Miscellany...

* I am finally getting time to work on the photos from November 18, Noah's first birthday. It has been fun and satisfying!! The cake smashin' photos are next!

* I have this lofty goal of putting most of the zillion photos I took of Noah his first year into a big coffee table book from Blurb-- hundreds, if not thousands of photos. I don't want to do a ton of words, but even just the photos will take some work... You see, as a busy, tired mama, I have only actually polished and edited probably a quarter of the final photos I would want to keep... So that means I have the monumental task of going BACK and selecting more photos to edit and include. It would be so easy to just say "never mind, I'll use the photos I've finished and forget the rest"... But then, what would be the point of keeping them? And if I am going to do this massive, expensive project, I want to do it right.

* Enough about ME, on to Noah: He is making more and more animal noises now. So far, he can reliably do: dog, cat, lion, elephant, owl, rooster, sheep, duck, monkey, and bird. He is still a CHAMP at imitating cars and sirens. And today while I watched "Enchanted", at the part where Amy Adams is falling from cartoon land to the real world, with all her shrieking, Noah did an EXCELLENT imitation of that sound. LOL!!

* Noah is also learning more sign language all the time. He is never 100% consistent on any word, but the ones he is getting more reliable on are: milk, more, all done, bird, light "on" and"off", shoe, sock, ball...And he does this darling imitation alphabet where he writhes his one hand into various shapes and contortions as I do the real thing for him. It is really cute!!

* He has been "sleeping in" in the past few weeks-- waking at 8:00 instead of 7:00... I LOVE it! He still wakes once a night, a time that used to be consistently between 3 am and 4 am, but has now crept to between 5am and 6 am. I really don't begrudge him this one wake-up... I give him 2 ounces of milk (or the last can of formula) and put him right back down and he (and I) are happy as can be.

* I am 99% done breastfeeding. I think I might still be producing a bit, since our last session was Christmas Eve, but I have not been offering, and as I suspected, he has not noticed at all. It's bittersweet, but I am MUCH more prepared for it now than I was even just a month ago when he turned one.

* I am INTENT on getting him his first haircut, for real, this week sometime. Kind of a New Year's thing. He really needs it. But still-- sometimes (and especially in our recent warm/humid wave), the length of hair around his ears becomes this darling flippy curl that I just melt over..... *sigh*.... But most of the time, it is not cute AT ALL. so snip, snip.

* Noah is still in love with pushing his wheeled toys (and sometimes even the un-wheeled toys, like his penguin puppet) around and making a "vroom vroom" noise... But just yesterday, he modified his sound to a more "helicopter-y" "Jetson-y" lip trill.... Really funny!

* On the subject of the penguin puppet... He LOVES this thing. Noah is NOT a snuggler... NO WAY. Pushes off of us as much as possible. But if you put this puppet on your hand, he'll hug the HECK out of your hand and forearm. and ya know what? I'll TAKE it!!! so anytime I need a hug from Noah, I joust go get the penguin puppet! Haha!

* Noah is getting to be quite the climber. His favorite things to climb are the couch and.... me.

* He is FINALLY interested in walking around holding onto our hands. We'll chant "walk walk walk" with each step and he practically RUNS, he marches around so fast and energetically. He has also taken to chanting "..k, ...k, ...k" with us. This is all BRAND NEW. Just this week. Until now, anytime we attempted to "walk" him around, he'd stubbornly plop onto his bum and scoot away, as if to say--"That walking thing is LAME. This is MUCH faster."

* Noah is out of the "picky" stage somewhat with food. At least, this week. I'm sure he'll be right back into it soon. :) For now, though, there is much less spitting things out. And he is a champion sippy/milk drinker.

* He is so quick to smile, to laugh, to explore.... He amazes me DAILY. Exhausts me, to be sure, but amazes me even more, and that makes the tough stuff worth it!

...That's it, for now. I'll try to think up some more sometime soon!