cute Noah pictures from last month

Nine months and no teeth :)

These are a few of my favorite things

I have a whole set of fabric blocks but mostly I just like to drag this one around. It has a flap I can use to hold it so I can easily take it with me wherever I go.



Have you guys seen these door stopper things? Endless fun!



This stepstool is the best. It also functions as a drum.



Then there is my high chair tray. I love to push it around on the floor. I can't believe my mama lets me do this. Neither can she.



This lever on the chair is so cool. I'm always trying to figure out how to eat it. (Also: notice the block in my hand!)



Oh, and my parents have this cool maze set up in the dining room. They call it a "table and chairs".

Fall...it goes by quickly.

Pumpkin patch with Grandma Sue:





FIVE year anniversary: We had dinner at Rue Cler and then went to see Built to Spill the next night.



Fun visit from Kasey:


Noah: "I finally got to meet this nice girl who sent me my favorite shoes!"

Halloween:


Don't laugh - it was free!

Another visit from Grandma Sue:




Cows:



that about wraps it up.

7 months and lots of changes for Noah:

-He started sleeping in his own bedroom at night. I didn't want him to ever leave the pack n play by my bedside but one early morning at 4 am, Sameer picked him up and moved him to his own room where he promptly fell asleep. So did we. He had been babbling (LOUDLY!) in our room since 2 am that night. I thought his first night in his own room would have been a little more ceremonious.

-He graduated from the infant carrier to a convertible car seat. This means he gets to sit up in the front of the shopping cart too - very fun for both of us and I humbly suspect it's a treat for everyone in the grocery store too.


-His vocabulary has expanded and he can be quite a chatterbox. (ba-ba-ba, da-da-da, ma-ma-ma, a-woah-woah, nah-nah-nah, ga-ga, typical baby talk)

-He's eating solids with lots of enthusiasm! His favorite is butternut squash :)

-And as of today, he crawls! Up until then he used the frog hop to get from one toy to another.

He's REALLY on the go during the day and is always trying to jump, scoot, crawl, eat, babble, laugh and grab...and then bedtime rolls around and here we are for his evening feeding. Sometimes he'll stop in the middle of that feeding and just stare at me like he's seeing straight into my soul. The expression on his face during those moments is unlike any other. I won't ever be able to capture it on camera but that's okay - it's almost sacred. I'll just have to burn it into my memory. In the morning I literally take a second to close my eyes to make sure I still remember it. He studies my face and I talk to him softly, telling him all the things I love about him..."Your hair that is sticking up all over the place, your chubby hands, your perfect ears, your round cheeks, your button nose, your Yadav mouth, your chunky thighs..." and I trace my fingers along his face and he smiles a quiet smile - not the huge gummy smile we get during the day but a closed-mouth peaceful smile. He listens intently to everything I say and we just stare at each other some more until we're both satisfied. When we've had our special mama & baby time, he goes back to nursing and eventually falls asleep. I lift him up to carry him to bed and his little feet still reach up to his bottom. He's still my tiny baby.

Fun fact:

In early March of 2009, I watched all 9 SEASONS of Coach in 2 weeks. Impressive, right?!?

I don't have much of an attention span for TV or movies unless I'm really sick and tired but unable to sleep. That is exactly how the first several weeks of Noah's life were. He was so colicky and had to be held upright constantly; I was so afraid of falling asleep while holding him.

So, I resorted to netflix "watch instantly" to get me through the long nights. Noah and I spent most of our time in bed with the laptop. (Sameer slept in the guestroom so one of us could be rested!) Noah probably thinks the theme song of Coach is a sweet lullaby. At first, I watched all the episodes of 30 Rock and then Chuck. I couldn't watch anything scary or sad; I knew I couldn't handle too much drama in my sleep deprived state. After I finished Chuck, I had no clue what to watch and then I stumbled upon Coach. This was definitely not a show I would ever watch but it met the qualifications of "not scary" and "not sad". So I watched 9 seasons of Coach in about two weeks. Nights blurred into days and back into nights again. I usually had no idea what day it even was. My only measure of time was what season/episode of Coach I was on.

