The Story:
On Monday morning, Noah was riding on Daddy’s shoulders when he decided to lunge for Phil’s coffee mug. Phil caught him, but up against the wall. He had hit his head, and was crying a lot. I finally calmed him down, and he took a nap. Phil went to work thinking that he’d be fine when he woke up. When he did wake up, he was really fussy. I fed him and let him play for a while, but finally put him down for another nap. We then had some friends over in the afternoon. I hoped that the company would distract him from his fussiness, but to no avail. Finally, I called Phil asking for him to come home early. I couldn’t figure out why he was acting the way he was. Usually, he’s so happy. While I waited for Phil to come home, I noticed that he was hardly crawling anymore and he wasn’t pulling up on the furniture without crying A LOT. I’d have to rescue him everytime he pulled up. I finally realized that there was something wrong with his leg. Phil and I kept an eye on it all evening and then put him down for sleep at the normal time. When he woke up a couple of hours later crying and wouldn’t be consoled, we called my mom asking her if she thought that it could be broken. She thought there was a chance that it was, so we went to the ER around 10PM. It was really busy but the doctors and nurses were really kind. They were pretty surprised that a kid his age could hurt his ankle like that since kids are “made of rubber.” Finally, they got the leg splint on, and we could go home. We got home around 1AM.

Here’s some pictures we took at the hospital:

A common theme throughout our experience with the hospital staff was just how young Noah was. The nurse making the splint kept saying: “This is the smallest leg splint I’ve ever made.” And there there was this conversation that I had over the phone while I tried to get copies of his x-rays.
X-Ray Guy: Let me look up the patient by birthdate.
Me: Ok, it’s December 25, 2007.
X: 2007?
Me: Yah.
X: 2007?
Me: Yah.
X: Oh, wow.  Here he is.  This is the youngest person I’ve ever looked up before.  Usually, I’m looking up people from the 1940s and 50s.

Noah’s taking it pretty well. We’ve been doing lots of stroller rides and car-errands trying to keep him off his legs as much as possible. Here he is at Central Market trying one of the big pumpkins on for size:

Nothing keeps this kid from climbing! =)

Noah’s really taken to the new house as well.  We started doing the Sleep Lady’s sleep coaching once we moved in, and now he’s sleeping through the night pretty regularly.  Yay! He loves to talk to all the furniture in the house, and seems to enjoy his room.

We are still working on getting decorations up on the walls and figuring out what furniture to keep and what to get, but things are starting to look pretty well lived in.  Here is a picture of our new place:

Noah is now nine months old.  It seems like he’s been around forever - no wonder pregnancy seems to be never ending!  =)

We just had his check-up with his doctor, and here are the newest stats:

He is now 30 inches long and weighs 19 lbs. 12 oz.  The kid is tall and skinny (I have no idea who he gets it from.  ;-) )  The crazy thing is that he’s actually dropped percentile points for both height and weight.  He’s no longer off the charts for height.  Now, he’s only in the 95th percentile.  He’s just under 50th percentile for weight.  His head is 17 & 7/8 inches around putting him in the 50-75th percentile.

In other news, we just got two more teeth.  He had had two teeth on bottom and two teeth on top, and I was watching for the next two on top since they looked like they could pop out any time.  Well, tooth #5 turned out to be on the bottom.  Totally surprised me.  Then, the next day, tooth #6 showed up, but it’s on top.   They are both on his right side so he’s going to be a bit lopsided for a while.

In closing, for now, here’s a recent picture of our 3/4 year old:

Then, this weekend, we took a few car loads of boxes over.  Mostly books and things that we don’t plan to use for the next couple of weeks.  Our bookcase here is beginning to look quite bare.  It almost makes me want to go used-book store shopping to fill it up!  We are also having quite a lot of fun visualizing how we want the house to look.  We keep changing our mind on which room will be Noah’s room and which one will be the office/library.  It’s funny how, even though they are just about the same size, there are just small enough differences to make the decision difficult.

Right now, we are just moving over about one carload per day.  We will be doing our official move the weekend after we get back from our vacation, so September 6 and 7.  If anyone is around to help, we’d gladly appreciate it.

Anyway, no pictures quite yet.  Hopefully, soon, though.  Stay posted!

The next day, we went to Fremont (aka The Center of the Universe) to hang out with Dan, Brittany, and Loren. Dan came to visit us from Louisiana, and it was so much fun to be with him and his girlfriend, Brittany.

So, after we got to Fremont and made our necessary visit to Stickman Coffee, we had a fun time looking at all the goofy things they have in this little neighborhood including a huge statue of Lenin, a rocket, and dinosaurs. Noah conquered the dinosaurs, after we walked through the Sunday market.

That evening Dan and Brittany made us an incredible home-cooked Southern dinner.  It was amazing.  Unfortunately, they had to leave on Tuesday, but we had a great time with them overall.

In closing, here are a couple of pictures of Noah enjoying his uncles.

For Phil’s birthday weekend, we headed down to Mount Rainier since we hadn’t been there since we came to visit Washington in October of 2006.  Phil has really been wanting to go back, but pregnancy and new baby made it difficult.  However, Noah is now much more interested in what is going on around him, so we packed up and made a weekend of it.  First, we stayed overnight and his aunt and uncles home in Graham and had a nice birthday dinner with them.

Then, we made an early-ish morning to make it to Mt. Rainier.  Phil’s mom came too, so it was a lot of fun.  The snow was pretty far down, so we even got to do a little sledding.  Yes, we used black trash bags… they’re perfect!  You can stuff them into your pockets when you are done!

