A call for help

Please help out our fellow moms (and baby girl) in need by donating some of your baby clothing (that your baby has outgrown), some supplies to which moms could find helpful for post natural disaster recovery (hurricane Sandy), or send some money.  This is for the sister in law of my friend Gina DeConti, along with her sister in law's wife and two months old baby girl, details below:

For those of you who weren't around yesterday, I wanted to repost:

My sister in law, her wife, and her two month old daughter lost their house, their car, and all of their possessions due to flooding from Hurricane Sandy. They lived in one of the hardest hit areas of Long Island where over 75% of the homes have been destroyed. If you have it in your heart, please help them rebuild their lives. Or if you are unable to donate, please share this so others can see this and possibly donate a little something to help out. No amount is too small.

Thank you so much for your support. Our family thanks you :)

http://lauraandkristine.com/

Post Sandy and Post Katrina

So far I've put all of my thoughts about Hurricane Sandy on facebook.  Sitting here this evening, watching coverage on several different news casts makes me so sad.  I have so many different emotions.  Oddly, I think I have some small amount of guilt - we were hit by the same storm, and suffered nothing from it.  I can only imagine the devastation so many are going through.

I'm sure I'm not the only one remembering back to Katrina.  We lived in Kansas City when it hit, but being a Texan, my heart went out to the Gulf Coast.  Also, not long after Nerdstar and I got together, we started our first long road trip in New Orleans and Biloxi.

Back when Katrina hit I wasn't working and decided to go stay with my family down in Dallas so I could volunteer and help some of the people coming into the Dallas area after the storm.  This evening I decided to go back and see what I'd written about that.

Volunteering After Katrina  scroll down to the first of the month and read up.

If we didn't have Noah, I'd probably be very tempted this time as well to try to find a way to go help.

I will say, back then, and now, I've never been a big fan of the Red Cross.

This and That

We think Noah is starting to have nightmares.  And it really, really sucks that as much as he tries to tell us what's wrong when he wakes up all upset - we don't understand him.  He woke up once in the night crying and talking up a storm even before Nerdstar got up there to him.  Then today, during his nap, he woke up in the middle of it again crying and talking.  I wanted to cry I felt so bad for him.  It didn't take long for him to calm down, but still.

Totally different topic.

These days, the leaves are so beautiful in all their colors, but they are also the bane of our existence.  We have a nifty black n decker leaf blower/mulcher.  But it takes so very long to get leaves up.  And we keep having rainy days.  Plus one of us has to keep an eye on Noah.  I finally bought some fertilizer   and a dispenser in hopes of getting the leaves off the front lawn before the rain started on Sunday or Monday.  Ugh.  Now it could rain some on Friday.  Directions say to not put the fertilizer on wet grass, but to water after application.  We'll see how it goes.  DIY is not for wimps.  Oh yeah, and this is just the front yard - all those tall, tall trees in the back yard haven't really started yet.

Other than that... well, I'm still in love with a baby boy.  He really is a good, sweet kid.  He minds pretty well for a two year old. (well, he minds me...)  He takes every bit of patience I have and then some, but it's fun having him to run errands with and go to the park and all that.  I've spent more time outside in the past year than I did the past ten years combined.

Oh, and one more thing about dreams - Noah is now in every single one of mine.

Just a Little Entry

We keep meaning to update around here, but just don't seem to get around to it.

I realized the other day that Noah is already a teenage boy when it comes to some of his sleep habits.  He's definitely a night owl.  (Ok, maybe he gets that from us.)  His bedtime is still around 10-10:30 p.m.  He gets up most mornings between 8:15 and 9 a.m.  Yes, we know those two things are related.  But as a life-long late sleeper, it's so, so hard to get me and him up earlier.

The part that might be most teenage like is that once he wakes up, and yells for us until we get up to his room, he doesn't want out of his crib immediately.  Nope, he wants to lounge around in there for another fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes until I finally convince him to get. out. of. bed.

Also, pants and socks are ok.  Shirts not so much.  Even now that it's getting colder.  And he thinks those cold little baby boy nipples are fun to touch.  Heh.

After Bath Fun Time!

This is pretty typical of Noah's after bath time...

First we have his new ability - the forward roll!  He pretty much figured this out on his own over time.  Then we have a dance section - you can't really hear it, but "Jive Talkin'" is playing on his iPod.  There's a short new Flashdance move he's picked up lately.  And we end with some general cuteness. 

Singing Along

For well over a year now, Adele's album has been Noah's favorite music.  When he was still tiny, he'd stop and just stare into space and listen to her sing.  He likes his kids music cds well enough, and will pick out a word from a couple of them to repeat or let us know to play that song.  But he doesn't sing along.

The other day in the car, Remember Me came on, and when she got to the long, drawn out "me", from the back seat I heard a long, drawn out "beeeeeee" from Noah.  It was so cute.  He still uses B for M.  (Which means I get called "bay bee" instead of "mommy".)  He's sang along with that part of Adele a few more times and it cracks me up. 

Noah's Speech Update

Hmmm. where to start?  The list of words he can say is increasing slowly but steadily.  But that's about it. 

Back in May he was still seeing the speech therapist from the county.  She was ok, but it ended up she helped us see the physical problems - the mouth breathing, the eating on one side of the mouth - and led us to seeing the ENT and getting his adenoids removed.  Because of the problems with the first try at removing his adenoids, it seems like it's been a lot longer process that we first anticipated.  Hopefully we're all done.  He has another follow up with the ENT next week. 

In the meantime, back when we started the program with the county, which ended up costing us $120 a session, we were told that he would be eligible for a program through our school district that would be free.  (When we started with the county we didn't know if insurance would cover any of it, and were at least six weeks into it when we found out they wouldn't and what we'd have to pay - thankfully we didn't pile on sessions to start with.) 

It worked out that about the time we were ready to resume therapy after his surgery, the school year was starting and he got a new therapist.

I really like the new therapist - he seems to as well.  Nerdstar hasn't met her yet.  She's done two sessions with him, getting to know him and how he does and doesn't do things.  It's funny to me to see him be as stubborn with her as he is with me!  She's setting up a routine of four activities each time and helping us with some ideas.  We took pictures of almost all the things he likes to eat to sort of make him a menu.  And we took pics of some of his toys and things around the house.  The idea is using pictures to bridge to words. 

So, it's slow going.  As he gets older and it feels like he's not keeping pace with his physical growth, I get a little sad.  I know him so well, but because he can't really talk to us yet, there's so much we don't know about what he's thinking and feeling. 

We know he's still young.  And he's a boy.  And one day he'll talk our ears off.  We just wish the progress was a little faster.