(Sometimes I wonder: if I had only given zantac to Noah when it was first prescribed, I may not have given over 60 hours of my life to a bad nineties sitcom)

Anyway, all that to say, I'm glad those days are over. When I finished Coach I was quite sad. Those characters were like family - they were with me through some hard days and I was with them through the changing styles and hairdos of the nineties. That's when I started Charles in Charge. Fortunately I gave up the netflix addiction a few episodes later.

6 month portraits

Do all babies just really dislike having their portraits taken? Today we went to Target for Noah's 6 month portraits and while he didn't cry the whole time like last time, he wasn't too happy about being there either. It took dozens of "peek-a-boos" to get 1 real smile and a couple half smiles. Our normally cheerful boy was so skeptical of the whole process! There are still some pretty cute ones though. Oh, and wait until you see the hair - it is out of control!

To take a peek, click here and enter "Whitney Yadar". Yes, "Yadar" - not "Yadav." Target's mistake.

Happy Half Birthday, Sweet Boy

Jen and John

Noah playing with his new friends who visited us last week:

So big

Our big boy is about 5 and a half months now. The two compliments he receives most frequently are:

"Wow, he's so big!"

and

"That hair is amazing!"

So he's a good size with a decent amount of hair...but there's so much more to love about him.

He's a sweet boy and loves to talk and laugh with us. Lately he's been saying a lot of "Ah-ya-ya" and "Ah-ga-ga". It's very cute but we can't capture it on video. As soon as we turn the camera on the giggles and talking fade to a blank stare - he's completely mesmerized by the thing.

He's rolling over - and over and over and over. Everyday he seems stronger and faster. That's a good reminder that we need to childproof our house!

We are loving every minute with him.

Aunts and Uncles

-pretty much the best weekend ever-

so fun

4+ months already!

Noah is over 4 months now and is at such a fun age. A few weeks ago, he seemed to turn into an "easy baby", almost overnight! He actually sleeps much more now than he ever did as a newborn. In addition to taking a few decent naps everyday, he also sleeps through the night most of the time. Sometimes he'll wake up at 1 or 2 am but even that is easy because he eats for 20 minutes and then goes right back to sleep....no more hours and hours of fussing/feeding/never sleeping all throughout the night. He has also figured out how to get his thumb into his mouth and that seems to really aid his ability to comfort himself. Oh, and it's just plain cute!

He has several favorite toys that he enjoys holding and playing with. His pacifier is one of them - he no longer uses it to suck on but instead will hold it in front of his face and talk to it in bed. We hear quite a lot of baby conversations on the monitor when he talks himself to sleep.

Just the other day, we started having him take naps in the crib in his bedroom. He still sleeps in the pack 'n play by our bed at night and I honestly don't know how I'll ever transition him into his own room at night. Since he seems to like his crib, I think Noah will adjust just fine but I don't know how I will adjust!

The jumperoo is Noah's newest source of delight. It plays music when he jumps and he gets this really silly grin on his face when he's in there. He also spends a few minutes in the bumbo now and then. Sometimes he seems really proud to be sitting up in there but mostly he just looks concerned.


Noah loves to be read to. It's become our little before nap/before bed calming tradition. He can sit through a whole book or two and likes to touch the pages. (Who am I kidding? All babies like to touch everything and he's probably just trying to figure out how to eat the pictures.)

Apparently, he loves eating just as much as he loves playtime and books. At his 4 month appointment last week we found out that he now weighs over 16 pounds. He looks bigger than a lot of the older babies in the nursery at church. I'm excited about the automatic strength training program for my arms!

