sheer excitement!  She had never put 2 words together before.  Big stuff, people…big stuff.

On a related note, she imitated the word “fumble” one afternoon this week when the boys were playing backyard football.  Now, we think she’s calling footballs “fumbles”.  She says, “fuh-buh”, which could be football or fumble, but she says it with the same intonation that Rudy used when he yelled, “fumble” out in the backyard.

Her new teachers are reporting to us everyday that they just love having her in class.  They tell us that she is really funny.  She dances and loves music time.  She no longer cries when I drop her off in the mornings.  She really seems happy there, which – of course – makes me happy. 

As far as being funny… the new joke is for us (Rudy, especially) to ask her, “Can I have a kiss?”  She says, “No!” and turns her head away.  We respond by making a big deal (oh, man!  come on!) and she laughs and laughs like it’s the funniest thing ever!

I can’t imagine life without my girl. She’s wearing us out with her pre-2 tantrums, but we love her more than life itself.  She makes up for the fits with her kisses, hugs and grins. 

Two Wheels

July 18, 2011
Caleb decided that he was ready for his daddy to take the training wheels off of his old bike so he could learn to ride without them.  His new bike is still a little bit too tall for him, so we thought we’d start with the shorter one.  I had just gotten Nola to sleep when Rudy came inside to get me.  Sure enough, Caleb was riding on two wheels!  I ran inside to get the video camera!

While he was riding, I also managed to catch this blooper.  Caleb wants me to send it to America’s Funniest Videos.  It just might win us $10,000!

It’s been an eventful summer for this little guy.  He lost his first tooth, learned to ride his bike, learned to ride on a tube in the lake and gained a lot of independence.  He’s growing up in a lot of ways!
Ready…
Set…
Go! 

Pomp and Circumstance

Caleb graduated from preschool on Friday night.  It was an adorable program and he loved being with his friends.

 

After the ceremony, the daycare provided a spaghetti supper for the families.  At each table, there were 2 white balloons and a red balloon.  The parents wrote our hopes for our children on the white balloons.  The red balloons represented the kids. 

Then we tied the 3 balloons together and we went outside where the kids released them.  It was pretty sweet.

We have been so blessed to have Caleb’s pre-k teacher, Ms. Elizabeth, since he was started at CCCC when he was two.  Caleb loves her and we are so grateful that she has helped to prepare him for school and life!

 

Here’s our favorite graduate:

Snaggletooth

When Rudy and I were in Florida, Mom sent me a text telling me that Caleb had a loose tooth.  I couldn’t believe it!  I didn’t expect him to start losing teeth until he was in school.  Sure enough, that tooth got looser and looser over the next couple of weeks.  We checked it every now and then, but it seemed like it was hanging in there for a while. 
On Wednesday night (6/29), Kathy and Heather were at the house because Kathy was going to babysit Nola while we went to the rodeo. We sat down to eat spaghetti and Caleb started saying that his tooth hurt.  I looked in his mouth and that poor tooth was bleeding like crazy.  Rudy and I swooped him up and took him into our bathroom to investigate the situation without everyone having to watch Caleb bleed while they ate.  Rudy stood Caleb on the bathroom counter and started wiggling that tooth.  The more he wiggled, the more Caleb cried and yelled.  Rudy and I both thought about the old tie-a-string-to-a-doorknob trick, but neither of us have fond memories of that, so we opted not to do it. 

After much wailing and wiggling of teeth (tooth, really), Caleb was finally free of his loose tooth.  We rolled up a wet paper towel for him to bite on to stop the bleeding and then made a big to-do about the big event.

I mean, really – how cute is this little snaggletooth?!?

The best part of this whole story is that now Caleb has that missing tooth lisp.  Rudy and I have tried not to make a big deal out of it, but it is so stinking cute when he says, “My name ith Caleb Villineth” and asks if we can “thee if another tooth is looth yet.” 
So, what about the Tooth Fairy, you ask?  Well, Rudy and I talked about it.  We decided to stick with our plan of not pretending that tooth fairies and Santas are real.  We told Caleb that people might ask him about the T.F., but that wasn’t something we believe in in our family.  We don’t tell other people they are wrong, we just don’t believe it for ourselves.  He insists that (just like Santa Claus), the fairy is quite real and we are just too dumb to know the truth.  I’m not arguing with him about it, but he’ll never be able to say I didn’t tell him the truth.  I’m not sure how he justifies the fact that the TF didn’t come to our house that night.  Instead, we offered him a “Tooth Treat” of his choosing.  I expected him to want a toy or something of that nature, but instead, he asked to go swimming as his treat.  His daddy gladly obliged. 
I’m still trying to decide what to do with that first lost tooth.  I’m checking some fun websites for ideas.  I’ll let you know what I come up with…

Ready, Set, Walk!

