Thanksgiving 2015 (Part Two!)

We arrived just in front of the other Maldonado clan, and got unpacked and took a tour of Nolan's new nursery in Nani and Papa's house.  He sure has a good set up!  They have an empty space over the garage that used to be my dad's office, which has now been converted into Nolan's room...complete with crib, changing table, rocker, and lots of toys!

 

Meatballs were the meal of choice for Thursday night, and Papa was all too popular handing them out...but I think Nani's kisses were the favorite!

 

 

Since we did our BIG Thanksgiving meal with the family on Friday instead of Thursday, we enjoyed a day at the park on Friday before our big meal.  The weather was just beautiful, and I was so thankful that we didn't have to keep Nolan locked up inside all weekend.  He even slept through the night all THREE nights, which was glorious, glorious!  Our meal was fantastic, and we all ate and had a great time.

I was even able to sneak out really early Friday morning and do a lot of Christmas shopping.  I got a lot more accomplished than I figured I would, and some alone time was great to just shop and drink my Starbucks :)



 

Nolan and Nani wake up each morning and they have their whole routine down pat.  They feed the cats, play, and Nolan watches Nani at the bar while she makes breakfast.  She offers to let me go back to sleep, but I take that time to get ready instead (which is much better to get in early before the 10 other folks wake up!)

 

I brought my "big" camera to the park this day, and this is Nolan telling me "No Cheese mommy, NO Cheese!"  He was pretty much tired of having a camera in his face :)

 

I am not really as cool as I used to be, but I made Andre' take our pictures jumping out of the swing anyway  :)

 

The rest of our weekend was spent hanging out, doing crafts and watching football.  Ok, some people watched football and I ran to Hobby Lobby :)  I prefer that arrangement much better!  One of the highlights of the weekend was being able to have a DATE night on Saturday night.  We got Nolan to bed, and then Paige, Anthony and I headed out for some fun.  We went to the restaurant where Paige works first, then ended up at Hickory Tavern later.  It was fun, but I don't have a lot of "bar hopping" nights in me anymore - ha!

 

 

We made our way home Sunday without too much traffic, tried to get a jumpstart on the 10,000 loads of laundry we had, and then it was back to work on Monday!  Overall it was a wonderful Thanksgiving full of all of the things (and people) I love most.



Thanksgiving 2015 (Part One!)

Somehow, our weeks leading up to major Holidays always seem to involve some sort of sickness, and this year was no different.  I suppose it makes the time with family/extra hands/some extra sleep all that more enjoyable :)

Sweet little man had a case of pneumonia the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving this year, which meant lots of nights of no sleep and lots of Mommy/Daddy worrying.  Thankfully, we took him to the doctor and he had a whole week's worth of antibiotics before we left for out of town, and he did great and we had the BEST Thanksgiving this year!

We left early Thursday morning to drive to Concord to eat lunch with Mom's side of the family.  We got there just in time and had some awesome food.  Nolan had a blast watching all of this big cousins run around and play, and we even got to spend a couple of extra hours with Granny after eating which is always so nice.  Here he is showing support for the "best" SC team (even though they lost Saturday...womp womp!)

 

Memo helped the kids put together donation boxes, and this is the crowd after they were done...

 

Nolan apparently ate too much turkey and needed a rest on Ollie's shoulder.

I will always cherish these photos...Nolan is one blessed little boy!

 

Since football was on, we all decided to demonstrate the "wave" for Nolan...I think he got into it!

 

 

 

Once Granny decided it was time for her to go home, we packed up and made our way to Hickory for the rest of the weekend.  Andre', Sammi and the girls also came up, so it was a big, loud, fun household full of Maldonado's and Vance's!  Again, Nolan was enamored with his two beautiful cousins and was pretty much spoiled rotten all weekend :)

Nolan: An Update

I know I don't have to continue to do monthly updates on our little man, but I love looking back at them (and let's be honest, I can't remember a thing after 30 seconds), so I want to continue my attempts at remembering our little man's goings on - one month at a time.

Since I am tired of counting weeks and months, I am just going to do it one month at a time after two :)

 

One day I will take a video of Anthony giving Nolan a "ride" in his car.  Imagine Anthony running at FULL speed all down the driveway, through the yard, up the ditch, and through the bushes.  I almost keel over each time, but Nolan is my adrenaline junkie and LOVES it.

He has been able to count to 10 by following us, but now he does it all on his own.  He gets very chatty sometimes in the mornings on the way to school and will count and talk to me the whole way there.  I feel like we do some of our closest moments when it's just in the car with the two of us.  He asks lots of questions, we sing and repeat things.  I hardly ever talk on the phone with him on, and usually don't even play the radio so I can just tune into him.

He has started to say "Ohhh...." when you point something out to him he wasn't getting (sort of like, OH, I see now).  And I finally broke him of his "Nope" habit :)  Somewhere along the line he picked up responding to me with "Nope," and we quickly changed that to "No ma'am."  He usually responds with "No ma'am" when I ask him if he has a poopy diaper, and almost always he says no, which should really mean yes :)

He is also starting to string together more words at a time.  He is still missing some key words in each sentence to avoid saying fragments, but is easy to understand now.

