Welcome Spring!

The azaleas are blooming, the tree leaves are making their first appearance.

We've planted so many new trees and shrubs in our yard this year, I am hoping they continue to grow and thrive!

I will have to take some pictures of the transformation of our house once we finish the flower beds, and mulching. It looks LOADS better than it did last year. It's so rewarding to see the transformation of your yard and home, and be able to say "We did that". We have so many other projects coming up this summer too. Most of them are outdoor, but it's really where our house needs the most work.

We've been outside a lot, playing on her swingset. Tim recently replaced one of her regular swings with a tire swing. She loves it!

Brody's Birthday Bash

While it was extremely COLD for an early April afternoon, we still had so much fun!

Noel loved the face painter - I thought she did an amazing job, especially since Noel could not keep her eyes closed long enough for her to get a good "blot" with the painting sponge.

Here are some pictures

My friend Kim, her daughter Madi, and Bree

Giving the birthday boy a hug!

Nannie's Birthday Cake

Mom and Dad came up the first few days of the month, due to some home renovations taking place in their house.

It also coincided with mom's birthday. After much deliberation, Noel and I decided upon a Red Velvet Cake. I found an amazing recipe on the joy of baking website, so we went with it.

It calls for mascarpone cheese and cream cheese in the icing (yum!). Unfortunately though, I could not find mascarpone cheese at our grocery store, so we substituted with plain cream cheese. It was still super delicious!

Noel is potty-trained!

I was unsure how to go about this whole potty-training thing.

In the past, Noel has been quite clear that she was NOT interested in doing ANYTHING on the potty.

Thankfully, Dana and Jeff got us a potty-training kit for Christmas. It included charts, and stickers, and activities for her to do while sitting on the potty.

We started out giving stickers for ANY effort at all. Did she try to go? Sticker! Did she try to pull her pants down? Sticker!

After several days, she was doing SO well. On her first dry day, we got her a big My Little Pony mylar balloon. We promised her that when she finally had it down, we would get her a special toy.

One week later, after NO accidents and also some progress on using public toilets, we took her to the store to pick out her "special toy". She ended up choosing an Ice Cream Shoppe Play-doh station.

She hasn't faltered since, and is doing WONDERFULLY. No more diapers! Hooray!

We're so proud her :)

"Play with me, Kitty!"

Noel has finally mastered picking up the cat.

Unfortunately for the kitty, that means she gets to spend a lot of one-on-one time in Noel's room.

Nannie/Poppy/Dana time

I realize I am a couple of months behind on this thing, but I will try to catch up as swiftly as possible ;-)

My picture-taking has slowed down enormously, and our video-taking has completely stopped due to our SD card on that camera being completely full. We will have a solution for that soon, so I promise to take some videos when I can. Noel has been singing a LOT and I don't want to miss that!

The first week of March, Noel and I headed to Roanoke to spend time with family. Tim had coast guard training in South Carolina, and we didn't want to be home alone for two weeks!

My sister came up, and we mostly relaxed and spent time together. I took Noel's bike down also, so that she could really let 'er loose on their dead-end road. She LOVED having so much space to ride.

We also were able to catch up with Katie (baby Zoee) and Kafi (baby Zoe). It's so strange having two friends with children that share a name! Both of them are adorable beyond words, and such good babies! Noel LOVES babies, and lavished both of them with many hugs and kisses.

A quick nap on the couch.

At Walrond Park. She was invited to go on a ride! Guess
what she is getting for her birthday...:)

Baby Zoee

Baby Zoe

Bike ridin'!

Playdate @ Hannah and Leah's

It has been about 6 months since we've seen Hannah and Leah, PLUS I hadn't even met their new addition, Ezra. We kept making plans to get together, and our plans were continually foiled.

Anyway, we were finally able to find a date and time that we could meet. Noel and I headed to their house, just to play and for Megan and I to catch up. Noel loved it...and somehow got awfully attached to one of their bouncy balls. She's been asking about it ever since.

The grass is always greener when you play with someone else's toys I suppose!

Baby Ezra. Noel was fascinated with him,
lavishing him with hugs and kisses <3

Hannah, Leah & Noel.

M&Ms vs Pills

On Saturday, Noel made her second visit to UVA's Pediatric Emergency Room. If you don't remember the first, Noel was 9 months old, and I thought that she might have swallowed a lead weight from a fishing pole. It turned out to have been an acorn, and everything was fine.