On the afternoon of Friday, April 1st, we were sitting in the living room, trying to decide where to go for dinner.  Nola was playing in the floor.  I didn’t think too much about it when she crawled over and pulled herself up to standing by holding onto the coffee table.  She’s been doing that for months.  I did take notice, though, when she decided to let go.  She stood there for a few seconds before she put her hand back on the table.  Rudy was closest to her, so I suggested that he see if she would walk to him.  He did and – lo and behold - if she didn’t let go of that table and take a couple of steps!  We spent the next half-hour having her walk back and forth between us, laughing and enjoying the moment.  Here’s some video of her first afternoon of walking:

Nola right after taking her first steps on 4/1/11

Stuff We Did in April

April 1 ~ Nola suddenly started walking!  Of course, that deserves its own post.  More on that later.

April 4 ~ The daycare called me because Caleb had a suspicious rash that they thought was chicken pox.  I picked him up, took him straight to the doctor, got a diagnosis of post-viral rash and took him straight back to daycare.  While I was there, they told me that Nola had been having diarrhea.  I chalked it up to the antibiotic that she was on for her ears.  Later that night, I booked a trip for just Rudy and I in Florida this summer!  Yeah!!!

April 5 ~ Nola got sent home from daycare with fever and more diarrhea.  Turns out she had rotavirus.  Yuck.  My mom came to the rescue and drove up to stay with us since Nola couldn’t go to daycare.

That night was also Caleb’s first t-ball practice.  That also deserves its own post.  Again…more on that later.

April 7 ~ Mom left after packing and taking 365 pieces of Nola’s outgrown clothes to consignment. 

April 8 ~ My friend Sheila and I took our preschoolers (Caleb and Ansley) to see Seussical the Musical at Bentonville High School.  It was so cute and the kids loved it – even though they were totally exhausted by the time it was over.

April 9 ~ Caleb’s 1st t-ball game.  Awesome.

April 11th ~ Ugh.  Benchmark testing week.  Ugh.

April 12th ~ Crazy Hair Day for Caleb at daycare.

April 15th ~ Stacy and I drove to Frisco, TX after school for our girls’ weekend.

April 16th ~ We started our day with a trip to Sam Moon and Cheesecake Factory and ended it with a 7 hour concert at Cowboys Stadium.  We saw Uncle Kracker, Billy Currington, Zac Brown Band and Kenny Chesney.

April 19th ~ Caleb’s kindergarten screening at Reagan.

April 22nd ~ Tornado sirens sent us to the laundry room wearing bike helmets.  The tornado passed just a few miles from our house.  While we were in there (trying to keep the mood light to keep the kids from being scared), Caleb asked if we could pray about it…so we did.

That was the beginning of a very long week of nothing but rain, rain, rain. 

April 23rd ~ We went to the church Easter egg hunt.  Caleb and I dyed eggs and made our Easter cake.  It wasn’t pretty, but it tasted pretty good.

April 24th ~ Easter Sunday – a rainy day, but we celebrated anyway!  A separate Easter post to come…
April 25th ~ Nola ran a fever at school, so Rudy left to take her home.  The rain caused lots of roads in Northwest Arkansas to flood.  It was a difficult drive home from school for Caleb and me.  By the time we went to bed, Caleb was running a fever too. 

April 26th ~ Rudy stayed home with both kids.  We watched the TV closely again for tornado warnings.  It was a horrible week with lots of severe weather.

April 27th ~ Mom came up to take care of the kids again so that Rudy could go back to work.  Caleb had been on the couch with fever for a day and a half.  When she got here, he perked up like magic.  He told me that night that LaLa made him feel better.  I agree.

April 28th ~ Mom and I took the kids to Gravette for a photo session with Kim Durham of KD Photography.  I’m still waiting for the final result, but the sneak preview that I got looks wonderful!

Nola @ 12 Months (and a little beyond…)

Yes, Ms. Nola turned TWELVE months old on January 27th!
Here's what she's up to these days...

• Nola went to the doctor on February 14th for her well visit.  She weighed 23 lbs (75.55 percentile) was 28.5” tall (24.1 percentile) and had a head circumference of 47 cm.  She got her 2nd flu shot, a chicken pox shot, an MMR shot and a pneumonia shot at that appointment too.
  
• When she turned 12 months, she was still taking bottles when she woke up.  Shortly after that, on February 10th, we decided to start “bottle rehab.”  We boxed up all of her bottles and replaced them with sippy cups.  Day one was not fun.  After that, she started to get the hang of it.   By the 13th, she was completely fine with it.  We donated all of her bottles to Loving Choices.  God willing, there will never be bottles in our house again – at least not for our own children.
  