As sitting in church this morning reminded us, there is nothing especially unique about Noah's crazy play time shrieks and trills but we still make a big deal over each and every crazy new sound he makes. Sometimes it really sounds like we live in a zoo. He is so fun to listen to! He also does this funny thing with his tongue. The sound it makes leads us to believe that it might be his version of a kiss.


One thing about him that is unique, however, is his crazy hair. He was born with a bunch of hair, but now, it is OUT OF CONTROL! It is so long and it does whatever it wants.

Every new stage is so fun but this is all definitely going too fast. Sameer disagrees but maybe that's because he's with him during the day while I work. I always love getting to the weekend so I can be with my baby all day - but then every Saturday Noah is a week older and I just wish I could slow it all down.

Noah in the Nursery

Today Noah went to the nursery at church for the very first time. He did great - or at least that's what they tell me! While there, he took a nap in a swing with a reclining seat...........makes me wonder how much easier his first 3 months would have been on us if we had only invested in a swing! (We had borrowed a take-along swing that has a very upright seat that does not recline at all so Noah wasn't too fond of it.)

Here he is in his overalls - we think they look super cute on him, especially from the behind!

Noah wears bibs

Hi, I'm Noah and now I get to wear a bib nearly constantly since I drool so much. Fortunately, I have several dozen from all my mom's baby showers. You can't tell by this picture but I get SO excited when my mom starts to put the bib on me. I start laughing and smiling and I can hardly contain my glee because wearing a bib is SO FUN AND EXCITING.

Noah at 3 months: Active, Curious, Delightful!

Noah is now 3 months old and we can hardly believe it, although he himself seems indifferent….


Most of the time he is a very happy baby, but there is one thing in particular that draws his ire. He doesn’t like it when Whitney eats anything that tastes good. Apparently he can monitor her milk supply for the minutest hint of flavor, and reacts to it by working up a heroic amount of intestinal gas. So Whitney’s been sustained largely on a diet of plain flatbread, plain rice, and some unseasoned turkey meat, with a few plain baked potatoes thrown in once in a while. Have I mentioned how plain that is? The blandness of the cuisine is rivaled only by the British.

Whitney has been back to work for two weeks now. It's tiring (for all of us) but we’re making it work so far. She's working shorter days so by 3:00pm there is a changing of the guard and I can start getting some work done. My days are spent taking care of Noah, and we have a great time together. He has a couple of new tricks this month. One is to kick the bars on his play gym to make the animals move. This is serious work and the look on his face while he’s doing it suggests that it requires a great deal of concentration. He has also recently found his hands and sometimes he just puts one of them in front of his face and stares at it for a few minutes solid. We conjecture that by making him occasionally wear pooh-bear mittens, we’ve inadvertently trained him to expect that if he waits long enough his hands will turn into small woodland creatures. What he really wants is to cram one of those things straight into his gob. Sometimes he succeeds at that.



Sometimes he doesn’t.

Noah is very fond of bathtime. He gets a bath every night because it helps with the "bed time" routine – and, who are we kidding, it is also because he starts to smell like Cheetos by the end of the day. Sometimes the bath actually gets him in the cozy bedtime sleepy mood. Most of the time it just makes him feel more well-groomed for the night shift. As soon as his toes hit the water, he stares at Whitney with this adorable look on his face during the entire bath.


His head actually gets stuck that way, and it is really a challenge to get him to turn his head so we can clean the other side properly. We always wonder if the far side of his head/face (and particularly under the neck-rolls) is where he secretly manufactures his extensive line of cheese products.


His vocabulary is expanding: to “aaahh,” “coo,” “ah-goo,” and “oongoy” he has added “Goya.” Who would have guessed that he would come to appreciate a great Spanish artist so early? We thought about getting him to specify it was indeed Francisco de Goya that he is referring to, but what other explanation is there? He has also achieved his own special brand of mobility. When he's lying on his back he digs his feet into the floor to lift himself up and do a mini back-bend and then scoots backwards a couple inches. He does this over and over and is quite pleased with himself. He can get pretty far across the carpet if you give him a few minutes, so now we always have to make sure he's really far from the wall or any furniture so he doesn’t whack his melon. He is wonderfully chubby with all kinds of extra rolls in just the right places.

