First Time for Everything!

It was officially 21 months and 2 weeks to the day before Anthony and I left Nolan overnight for the first time!  We each have taken random overnights away from him before, but never both of us at the same time.

I figured in honor of Anthony's 35th birthday that a special night away was in order :)  So, I cooked up a surprise for him where my mom agreed to come over on Saturday around lunch, so that Anthony and I could go see a movie and then head to a hotel in downtown Raleigh for the night.  He was so surprised when I told them the night before, and really excited!

I didn't get a lot of pictures that night, but we had such a great time, and it was a much-needed time for us to connect and enjoy some quality time together.  We are WITH each other a lot, but with a crazy toddler in tow it's hard to talk and reconnect.

We headed out around noon and caught a matinee showing of Ant Man, which was the FIRST movie I had been to since before Nolan was born!  I know I was a bit rusty, but I really enjoyed the movie and thought the effects were pretty good!

 

After the movie we decided to take a quick walk through the art museum.  Anthony had never been before, and although it's right around the corner from my office, I hadn't been there since high school.  It was free admission, which was great, so we strolled around for about 45 minutes until we decided to head to the hotel.  I was hoping to grab a quick nap (oh joy!) before we headed out to dinner that night.

 

We grabbed a drink at the restaurant down in the lobby, and checked into our room.  We both felt a bit odd with so much spare time, and no schedule in sight!  I tried to nap, but I am not used to it anymore so I actually couldn't sleep!  We rallied and headed out to walk around downtown and find a place to eat dinner around 8:00 or so.

 

 

Randomly, as we passed a new restaurant, we ran into a partner from my office, and he and his wife urged us to try the restaurant they had just left.  We had no other ideas of where to go, so they were able to get us a seat in the super busy restaurant, and down we sat!

 

We were seated right at the bar and had a great time talking to the bartender and deciding what to eat.  I didn't see too much on the menu that I was hungry for, so opted for a salad and Anthony got oysters.  We did enjoy a couple of dessert items at the end, and they were beautiful!  My salad and the dessert both had flowers in them...I must have eaten a whole bouquet by the end of the night - ha!

 



We ended the night with some more junk food room service, and tried to sleep in as late as possible.  I missed my baby monitor noise, so I downloaded a "white noise" app to try and sleep!  Anthony was the one that woke up first, so there wasn't much sleeping in.  I think it would take more than one night for our normal internal clocks to get used to sleeping past 6 a.m.!

We ended our adventure with an awesome brunch at the hotel bar, and then headed home to our little man.  He had an awesome weekend with G, and was just as happy to see us as we were to see him.  I am looking forward to another night away with my hubby, but will be just fine with one night and not more right now :)

21 Months!

This month was pretty crazy, and I still didn't get to take as many pictures of the little nugget(s) as I would have liked, but I got a couple.  Nolan was sick for a good part of this month, so we had a lot of down time. 

On a side note: it has been HOT HOT HOT here!  Oh my goodness - the temperatures here have been soaring, and it makes being outside almost impossible on some days.  I guess global warming really is a "thing," because it's for sure making itself known.  There were a few days where we hit 100 degrees, but the heat index has made almost every single day feel like it's over 100.  Thankfully, daycare won't take the kids out in the afternoon when it gets that hot, and that's a good thing because we have noticed that Nolan will cough a lot more when he is sick if he's outside in the heat for too long.

But let's get to a quick little recap of our sweet boy, shall we?

Health:  We had been on a pretty good streak of some good health over the past couple of months, but this month caught up to us unfortunately.  We all started off the month of June with a nasty cough/cold, but it ended up sending poor Nolan back to the doctor for an emergency treatment once again.  He was on steroids and an extra breathing treatment for a couple of weeks, but it took a long time for the cough to go away.  Then, sweet babe was hit with strep throat just a week or so after, so the 4th of July was spent with my little man getting him well.  We are most likely going to visit with another ENT doctor to get a second opinion on whether removing his adenoids/tonsils will help, and then hopefully will have a better answer as to what we should do.

