My New Tricycle

This weekend, Mabecca bought me my first tricycle. I Really like to sit on it and yell "bike" for the whole world to hear.




...But my favorite part of all, is that I can put all my toys in this little basket on the back.

Myrtle Beach Trip

Last week, Nathan and I took a trip with Mabecca and Pops to their condo in Myrtle beach. It was too cold for swimming, but we played on the beach pretty much every day. We built sand castles, collected shells, played with dogs walking by, and splashed in the water. Nathan's favorite thing to do at the beach was chase the seagulls or "ducks" as he kept calling them. It was very funny to watch. We also went to Ripley's aquarium. They have an exhibit where you stand on a conveyor belt and it loops your through a huge dome shaped tank. It makes you feel like you are actually in the water with all the fish, stingrays, turtles, and HUGE sharks. Pops would hold Nathan up to the sharks when they passed over our head and Nathan would immediately yell "all done!" Smart boy, they had some big teeth! We had a great time but now it is back to reality and back to studying for final exams. Yuck!

Feeding Himself With a Spoon

One step closer to becoming an independent little boy.....



And this is the wonderful mess mommy got to clean up afterwards. We are still working on it....

18 months old & Easter

Another month down, many more milestones hit, and an ever-growing, hyperactive, toddler personality. And I must say, I am loving every single minute of it. This stage is definitely my favorite stage so far. I know I have said that many times in the past, but it just seems like the fun factor increases as each month passes. Not a day goes by now that Nathan doesn't do something that has me hysterically laughing.

We have been working on his animal sounds (he now knows dog-"oof", cow-"boo", and lion-"roar"), his manners (he now says "pleeease" when he wants something, instead of that annoying sound that made people think he was choking), eating with a fork and a spoon (which has resulted in some of the biggest messes I have ever seen), his numbers, and letters(5 is his favorite number and X is his favorite letter, for reasons we may never know). We still have a long way to go with his numbers and letters. Right now he really only knows what 1 and 5 look like and he will just point to things as someone else count them. He is starting to recognize letters too, but his favorite part is the ABC song. Several times a day, he sings nonsense words to the tune of the song. He is also talking more and more everyday. I gave up on trying to count how many words he knows. At this point it has to be between 50-100 words.

Nathan has also discovered his incredible love for airplanes this month. Side note: If you ever want to know what his favorite thing is at the moment, be the one that gets him from his crib when he wakes up. 99% of the time the first thing he will say to you is his favorite thing. First it was ball, then is was bubbles, now its airplane. Anyway, we took him to the RDU observation park for the first time this month. They have a little park, and an elevated deck that over looks their biggest runway. We watched the planes land and take off, and Nathan thought it was amazing. We will definitely be going back there.

We went to his 18 month well check up this week. Still a peanut as always. But after obtaining a copy of Mark's growth chart from when he was a baby, we discovered that he was a peanut too! In fact, they were almost exactly the same at this age. It made me and the doctor much less worried about it. He will probably be just like mark and be a "late bloomer". He weighed 21 lbs (5%) and was 32 inches tall (25-30%). And even though he may be small, he makes up for it in brains! The doctor was impressed with Nathan's communication and motor skills and said he is above the average 18 month old developmentally. I told him it is probably because he got sick of hearing mommy talk to herself all day, so he decided to talk back! :)


And last but not least, Easter was this past Sunday. The weekend before we went to an Easter Egg hunt put on by the town with Mark's parents. There were so many kids there and within minutes, all the eggs were gone. Thankfully, Mark was smart and ran out in the field like a child and put a bunch of the eggs in his pocket and threw them at Nathan's feet one at a time. Nathan's favorite thing he found at the egg hunt? An empty candy wrapper. As soon as he saw it, he threw all his eggs down and ran to the wrapper and was as happy as if he found a golden pacifier. Poor kid had no clue there was actual candy inside the eggs! Easter morning, Nathan woke up to a big basket from the Easter Bunny, and the Pardue family came over for an egg hunt and yummy food. It was another great holiday surrounded by all the people we love.

The wonderful trip where everything went wrong

Last friday, on my 24th birthday, My mom, Nathan, and I set out for RDU airport at around 10:15 AM for our trip to NJ. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 12:2o pm, and we planned everything out perfectly to arrive at the airport the recommended (and annoying long) 2 hours before take off. I was really, really hoping the day would run smoothly since A. it was Nathan's first time on a plane, and B. it was my birthday and the last thing I wanted was for anything to go wrong. well, obviously, the airport gods had different plans for our day. I swear if we could have seen them they would have been pointing their finger and laughing at us. At first it was a few small delays but that quickly turned into many long delays. I had brought a stroller, (an old stroller that my parents used for my sister and I when we were younger and had been stowed in the attic for 20 years), in hopes that Nathan would maybe sleep at the airport. Not happening. Regardless of how cranky and tired he was, he was not sleeping. He just wanted to run around, talk to random people and watch the airplanes. FINALLY, sometime around 4 pm we were allowed to board the plane. When we actually started to moving down the runway, we got really excited, but I should have known better. The pilot came on the intercom to announce that the weather was so bad in Newark that he was going to have to turn the plane around. WHATT?? At this point Nathan was a mess and the airplane felt like it was 95 degrees. After and hour and a half of deterring Nathan from crying with mounds of airplane pretzel sticks, we finally took off and arrived in Newark a little before 7 PM. We get off the plane, open the stroller, put Nathan in, and CRACK. Completely broke in half. At this point I just had to laugh.

That night we went to Janine and Billy's for pizza and birthday cake and spent the next day enjoying the wonderful company. That night, the crazyness continued after dinner when we lost power from a horrible storm. Not only did we have no electricity, but we had no water either. Apparently, it was the worst storm they had had in 20 years. The next day (Saturday) was Jackie's bridal shower and we still had no power. Thankfully, the venue had a generator so the shower was still able to happen and it was absolutely beautiful! The power never came back the remainder of the weekend. We stayed at my Grandmas house Sunday night. She had power, but no water. Monday morning, we headed back to the airport. Thank you airport gods for realizing we had been through enough We actually arrived back in Raleigh ON TIME.

So was the weekend crazy? Completely!! More than I could ever have imagined. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Despite everything we had a wonderful time. Nathan had so much fun playing with his cousins and we loved seeing everyone. I am so lucky to have such an amazing family.

Cute Video of Nathan Talking-2/16/10

Sick Nathan

Last week, I had to take Nathan for his second sick visit to the pediatrician in his entire life. He was sick once with a fever when he was 4 months old and has been pretty healthy otherwise. Until last week. He randomly spiked a fever of almost 104 one night and when it didn't break at all the entire night, we went to the doctor the following morning. Despite the high fever, no one would really even be able to guess he was sick. The doctor was pretty amazed at how much he was still playing and smiling. She said his throat was pretty red, but both strep and flu tests came back negative. She sent us home with orders rest and fluids. Trying to get a rambunctious toddler to actually rest is pretty much an impossible task, but after 3 days of the fever, it finally broke. Lots of cuddling, cool compresses, and Tylenol seemed to do the trick, and he is definitely back to his crazy self now.

On a happier note, Nathan is 17 months old today!!!!!