This month Noah enjoyed a great visit from his grandparents and he also got to meet his Uncle Varun who happened to be in town on business one night.





He delights us with his adorable facial expressions and we've spotted two different dimples. He just loved getting to know his Yadav grandparents and spent hours entertaining them with his winsome coos and smiles. He is even capable of a good hearty chuckle on occasion.




Last month his favorite book was 10 Little Monkeys but he is SO over that now....by the time you get through the first monkey, he knows exactly where you’re going with the other nine, and he’s simply not interested. So now it’s Brown Bear (“Brown bear, brown bear, what do YOU see? I see a red bird looking at me?” etc. etc.) . When we start reading it to him this smile slowly spreads across his face and gets bigger and bigger until he starts laughing and trying to talk too. He also likes The Tiny Bear's Bible but he thinks it's way too long. We can't get through it in a single sitting. We need to start it in the middle next time so we don't always get stuck ending on Daniel and the Lion's Den.

memo

Dear Baby Boy,

Thank you so much for working on sleeping in longer stretches. The 4 or 5 hour stretch per night that you are regularly blessing us with does not go unnoticed. Feel free to experiment more with the 6 hour stretch. Even 7...seriously - go for it! Now I just want to clarify one thing because I think there may have been a slight misunderstanding. When we talk about "4-5 hours" as a goal, we don't mean that you should ONLY sleep 4-5 hours per night - we were really emphasizing the idea of 4-5 UNINTERRUPTED hours. I know this can be confusing and you're still so new to all this. I should have explained it better before. So tonight, try this: sleep 4 or 5 hours and then after you wake up and eat, GO BACK TO SLEEP for a couple more hours. I know it sounds crazy but we've heard that babies all around the world - yes, babies your age and even younger often do this. It's just that your mom isn't quite ready to start the day at 2:30 am. She would benefit from a couple more hours of sleep since naps aren't allowed at her workplace. Just something for you to consider...

love,
your mama

p.s. Your smile still delights me at 2:30 am.

a conversation

He was pretty pleased with himself when we propped him up like this!

portraits schmortraits

So, it has recently been the case that when we get Noah up from a nap, he awakes only to give us a big smile. When we pick him up and talk to him, we get another series of smiles, from smirks to half smiles to full smiles to open-mouthed grins. During diaper changes? More smiles.

So you're saying to yourself, "I've seen people smile before - big deal!" But this kid has a real *winning smile* I tells ya - it makes the smiles of the kids in our baby magazines look like mere slack-jawed gawking. You'd really just have to see it. The trouble is, you can't. Why, you ask? Because the shutter-speed of our camera moves at the speed of a tectonic plate, that's why. We just can't capture it. Every time we try to snap a picture of him smiling at us with our digital camera, we end up with sleepy lids and a grimace, or an utterly dead-pan stare, as if we were trying to prove to the world that a baby can indeed give a convincing impersonation of a stroke victim or a catatonic schizophrenic.

Naturally, our solution was to take him to a department store and get some portraits done to document the magnificence of his beaming visage. (We had a coupon!) So today we went to JC Penny and took every precaution to make sure Noah was in a good mood before we actually sat for the photos. He had a nap, a nice "meal" (only one course, obviously, but still), and we walked him around the mall a bit.

As soon as we crossed the threshold into the sitting room where the pictures were to be taken, he went from a serene and even inquisitive countenance to shrieking hysterically like a banshee, or what I imagine it sounded like when a pterodactyl stubbed its toe. If you're not really into Irish lore or popular depictions of dinosaur sounds, maybe it will put things into perspective to realize that he didn't scream *nearly* as much when he got his vaccines. For some reason, he thought sitting on a pillow with some nice lady taking pictures of him was much worse than being pinned to a table by a strange man sticking three one-inch needles into his soft quaking flesh. Whenever either of us held him in our arms to get a picture, he reacted as if just prior to picking him up we had dipped our arms in boiling glue and plunged them into a bucket of broken glass.