 

Daycare sent me this picture today, and it cracked me up.  He was out cold!  He is doing well at daycare now.  He has mostly quelched his "nibbling" habit, and now has moved on to "tackling" his friends.  I blame Daddy for this one :)  Their favorite thing on the weekends right now is to watch Sunday night football and "TACKLE" each other.  It's absolutely adorable, until I learned this week that Nolan is tackling his friends at school and they don't like it so much - oops!  Anthony has even taught him to say "Go Falcons!" as an homage to our former state :)

 

Overall, he is changing every day and I love him more and more each second!

2 Year (Family) Photos

We scheduled Nolan's two year photos for his birthday weekend, but poor babe ended up being covered in hives and it was pouring rain all weekend, so we rescheduled for Halloween.

That wasn't the best timing in the world, but we got some sweet shots of Nolan (plus the family), and a couple of these will appear on the Christmas card this year :)

He kind of looks pained, but I am loving it :)

Oh that hair...I could have an entire gallery dedicated to his hair shots :)

My precious little 2 year old...time flies.

P-O-T-T-Y!

Nolan first actually "pee pee'd" on the potty on October 12th, but that was just me holding him over the toilet before bath time to see what he would do.  Anthony was out of town that night and missed it, so it was a little victory for me and Nolan.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and we finally bought him a real "potty," since he is showing a lot of interest.  He was SO excited for his new potty, as you can tell!

He managed a pretty good tinkle, and has done so each night since then, so I think we may be working our way to potty training...wish us luck!

Oh look what I just did!

 

Next we need to get him a little step stool so he can climb on up there by himself.  So far, I really like this potty because it's not covered in crazy Elmo faces, is easy to clean, and is soft and suctions to the seat - perfect for his little hiney!  Can time please stand still...I can't believe we are almost into this next chapter - I would change diapers for another year if it meant I kept my little baby!

Our First Pumpkin...

I can't tell you how many years its been since I have carved a pumpkin!  I usually don't carve pumpkins because it's messy (hello, OCD), and because it seems like they always rot so fast afterwards!  Well, I threw caution to the wind this year and decided to carve one of our pumpkins since we were doing Halloween up right this year!

 

It was a fun, and surprisingly quick, ordeal.  I plopped everything (and everyone) down on a plastic tablecloth outside on Friday night and carved away.  Nolan was more interested in playing with KK, so at least that kept his fingers away from the knife :)

I didn't do a dramatic design, and next year will remember NOT to color on the parts that are staying...derp.  Nolan helped a little bit and pulled a couple of handfuls of the "guts" out and then he was done!

 

I am sure I will have to up my pumpkin-carving-anty next year, but for my first one in a couple of decades, I thought he was pretty cute!



 

Halloween 2015!

Halloween was SO much fun this year!  Nolan still didn't exactly get what was going on, but he had a great day regardless! 

Our Halloween weekend actually kicked off on Friday where his school did a Trunk or Treat, and I was able to use some special PTO to get off work early and attend.  I played with Nolan and all of his classmates on the playground until Daddy and G arrived, which was so much fun!  The little tykes will just flock to you and are so excited to have someone new to play with!

The parents at the school did an AWESOME job of decorating their trunks for all of the kids...I am talking some serious effort and thought went into them!  At least I know what to plan for if Anthony and I ever decide to do it!  We took Nolan down the line and he said his first "Trick or Treat" ever, and got some good candy.  He had NO idea what the candy was, but seemed to enjoy the whole "I say Trick or Treat and you give me something" ordeal :)

Saturday was the main event, and I furiously scrambled to finish his wagon in time for our trick or treating.  It came together pretty well, but I still wish I could have done more.  The goal, since he is obsessed with trains, was to dress him like a train conductor and then turn his wagon into Thomas the Train.  We didn't show him his train until right when we were about to leave, and I think he liked it!

Nevermind that he had both sides ripped off by the time we got to the end of the driveway...I just sighed and stuck them back in.  Hey, my job was done and it was dark anyway :)

 

We even had room for one more passenger - a monkey!

 

Love that Daddy already had a train conductor outfit...ha, my old man :)

 

After we took the boys to few houses, we headed back to our house to hand out candy and eat some chili with our neighbors and G and Ollie.  I put up a cute little Halloween spread and we all had a great time watching the boys play and eating.  Ollie and our neighbor talked football, Anthony wrestled with the boys, and the girls manned the door and tried to get the kiddos to eat :)

 

 

We had WAY more food that we knew what to do with, but it was good anyway!  This was the sweets station...the chili and cornbread + fixin's was on the bar.

 

Obviously before I added the food :)

 

Overall, I would count this year as a success :)  Nolan had a great time (and was too young to care about actually eating the candy), we got to hang out with some friends and family, and we attempted our first Halloween costume.  Fun stuff, fun stuff indeed!