April Happenings

Nolan has started the cutest habit of trying on our shoes and walking all over the place in them.  My favorite are when he wears Daddy's work boots... I mean, gah!  

We spent the first weekend of the month with a day at Hemenway Park in Boulder City.  Harley had to get groomed, so we took him to our groomer (that is in BC), and spent some time hanging out here afterwards.  We were hoping to see some bighorn sheep, but no luck.  Either way, this park was awesome and you can't beat the view!  We had never been before but definitely plan to return.  Nolan had a blast on the playground, and when Harley met back up with us, he thought it was SO fun that he could play with his puppy at the park!  We never take Harley out, other than for walks (which is also rare), so they both got some well needed fresh air and playtime together!

Nolan's been extra affectionate towards his toys since he's been playing more with "baby dolls" (my old Cabbage Patch dolls, who he likes to call Baby Sissy Doll and Baby Brother Doll), and gave Elmo lots and lots of hugs and "awwws" one afternoon.  (See other picture for proof of taking care of "Baby Sissy Doll").

Speaking of Sissy- Nolan also enjoys talking to her in the mornings and always asks to "listen Sissy" with my Doppler.  He'll bring it over to me in bed and insists on speaking into the monitor and listening to her heartbeat.  Sometimes he'll dance around to the beating heart he sees on the screen and likes to think she's dancing, too!  MELT.

We got some awesome Spring storms this month, and Nolan had a blast when we let him play outside for over an hour one weekend.  The weather was perfect because it had been raining all morning, but the sun started coming up again to give off some warmth, which made it feel like a total Spring day.  He splashed in the miniature puddles and spent an insane amount of time picking leaves off the tree, shaking the water droplets off of them and throwing them into our rocks.  Plus, he got to wear his rain jacket and thought his hood was beyond awesome!

The next day, the storms continued, and we got such a bad thunderstorm that it left us covered in hail!  I brought some in for Nolan to play with and he literally thought it was the coolest thing that snow was inside the house, so he played with it for over a half hour.  Score!

Since we've been finishing up parts of the nursery, I swooned over these Oh Joy! sheets I ordered from Target to fit in with the flamingo theme of her room.  Although I'm not going crazy with too much flamingo stuff, I had to get a little wild with these sheets as some backups for when her pretty ones are in the wash.  They are SO cute and SO soft!

The baby has been moving in crazy positions lately, and I've caught her alien like movements on video which I posted in our 37 Week update.  I also snapped this one of her booty pushing out (or what I think is her butt!), which isn't the most comfortable thing in the whole world... Ouch.  Even though she's running out of room and it's more pushes and painful prods than cute baby kicks, I know I'm going to miss the heck out of it when she's here, so I'm trying to soak it all in!

Nolan ate corn on the cob for the first time (first time on the cob, anyway), and had us cracking up with the faces he was making while chowing down.  He loved it!

I did lots and lots of baby laundry in preparation of lady love's arrival.

Nolan constantly asks for the "Dino Movie" (The Good Dinosaur... and we really need to just buy it for him) so we hit up Redbox one night when Daddy had plans to work late, and had a fun Mommy-Son movie night date!  We started the movie early but Nolan thought it was so fun to (for the second time ever) get in his PJs, snuggle up on the couch, eat snacks and watch a movie!  I love this tradition and want to keep it as something we don't do often so it remains something he looks forward to and thinks is special!  

Desa and Dustin sent us the cutest baby gift and I seriously could not stop gushing over the wrap job and even more, the onesie and head wrap they sent!  Absolutely love it and I can't wait to see her in this outfit!   Thanks again, guys!  We miss you!!!

We took our maternity pictures at Lake Las Vegas all on our own one weekend, and although a little time consuming (and exhausting), I'm happy with the way they turned out!

Nolan asked for his picture to be taken one morning before heading out to run errands, so of course I had to say yes.  He chose to stand by "this tree" right here.

We hit 37 weeks in this pregnancy and are so excited to be rounding out the third trimester and welcoming this new babe in just a short, short time!

I find myself just stopping into the baby's nursery to swoon over it time and again, so I posted a sneak peek picture of it even though there's still a few things left to do!

Nolan helped Daddy do some pushups one morning, although I don't think he was much help...

Harley passed out on the couch one weekend with his eyes rolling around and mouth open... sometimes I like to think this is how I deep sleep, too. Ha!

I continued checking things off my "to-do before baby" list and decided to sanitize every bottle, new pacifiers, nipples and pump parts we own.  Craziness.  

Nolan learned "eskimo kiss" and it is probably one of my favorite things he says right now!  Es-kee-mo kiss!

...Until next month (when we'll have a new member of the family, EEEEK!)

Tot School Week 9: Sky + Space

This week was by far one of my favorite topics we've covered, and I think Nolan had a blast with each activity!  

We started our Sky + Space theme by reading Goodnight Moon.  Nolan really enjoyed the book, and funny enough, we had never read it to him since we don't own it!  We played a game of Moon Rock Throw by tossing some tin foil "Moon Rocks" into our bin.  Nolan played this a million times over again and loved it!  He was super funny by trying to back up and throw the rocks from a distance... he just kept creeping closer and closer to the basket without really realizing it!  Each time he finished, he would dump all the rocks over his head and laugh so hard!

We played a matching game (found here) that he did surprisingly well at.  I would point and say the word aloud, and he would find the picture that matched it.  There were a few he wasn't familiar with, but after doing it once through, the second time he completely got it on his own.

My favorite project of the week was painting our Moon!  We simply mixed some flour in with the color choice of paint that Nolan wanted (red), and painted into the cut out area of contact paper that was stuck to the black construction paper.  Nolan used his hands to paint which gave it more texture.  We used bottle caps for our craters, and in the end, it came out looking really like the Moon!  I love it!  It didn't go without our fair share of a temper tantrum though... and luckily we were finished, but at the same time, I was left with this mess to clean up.... Yikes.  After a nice little timeout and cool down, we stripped off our contact paper, and, Voila!  The moooooon!

To end our first day of the Moon theme, we studied up on the Moon Phases by using Oreos! The adorable printable idea can be found here.  This was definitely Nolan's favorite activity of the week, and no, don't worry, I didn't let him eat all of them!

On our second day, we read the story, Earth Space Moon Base, and paired this with a fun glow in the dark activity where we made our own constellations and stars by shining a flashlight through a colander!  

We practiced our counting by using the different planets counting printable, and placing star stickers on top of how many each planet's number corresponded to.  Nolan can identify his numbers very well, but has a hard time counting out each and knowing when to stop counting based on what number he's looking at, so this was a tough one for him and I had to help him through the whole thing.

We then created our Nebula Jar, which was a total fail!  It definitely didn't work for us and just created a mush of cotton and paint and glitter... but Nolan thought it was still pretty sweet, loved shaking it up, and he carried it around the rest of the day!  Haha. 

Finally, for our third day, we read How to Catch a Star, which was a super cute book and we loved our activities that directly related to the book, as well.  After reading the book, we shot off our own straw rockets by blowing into them and shooting them far!  Nolan thought this was super fun and liked it better when Mommy did it because it went farther.  

Our sensory bin was a huge hit, this week, and Nolan was totally into searching for the matching planet printables we hid inside our bin.  He also had letters to find to spell out his name on a moon drawing I quickly made up for him the night before.  I simply wrote the matching letters on star stickers with the backing kept on, and he matched them up wonderfully.  He played with the sensory bin and researched over and over again for a good 20+ minutes.  

Our craft for the day was one that didn't come out so cute, but Nolan still enjoyed it.  I created some hot glue stars along with his name on a black piece of construction paper, and he was allowed to decorate how he pleased.  He chose some finger painting and glitter, and although it wasn't a very pretty result, he did like feeling the glue with his hands and decorating it to his liking.  

Finally, we left off our Sky + Space week with Nolan's own name constellation, where he was to mark each dot on each letter of his name with a star sticker.  He did surprisingly well with this activity and only needed help in the beginning, and was super proud of his work in the end!