But guess what? We ended up with some pretty good pictures. He wasn't smiling in any of them, but neither did he have the unbridled anguish on his face that he seemed to exhibit the entire time we were sitting for the pictures. How is that possible given what you've just said above, you ask? (You're really not asking any of these things, I realize). Well, apparently the benefit of having pictures taken with a professional grade camera is that the shutter speed is faster than a proton in a large haldron collider. So in between one red-faced howl and the few nano-seconds when he was winding up for the next one, his face would look normal, and our photographer managed to catch a few of those fleeting frames. It's a good thing that for him "normal" = super-cute, so we wound up with some fairly good pictures! Here's to hoping we can get him to smile next time around ...

happy baby

cooing



and smiling

2 Months!

Today our little Noah had his 2 month check-up. He is now exactly 2 feet tall, weighing in at 11 pounds, 14 ounces. His weight gain has slowed down recently but he's still delightfully chunky with impressively large cheeks. His height is in the 87th percentile for his age, which is hard to notice most of the time because of how he tucks his legs up to his butt, even when you pick him up.

He also had his 2 month vaccinations today - three shots, one on the inside of one thigh and two on the other. We were prepared for some sad and serious wailing, but he actually didn't cry very much and took a pacifier, handling the whole thing like a champ. Since we've gotten him home, he's been a little more sleepy and fussy than usual -- poor little guy doesn't even know why he feels sick and can't connect the dots to realize that that recurrent pain in his legs is caused by his involuntary kicking. He doesn't even know he HAS legs. Still, he's had some good times today, batting at a toy and taking a nice bubble bath.

If he's sadly ignorant of his legs, he is even more so of his esophagus. Noah's got "Silent Reflux" - the stealthy and more painful cousin of Regular Reflux. Instead of spitting up the acid, it goes back down. So he gets to have his esophagus burned on the way up AND the way down. This explains the excessive salivation, hoarse voice, congestion and constant snorting and choking while trying to sleep (so it's NOT rabies after all!). The doctor thinks that wheat in Whitney's diet isn't likely to worsen reflux - that might just be giving him more gas (which he wasn't short on to begin with). Other than continuing to stay off dairy and other reflux culprits, our other course of action will be to eventually increase his dose of Zantac and maybe try Prevacid soon. If we can keep the acid reflux under control he won't get so congested and he'll have a lot less discomfort.

All the while he is just as sweet as can be. He delights us with his smiles, coos and (occasional) laughs. On Easter Sunday he started to get a little noisy in church so Whitney took him out to the foyer and as soon as they left the sanctuary he gave her a big smile and actually chuckled at her. Our little pagan is already finding ways to get out of church! Do Presbyterians get to have their babies re-baptized if the first one didn't take?

Speaking of people who aren't fans of immersion, Noah has become something of a Baptist. He suddenly LOVES bath time now. He wears a tentative but pleasant expression that occasionally gives way to full blown grins. Getting his diaper changed has also grown on him - we've discovered that he likes it when you fan his bum with a clean diaper before putting it on -- we try not to make him feel weird about it by reassuring him that "everyone loves a bum-fan." In general, we just love seeing him take in new things. Whenever we leave the house he is so wide eyed and curious about all the new things to see. What wonder must accompany his taking in of a world that he is unable to classify and mark off into "things." Pure awareness.

He's just a gift to behold - marveling at him makes me marvel at ourselves for the kind of love we are capable of and at the God revealed in that love!

A couple of firsts

First bath without screaming the whole time:


First time wearing "big boy pants": (I always forget that he has clothes other than sleepers and onesies - he's growing so quickly we had to try these on!)


First time we caught the new pout face on camera: