Peek-a-Boo Playdate

Have you ever been some where you thought would be so much fun, but quickly realized it was going to me a nightmare???? On Saturday, we went to a place called Peek-a-Boo Playtown. Cute concept. It is a "playtown" for toddlers to apparently 12 year olds. To say it is a pretend lovers paradise is an understatement with its fire hall, grocery store, library, and play houses. We went to have a playdate with Nolan's buddies Sav, JH, and Bailey. When we first arrived, the place had just opened. There were a few toddlers there wondering about, and Nolan was having fun roaming and playing with the toys. There is a GIANT slide in the center making it hard to see where he was from time to time, so I had to do a lot of following. Now if I were running this place, I would have certain times for certain ages...something to keep big kids away from little ones. Not too long after we got there a group of 10ish 5 year olds came in for a birthday party. All of the sudden, it was a mad house. Kids and adults everywhere. One minute I would see Nolan, and the next he was tucked behind a play structure out of my view. I was talking to my mommy friends when I realized I did not see Nolan's bright yellow shirt anymore...smart mommies dress kids in bright colors when going to a crowded place :) I started walking around and looking in the nooks and crannies and didn't see him. I did see a hallway near the bathroom, but I didn't think he would have ventured down there so I kept looking. Less than a minute later something came over me. Call it mommy intuition. I decided to go look down that hallway. It made a right angle that lead down another hallway. That is when my heart sank. At the end of the hallway was an outside door propped open with a piece of wood. I walked quickly towards it and looked out. There was my sweet boy 50 feet away walking down the sidewalk. I yelled his name, and he looked at me and laughed. I,however, looked at him and wanted to cry. I was so upset my hands were shaking and my voice was quivering. Who leaves a door propped open in a play land for TODDLERS that they can access????? I went straight to the desk and let them have it. To say I was MAD did not cover it. So, lesson learned. NEVER will I let Nolan out of my sight in a public place. The Playtown place is designed/set up to "secure the children". Whatever. We will not be going back to that place...especially on a Saturday morning. I did manage to get a few pics of Nolan and his friends..........


Nolan did NOT like the ball pit. I guess it reminded him of being in the leaves :)





Look at these kids. To think they were so young a year ago...or not even born...amazes me. Ohh how time flies right on by! Nolan wanted that orange soooo very bad. His favorite food right now is a Clementine and as far as he was concerned I was a mean mommy for not peeling it for him :)

Sweet little blue eyed Bailey. She loved that basketball more than anything. Lisa, you may have a tomboy on your hands!

I am going to have to buy Nolan some puzzles. He loved putting the pieces in and then dumping them out.

He even let Jack Henry play :)

Look at the Boo and his stylish outfit. He was sooooooooo hot. I had to take his shirt off because he was sweating. All that playtime can work up a good sweat.

,

This picture was funny. It is so much harder to get walking children to sit for a picture. I long for the days when we could sit them down and they didn't go anywhere............................


These days seem so far away. I would say they are about 6 months give or take in this pic. Bailey was at this play date as well...in her mama's belly :)

Mama/Boo Date

And.........he's off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You have heard me talk about the snow. Well, it did it again. Wednesday we got a few more inches to add to our totals, so we had two snow days :) I could not stomach the thought of sitting in the house all day on Thursday, so Nolan and I went on a date to the Adventure Science Center. I was really just looking for an indoor place where he could run-a-muck, and for a price of $0 for the two of us it could not have been better. When we pulled up, there were 3-4 school buses...that worried me a bit. I didn't want Nolan being trampled by big kids. However, once we got inside the kids all went into their learning labs, so we had the place to ourselves. Boo had BLAST exploring. I let him go where ever he wanted. It was funny. At first, he would look back at me to make sure I was still behind him. After a while, he could have cared less if I were there or not. He is my independent boy.


If there is a button to be pushed, he will find it. Nolan pushed every button in the place...even the ones that were hard to reach!



Boo on TV. That orange blob is his face.

The giant piano was a HUUUUUUUGGGGGGGEEEEEEEE hit! We walked on that thing for the longest time. I had to redirect him to something else because a line was starting to form.

Watching Nolan try to play the "whack a food" game was funny. I showed him how to do it, but the hammer weighed more than he did. He decided that he would just stand in the one spot and hit the one directly in front of him. Unfortunately, his strategy didn't get him many points.

I have never see a kid who can be all over the place one minute, and completely enamored the next. When he saw the catwalk that over looks the space jump, he darted for it. He looked down there for almost 10 minutes. He loved watching the kiddos below. It also gave me a minute or two to rest my feet :)

This is the look I got when I told him it was time to find something else to do. Mastering the pout already :(

This contraption was also a big hit. When you put the ball in the hole, air pushes it through a series of tubes. Nolan LOVED watching the balls, and then chases them when the popped out.

We took a little trip with Mrs. Frizzle on her Magic School Bus. FYI...I did not have to ask Nolan to go do that. He went back there and said "HI" :)

The most fake smile ever. I tried to get him to crawl in the tube, but he was NOT having it. So, we sat inside and took a few pictures. He was OVER me and my camera at this point.

Here is a picture of Nolan standing on the rope bridge. I tried to make him walk across alone, but that wasn't happening. We went together despite my reservations of how much weight it would hold :)

Once I got him in the middle, I left him. I am a mean mommy I know! This is him asking for help.

And this is him saying "one story up is kinda cool". But not for long, I had to walk back out there to get him :)

After all was said and done, he had a great time. We sat on this bench, and he sucked down the water in that sippy like he had been on a trek through the dessert.

And to prove that I actually do exist, here is a pic of Boo and I.

Yep, it snowed....

Blogging about Nolan's shenanigans is what I do. For me, it is like a time capsule that I can look back on when ever I please. For most kids who live in the south, snow is something that happens once or twice a season. So, it would be expected for some serious snow blogging to go on. This year, we have had more snow than I can remember. Since December, Nashville has gotten almost 9 inches of snow. That is BIG time for us. I kinda feel like you have seen enough pics of Nolan playing in the snow. At this point, it is hard to even get excited about it :) El Nino, La Nina, global warming, or just a good old fashioned low pressure system that keeps dipping into the Nashville area...call it what you will...we are kinda over it! So, this post is not going to be about Nolan playing in the snow. Just pretend like the snow is not there :)


See what this kid is doing? In the past few days, Nolan has figured out how to unlock the doors of my car. I don't think he knows the specifics, but he does know that this is what mommy does before she puts him in the car. When we leave daycare, Nolan holds my hand as we cross the parking lot. As we approach my car, he knows that you have to push the little button on the handle...and it makes a noise. He then walks to the back door and waits for me to open it. With his little arms and legs, he crawls in :) Very smart and super cute! We went out side a few days ago to play in the snow, and the first thing he did was walk to the door and push the button.

He pushed and pushed, but the sound he was looking for was not there. So, he walked to the other side....


He pushed that button for forever. I didn't have my key senor with me, so he never got to hear his beeping sound. Persistent little bugger! In the past few weeks, Nolan has really started talking up at storm and showing us that he really understands how things work.

• He can turn the tv on himself
• turn his lamp on himself
• he knows the sound the computer makes when Grandma Skypes and he comes running
• when I get the camera out he automatically says CHEESE before I have to say it
• the other day I was cleaning out the bathroom closet with the kitchen trash can pulled close. It was too tall for him to reach, so he went to the bathroom and got the little trash can and started throwing things in it :)
• he knows how to slide the button over on my iphone to get to the cool stuff
• he has recently learned that he can fake cough at bedtime and I will get a sippy for him...already learning how to put off bedtime
• when brad backs into the drive way, Nolan can tell the sound of his engine and and yells daaadeeee as he runs to the back door
• i could keep going but you would be too shocked and want to send him to a school for the incredibly gifted ;)

Needless to say I am amazed at my sweet, smart, handsome, precious little man. Ohh and here some pics of Nolan playing in the snow ;)

Oldies, but Goodies :)

A few days ago, I thought I lost some of my most precious memories. The hard drive on my laptop crashed. I have saved all my memory cards for my camera for this very reason, but I have never backed up any of our flip videos. I was crushed thinking that these were gone. It is so hard to go back and remember small moments with Nolan. I can imagine it will be much harder in years to come. Brad took the computer to three different people who all said that odds of getting info off are slim, but they would try...for a large hourly fee. So, he brought it back home and did a little work himself. After taking things apart, putting them back together, and banging it around a little...nope, not kidding....the darn thing booted up. We both rushed to grab a memory stick to save our videos. Yesterday, I watched almost all of them...around 100 or so. I laughed, cried, hoohaaed for hours. Thank God we were able to retrieve them because I had forgotten almost all of these precious memories :)

"Surgery" 1-17-2011

Nolan is continuing is tradition of worrying the tears out of his mommy. When he was first born, he decided to scare everyone with not breathing well on his own. I think he just wanted attention from the nurses. A few months later, we learned that he had a heart murmur. That cardiology appointment almost broke my heart. In December, we met with an ENT and learned that Nolan would need surgery to get tubes put in. I stopped blogging about his ear infections at about the 5th one. So, in case you did not know. Nolan has had 9 ear infections in his short little life...two of those being double ear infections. Talking with the ENT we learned that Nolan had a significant amount of fluid trapped in his ear causing slight hearing loss. He said that he was hearing everything, but it was muted. Kind of like living your life with ear plugs in at all times. After learning all of this, we knew that tubes were the way to go.


The days before his appointment, I was a little nervous for him. You never want your child to be put to sleep, but I knew it was something that had to happen. If I knew then just how long he would be "asleep", I would not have worried like I did :) Nolan had to be at Baptist Surgery Center at 6:30 AM. Of course, I didn't sleep well the night before, so 5:15 came VERY early! We got Nolan up around 6, and put him in the car in his pjs. I hated the fact that he could not eat or drink. If you know boo, he is an eater! Words can not describe how I felt driving to the hospital that morning. I made a comment to Brad that I had not been that nervous since our drive to the hospital to have him a year and a half ago. Brad commented back that I had not been that quiet since our drive to the hospital to have him a year and a half ago. My smart aleck hubby...we are peas in a pod. When we arrived, we had to sit in a waiting room for about 15 minutes. There were a few people in there with us. Nolan was driving them crazy... I am sure of it...with his Scout. Thank goodness we brought Scout...he was a great source of entertainment! They called us back, and lead us down a hallway with "rooms" separated by curtains. Not what I thought it would be like at all. I was really thinking we would be in a room with "walls". Call me crazy, but that's what you see on TV :) We ended up having to hang out with Nolan confined to a bed for about an hour. With no walls or door, he would have been peeking in on every other patient there. He was so easy going. Like he knew his mama needed him to be. The little girl a few curtains down was screaming like a crazy child...I am sure that drove her parents to tears. Here are a few pics of Nolan hanging out and trying to pass the time. Excuse the quality. In all my nervousness, I left the house with out my camera and had to use my phone. You can imagine how upset I was.

When the nurse finally came to take him back, Nolan went right to him. Didn't hurt that he had a super cool light up thing. I thought I would cry but I didn't. I watched him walk down the hall and through the double doors. Nolan looked back at me. That's when I felt the tears start building. They instructed us to go sit back in the waiting room and wait to be called. I knew that I couldn't sit in there and have everyone watch me cry, so I walked right through the waiting room and into the lobby. Good thing. The "few" people that we in there when we arrived turned in to at least 20. Brad followed me out. When he went to hug me, I let out so many built up tears even I felt silly. My fears were no longer about him being put to sleep. They turned to fears of him being with someone he does not know. Never have I left Nolan with someone who he considers a stranger. And now, I had thrown him into a room full of them. I went to the bathroom to collect myself, and when I came out Brad had a funny look on his face. He said that the little old man who passed us in the hallway followed him in to the bathroom and asked asked if I was going to be okay...yes while Brad was at the urinal :) That was a good enough story to make me laugh and lift my spirits. We went back to the waiting room and no kidding less than 10 minutes after they took Nolan away they called us to come back to see him. I really just did not believe it was already over. In the post op conversation with the doctor, he said that it was good that we got the fluid out. Apparently, Nolan's was thick like glue and had to be sucked out. He was for sure experiencing some hearing loss. When I rounded the corner to see Boo, he looked so funny. The nurse was holding him and he looked very dazed and confused. He didn't even reach for me. She said that he was doing great. We were told by anesthesia before hand that he would either wake up screaming or wake up calm. I am glad he chose the wake up calm method :) I am amazed at modern science. In one day, Nolan was put to sleep for a surgery...minor, but still surgery.......

went on a family walk that afternoon.....

colored some pictures......

and ate some markers :)

Chit Chat

Nolan has recently learned the art of talking on the phone. It is hysterical. He knows EXACTLY what he is saying, but we have NO CLUE what he he saying. Go ahead. Try to figure out his secret language :)

Just for You, Grandma!

Nolan was hard at work this morning making you a birthday craft. Happy Birthday, Grandma! We love you :) xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

I said "say hi to Grandma" and he gave you a wave :)

MN or TN???

When my family moved to MN, the first thing on everyone's mind was SNOW! I knew that when I went for a visit during breaks from college I could expect to see snow from September (sometimes) to April :) The nice thing about it though was that I could visit it, and then leave it! This winter has been very snowy in Nashville, and it seems that I CAN'T GET AWAY FROM IT!!!! It is the beginning of January and we are already experiencing our 4th snow of the season. That is a lot for us southern peeps :) This time around we got about 4 inches which kept daddy from going to work...something that almost never happens! The two of us had such a fun time playing with Nolan. Because we have had so much snow the past month or so, Nolan knows EXACTLY what to expect when he sees the white stuff. He kept grabbing my hand and taking me to the back door...wanting to go outside and play :)

Here we are in all of our layers. He had on two pairs of sock, two long sleeved shirts, two pairs of pants, gloves, a hat, and of course his super cute "NORTH FACE JACKET"...hehe ;) When we got back inside his body was hot!

I love his picture. I just wanted a pic of Nolan and I in the snow. As the mommy, I am usually the one behind the camera. Well, as soon as I picked him up he flippppped out! He instantly thought we were going back inside and he was not happy about it what so ever.

So, we tried another tactic and it seemed to work :)

He thought pulling the lights out of the ground was the bees knees. See the one behind him? I think there are 10 or so out there. Daddy will have fun putting them back into the frozen ground ;)

You could say we are a little unprepared when it comes to cold weather. I need to get Nolan some snow boots and a sled. So, we rigged us up a homemade sled which Nolan was not so sure about. Check out the look on his face.


Probably because he saw this coming ;) This wasn't the last time this happened either. Poor kid...never cried though!

After Brad perfected his sled pulling skills, he thought it would be fun to take Boo on the icy sidewalk. Stupid is as stupid does. He slip slided all over the place :) Nolan seemed to find it funny!

Go ahead and click on the pic to enlarge it. If that is not a look of excitement I don't know what is. Our driveway has just enough slope to it to make Nolan slide a little faster. Perfect slope for a 1 year old.

Next year we may try the hill up the street. After that, all sledding will be happening on Knob Rd where News Channel 4 is located. We can walk there from our house. Now, that's going to be some fun sledding!!

Snow angel making is something every child should know how to do. What better time to teach Nolan?? As you can see his skill need a little perfecting.

So, I showed him how it was done. He looked at me like I was crazy. Guess I can expect more of that as he gets older.

Here you can see Brad throwing a snowball at me. I went inside to warm up. Nolan wanted no part of coming in with me. The first time Brad threw a snowball at the door, Nolan didn't know what to think.

Love this look. He didn't know if he should make sure I was okay, or laugh at me like daddy. Yea, Brad has socks on his hands. Like I said earlier, we need to beef up our snow gear ;)

My version of a mud room. In MN, EVERYONE HAS A MUD ROOM. Didn't quite get it then, but I get it now. All that snowy mess gets on the easy to clean tile, and not my hardwoods!

Here is a picture of Brad's snowman. Yes, he messed up my pretty, snow covered yard.

Up close view. Clementines for eyes and pine cone for a nose. I asked him wear the mouth was and he told me he had to stop because he could no longer feel his hands. Poor guy.

After our morning of fun, Nolan needed a serious bath and daddy needed some serious rest time :) What a great day! We shall see how many more of these snow days we get here in TN. A lot I hope! Nothing better than getting paid to play with my boo all day!