 

 This is his official "21 month" picture...poor baby - he felt so bad!

 

 

Eating:  The eating strike is still going on, but I can't blame him with all the medicine he has been on and with being sick.  We did have a fun dinner with "G" one night, and he managed to eat a few nibbles.  We can still usually get him to eat fruit or cheese, so at least there are some nutrients in there :)  Most recently, Anthony has resorted to "negotiating" with him for food.  He gets one bite of something he wants if he takes one bite of what we want him to eat...whatever works, right?!

 

 

And I failed to mention he loves Peanut Butter!

 

 

Development:  Developmentally, he is right on track.  His vocabulary is expanding and he is asserting his own opinion and independence a lot more nowadays too.  He has his little tantrums, but they don't last long and usually aren't very severe.  Thankfully, he hasn't started to see things in the store and then "insist" on taking them home with him, but I am sure that is coming!  He still enjoys books and can point to most pictures or objects if we ask him "point to the ______."  He knows some colors, but will still say everything is "yellow" if you ask him what color something is - ha!

 

 

Fun Stuff:  Even though he has been sick, he still is a happy little guy and loves to cuddle and roughhouse with Dad and Jacob.  He has loved having his Big "brudda" and "sissy" around, and could stand and watch Daddy and Jacob wrestle all day long.  He flips whenever you mention any of his grandparents, and gets so excited when he sees any of them now.  He will talk a little bit if you hold the phone up to his ear, and it's hysterical when he takes Anthony's phone and holds it up to his ear and says "hello" even when there isn't anyone on the line!

 

 

 

Gah, even though he makes us sleep-deprived, he is still SO precious!



Fourth of July + Strep Throat!

Well, the title says it all!  Our poor little babe ended up with strep throat of all things, the Thursday before the 4th of July this year.  It was really quite surprising, since he wasn't running a fever, but it was going around his school so the doctor did a quick test just to be sure, and sure enough, it was strep.

 

This was how he looked before he went to the doctor...all smiles!

 

I guess I could backtrack a bit, just to lay the groundwork for one crazy week :)  We buried my precious Grandmother on Monday, and then my Dad and family arrived home to an exploded water heater that evening that flooded their entire basement.  Since we had initially planned to gather ALL the Maldonado's at their house for the 4th of July weekend, our plans were cancelled because Dad and family had more important things to deal with that weekend :(

On Tuesday, we decide to have the cousins and Aunt and Uncles to our house, so the cleaning/shopping frenzy began (there would be a total of about 10 people in our house from Thursday to Sunday).

On Wednesday, Nolan got sent home from daycare because he was coughing so bad he vomited, so I left work early (after being out on bereavement leave Monday-Tuesday).

On Thursday, mom took Nolan to the doctor and we discovered it was strep so we cancelled the plans with family and tried to keep Nolan comfortable and avoid the rest of us getting sick!  Friday was somewhat decent and we managed to purchase a new walking lawnmower for the yard (which is a whole other story in itself -ha!)

And Saturday (the 4th), Anthony took Jacob and Lexie on a last-minute trip to Columbia to see the cousins before they left town, and it was just me and the babe for the rest of the weekend. 

We did manage to get in a little bit of outdoor time, but by evening he was not feeling too hot!

 

Here he is helping me take some limbs I cut off to the garage :)

 

Nothing like a empty box to boost the imagination!

 

Loaded the car again with branches :)

Poor sweet boy felt so bad Saturday night he slept cuddled into me (literally, into my CHIN).  I was exhausted completely, but I actually loved all that cuddle time with my boy.

I will say, that before I headed to bed that night, I was able to see THREE fireworks shows from our house.  It was like my own private showing!  The space is so wide open here that I saw fireworks from Clayton and Archer's Lodge (not to mention the neighbors that fired off some I swore were going to come through the living room window!)

So, needless to say, I don't have many pictures of this year's 4th of July, but it will be one that I won't forget for a long time either! :)