Noah had a great time as well. He really enjoyed playing in the snow and thought it was great to be be carried around on mommy and daddy’s back.

It was also really fun to see the differences in the mountain in the summertime versus the autumn from last trip. This is the same hill in July 2008 and October 2006:

Now, we’ll just have to go back in the winter and spring to complete our picture of the mountain.  Someday, we also would like to make it to the top, but I believe we’ll have many more years before that will be possible for our family!

Today, the trunk… Tomorrow, Mt. Rainier!  Noah’s climbing.  He began to pull up a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been no stopping him since.  Once he discovered he could pull up on objects, he was climbing them.  His favorite is the trunk, but he also pulls up on the couches, chairs, bed, and bookcase.  He also started cruising (walking by holding on to furniture) within a day or two of pulling up.

Since he began to cruise, we started to wonder if he was ever going to start crawling instead of just scooting on his tummy.  However, we had no need to worry.  He now prefers to crawl up on all fours all the time now.  No more tummy time!  He likes to follow mommy all around the house, and laughs with glee if he finds her in a different room.

Right after Phil and I became members of our church, Pastor Kelly took Noah and asked us these questions.

1. Do you acknowledge you child’s need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit?
2. Do you claim God’s covenant promises in his behalf, and do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for his salvation, as you do for your own?
3. Do you now unreservedly dedicate your child to God, and promise, in humble reliance upon divine grace, that you will endeavor to set before him a godly example, that you will pray with and for him, that you will teach him the doctrines of our holy religion, and that you will strive, by all the means of God’s appointment, to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?

After we affirmed these statements, Noah was baptised.

This was a very different experience for Phil and I as we were not brought up in churches that practiced infant baptism, but after a lot of prayer and conversations with other believers, we decided that this would be the best thing for our son.  Infant baptism in the Presbyterian church is not one of regeneration (as it is in the Roman Catholic Church), but rather one where we look forward to the time that Noah will put his trust in Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and Lord.  He will still have to make that decision for himself, but it is our job as parents to pray for him that he may come to that saving knowledge.

We were blessed to have Phil’s mom, aunt, uncle, and grandma to be there, as well as my brother, Loren.  It was a very special time for all of us.

First we were taken around to a few places around North Seattle. Right before we left, we saw one listing in south Shoreline that looked interesting that had just been put on the market, but we were in a hurry and didn’t make note of it. The first few places we saw were all right, but nothing caught our eye. Then we scheduled a visit to the house that we’d just seen show up, and it was the nicest thing we’d seen at that price. A lot of work had just been put into it, and the sellers needed to get out in a hurry, so the price was great. We put in an offer on the very next day.

The next day we found out that ours was one of three offers. The market is currently pretty slow in this area, so having that level of activity within one week of putting a house up is virtually unheard of. We were given an opportunity to raise our offer, but it originally included an escalation clause that brought the offer to above the asking price, which was already cutting it pretty close financially for us. So we left our offer as it was and hoped for the best. The next day we found out our offer was accepted!

We’ll have photos on Flickr before too long. It has three bedrooms and a spacious yard with a great deck and patio, so there’ll be room for entertaining and for Noah to grow.

This will be an interesting few months for us since we do still have our lease. It will end up overlapping with our mortgage payments, so it’ll be a bit tight on money for a few months. But this is really an amazing opportunity for us, and having the overlap will make the moving process less hectic. The way the offer situation went made it very clear that we had done the right thing. Our offer was obviously neither too high nor too low. We’re really thankful for the way it worked out.

As a rule I don’t plan for anything further than a few years in the future, but this is shaping to be the first time since fifth grade that I would live in one place for longer than two years.

Other things that make him laugh:
- Having people jump up and down (thanks Joe!)
- Making a “plop” sound with our mouth
- Rubbing our noses into his cheek or tummy or kissing him on the neck
- His own sneezes or coughs.  He thinks that it is so funny when he does it the first time that he tries to repeat it afterwards.
- Any sort of quick movement we make directed toward him (as we saw with Loren).

Fun Times.

Here’s a picture from yesterday. You can see the one tooth, and the second one just about to come in.

Since he now has teeth, I’m trying to make sure that I give him some solid food every day.  Sometimes, he loves it and will eat the entire amount in about ten minutes.  Other days, we have a conversation that goes something like this:

Alisha: Noah say “AAHHH”
Noah (smiling): “Mmmmmm”
A: No, no, you need to open your mouth.  Like this, “AHHHH”
N: “Mmmmmmm”

At this point I usually try to make him laugh so his mouth opens up so I can stick some food into it in hopes that he’ll like it and want more.  This doesn’t usually happen so we forego the food to another time.

In closing, here’s a picture of one of our most recent endeavors:

Somehow, something magical happened when I had Noah.  I’m flexible now.  Once, when I was playing with him, I kept taking his feet and having them touch his head.  As a joke, I thought I would try that myself.  To my astonishment, I could touch my own toe to my forehead!  When did this happen?  Is it because I’m playing with him on the floor a lot?  My theory is that when I had my cesarean, they cut through a tight tendon that wouldn’t let me move.  No matter how it happened, I’m definitely enjoying my new skills!  Sorry, no picture to go along with this blog post.  =)

He also had his DTaP today.  He takes these shots so well.  Although he cried as he was getting the shot, he was happy and talking less than a minute later.   So, all is well with our half year old.  It will be fun to watch all the new developments that will arise before his next appointment.