Anyway, Noel and I got ready for a birthday party. Maia's birthday party. We haven't seen Hunter or Maia in a long time, and Noel was SOOO UBER excited about going. So I showered, got dressed, and dressed her. I was checking my email and such, and Noel came to me, and said there was something in her mouth. She opened wide so I could see, and I didn't see anything. I said "Ohh I see some teeth!" And she went on her merry way.

A minute later she brought me an OPEN Unisom bottle full of tiny blue gel-filled pills. She said "Mommy, I had some M&Ms!" I said "Noel, did you EAT these??" and she said "Yes."

I immediately called Poison Control and she said since we didn't know how many she had taken, we needed to go to the ER. We jumped in the car and headed into town (which is an awfully long 45 minute drive).

It was an agonizing 45 minutes. When we finally got there I parked in a no-parking zone and ran her in. Her O2 levels were good, as well as her heart rate. She was a staggering 26 lbs (up one pound since September. LOL) And we were immediately taken back to the Pediatric ER so that they could evaluate her. She was in good spirits and not acting drowsy at all. They did an ECG on her, which was a challenge. It was normal, so they said they were going to have us wait around for a couple more hours, just to make sure there weren't going to be any reactions to it.

I was relieved to hear that the medication that she took is the same as benadryl. She's taken that before without any problems. The question was just "How MANY did she take?"

She never did have any reaction, but they wanted to do another ECG just to make sure there were no ill effects. It WASN'T going to happen without restraining her, so the doctor decided that it wasn't worth it, since she was acting normally.

When we got home, we had a big talk about candy vs. pills. HOPEFULLY if there were ever a time that she found another pill bottle, she would bring it to us and NEVER eat any of them. We are definitely going to be more diligent about where we keep medications, regardless. I wish we had had a talk about this prior to Saturday!

I took a picture of all of her ECG leads. I know they're just stickers, but it looks scary to me.

Amazement Square

On Friday Noel and I headed to Lynchburg to spend the day with April. We went to Amazement Square, which is a children's museum. And let me tell you...it completely surpassed expectation. The entire core of the building (which is comprised of 5 floors), is a maze of tunnels, slides, and ladders. There was also an entire room made of net, which had a zipline set up for the older kids.

They had a "Paint Box", which is a glass room that the children can paint wherever they want on the walls. They had a music exhibit, native american exhibit, a replica of the James River, and the city of Lynchburg. The river had dams that you could control, to see how the water flow affected the rest of the river, and the city. You could even make it rain on the city, to see how the rainfall affected the river.

The only complaint I have about the entire experience, is that because Noel is 2, I had to follow her into every tunnel and slide, so that I would not lose her. And there was one slide that turns into a NETTED tunnel half way down. Excellent!

It had more than I could really explain or rave on about, but I'll just say this...if you have a child and are within driving distance, I HIGHLY recommend a visit. We spent 5 hours there and Noel really didn't want to leave. We left just as they closed their doors!

The Paint Box

The dreaded netted tunnel/slide. Yikes.

One of Noel's favorite Exhibits. She actually tried climbing into it!

Superb, April. Thanks. ;-)

Weee!

The Kaleidoscope

Haha! Got you back ;-)

Golf Ball Ramps

Light up steps!!

Not sure what I'd call these, but they were really cool to play with.

Picking Corn

Milkin the Cow

We also spent time at April and Josh's house, which might have been Noel's favorite part actually, because they have two cats, and are dog sitting for her parents, so Noel was in heaven. Too bad the kitties didn't like her too much :-\ I came home with a renewed appreciation for our cat, who takes an enormous amount of abuse on a daily basis, and has only scratched her once.

Children's Museum Trip

Today Noel and I met up with Allison and Ronan. It's been a very long time since we've both gotten together and let the kids play.

Since we've been stuck indoors a LOT lately, making Noel very fussy and grumpy most of the time, we decided to meet up at the Children's museum in Short Pump.

As you can tell from the pictures, Noel had a blast! I think she loved the train most of all, but it was a big ordeal after the ride was over...she couldn't understand why she had to get off. After several minutes and a sucker, she was fine and resumed playing on the big slide.

They also had an arts and crafts center, where you could make several crafts, and paint or color. Noel loved the painting the best.

After we were through at the museum (which it was tough to convince her that we needed to eat, even though she was STARVING), we drove over to Chick-fil-a. Noel fed Ronan some fruit and chicken nuggets and then we played some more on the indoor jungle gym.

We had a great time today, but I am definitely beat. I'm guessing Noel is too, because she's still sleeping now, at almost 6 pm :)

Noel liked the purple fish the "best"

Waiting for the train ride

Woo Hoo!

o