• We were going to switch to sippy cups and milk at the same time, but our well visit got pushed back a couple weeks due to the snow.  I wasn’t comfortable making the formula to milk switch without her doctor’s okay, so we did that after our visit.  Since February 15th, she hasn’t had any formula at all.  She drinks only whole milk.  We give her milk in the mornings when she wakes up and she drinks it at lunch at daycare.  Otherwise, she’s drinking water or juice or diluted juice from sippy cups at all of her meals and snacks.
  
• Speaking of meals and snacks…the girl LOVES to eat.  She will eat pretty much anything we give her.  Bananas continue to be her absolute favorite food.  She gets so excited when she sees us with one.  She starts clapping her hands together (her sign for “more”) and grinning.  She also loves yogurt, cheese, bread, pancakes, turkey, chicken, salmon, pizza toppings, spaghetti, soup (with the broth strained out), cooked carrots and the toddler ravioli meals from Gerber.  She’ll pretty much eat anything that we eat as long as it’s not spicy.  She (of course) LOVES sweets.  When we give her a bite of something that she really likes, she says, “mmm” and grins and claps.  If it’s something really good and she’s never had it before, she might even laugh.
  
• Nola still wears size 4 diapers.  She can still wear some of her 12 month clothes.  Her 18 month clothes aren’t as snug, but they are usually too long.  When she tries to crawl in her 18 month PJ’s, she gets tangled up in the legs because they are too long.  She wears size 3 shoes.
  
• Just recently, Nola has started walking while holding onto our hands.  She’ll even walk holding one hand, but it’s slow going and she won’t do it for long.  She would much rather crawl.  We’ve seen her let go of the furniture that she’s holding onto once or twice, but she’s not quite ready to take a step yet.  She is starting to get a little braver though.  She has gone from cruising the furniture to walking while holding on to the wall.
  
• She has started pointing lately at anything and everything.  She usually points and says, “ga” or “da”.  We try to label what she points to, but sometimes we have no idea what exactly that might be.
  
• As for words – she’s not very consistent.  (I still blame that on the persistent fluid in her ears.)  She said “mama” very clearly on 2/12 – right after she gave me one of her big kisses that seems like she’s going to take a bite out of whomever she is kissing.  I nearly melted to the floor when she did it.  She still says “mama” sometimes, but usually, she says, “mamamama.”  She has also said “dada”.  She said it today when she saw Rudy after school and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time she’s done that where we knew for sure that she was actually calling him “dada”.  We think she’s calling Caleb “ba” or “bab.”  She does it somewhat consistently, but she says that syllable so often that we’re not completely sure.  She will imitate “uh-oh”, but she says “uh-uh” instead.  She gets the intonation, just not the syllable change.  She also babbles with conversational intonation and she plays with sound a lot, repeating sound patterns and sing-song babbling as though she’s carrying on a conversation with herself.  She’ll imitate a few syllables like “kah” when we say “quack quack”, but she doesn’t spontaneously say any other words.
  
• What she lacks in words, she makes up for in gestures.  She signs “more” by clapping.  (She only does it for food, though.  I guess technically that would mean that she’s signing “eat” by clapping, right?)  She waves any time she hears the words “bye-bye” and she usually blows kisses when we ask her to by opening her mouth and patting it with her hand.  When she’s doing something she knows she’s not supposed to do and I say her name with a stern tone, she looks up at me and smiles while shaking her head.  I have to try really hard not to laugh because it’s pretty cute.  Sometimes when we are talking to her, she’ll raise her eyebrows up and nod like she’s really agreeing with everything we’re saying.  I’ve tried to get video of these things, but she clams up every time I get the camera out.
  
• She still sucks her thumb.  A lot.  Pretty much any time I pick her up, she puts her thumb in her mouth and she always does it when she’s tired or if something upsets her.  I asked the pediatrician if there is anything I can do about it and he said it’s too early to worry about it.  Everyone always comments about how cute it is and I just cringe.
  
• Nola now has 7 teeth – 4 on the top and 3 on the bottom.  That 4th bottom one should be coming through any day now.
  
• Nola moved up to the toddler room at daycare on February 14th.  She’s now a “Busy Bee.”  One of her daycare workers was also Caleb’s daycare worker when he was 18 months.  Nola is the only child in the class that doesn’t walk.  In the class, she sits in a little chair at a table for her meals and sleeps on a cot instead of in a crib.  Apparently, she’s doing pretty well with it.  She usually sleeps anywhere from an hour to 2 hours at naptime.  The girls in her class tell us that she eats pretty much everything they give her and hasn’t had trouble at the table at all.

Let’s see how our sweet girl has grown this year…

And, here’s what I got when I TRIED to take her 12 month picture:

Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood to model.