He loves his fresh produce! Right off the vine, a tennis ball sized tomato still warm from the sun.

Who ever said you can’t have fun in the rain? Nobody said that? Okay, well they should have so that I could prove them wrong! We headed out yesterday morning to meet up with the cousins and my SIL/BIL for a night of camping – in the rain. This was Noah’s first foray into camping so we wanted something easy and all.

We arrived and the sky was overcast but there was only a 30% chance of showers when I checked before we left. What I didn’t know was that that 30% was upgraded to 60% while we were driving the 3.5 hrs up there. Needless to say, even though we had some nice weather to get our tent up, lunch consumed and even fit a little swimming in, we got really wet. It started to pour around 4:00 and never quit for more than an hour or so at a stretch until the next morning.

You can see we spent some time in the car hanging out until the worst of it was over. Once it slowed down, DH and Uncle rigged up a tarp so we could eat dinner together and hang out. We had a great time even if we weren’t gathered around a fire roasting marshmallows.

Noah did great in the tent in his pack n play and actually slept more soundly than he does at home. The constant sound of the rain on the roof of the tent probably did the trick. Anywho, enough chatter, here are the pics!!!

The highlight of the trip was probably our baby raccoon visitor. I was was over at the car getting something and I noticed something moving out of the corner of my eye. This tiny masked face peaked around the tire of the car and looked right at me. As I rounded the car he set out across the campsite right next to our tent. He moved pretty slowly but never showed any aggression. He hung around long enough for me to call the boys over to see.

Exhausted doggie, fat bellies, new freckles and a little sun burn (on us, not Noah), and not a care in the world equals an awesome 4th of July weekend!

The earlier part of the weekend involved my in laws visiting. We stuffed our faces with mass quantities of steak and pie (and other fixins). Went for walks. Enjoyed some small fireworks

Sunday night we discovered that Noah’s not a fan of the sound of fireworks (like, at all!) and during our neighbors big show I ended up alternating between holding him with my hands over his ears while he clung monkey style to me or sitting in the window box inside where he could see the pretties but not hear them (he even ooed and ahed a few times when we were inside). Once the loud booms were over he promptly went back to sleep.

Monday we finally baby proofed the kitchen by installing gates in the doorways to keep him out. We figured out that we just can’t secure all the cabinets and drawers because our cabinets are frameless and there’s nothing to attach the locks to. Moving everything above his level was a no go either so just keeping him out was all we had. Now we have one pressure gate that you have to climb over and one that you can walk thru. Thinking we need to do both as a walk thru but we’ll see.

We capped Monday off with a wicked, up hill both ways, hot as hell run (to burn off the pie and ice cream of course) and then sat on our roof to try to catch a glimpse of the city fireworks (which we could see thru a 3x3ft section of trees). Next year we’ll brave the crowds and noise and actually go to a place where we can see things.

Anywho, here are some pics from the weekend for your enjoyment:

We had a great Saturday with an impromptu BBQ with a few friends and got the babes together to play. I’ll tell ya, I’ve read is many places that at this age they really only engage in parallel play but watching Noah and K I swear they were playing together. More than once they’d react to one another. Like Noah would push the buttons on the fridge toy and K would put the pieces together on the same toy at the same time (which would change the song that was playing). They also both had crackers and followed one another into the next room and promptly plopped down on the fireplace hearth to munch away. At another point one of them laid down and put their head on the pillow and the other followed suit laughing all the way. But none of these could top the duet on the piano…you have to see for yourself…

They went on like this for at least 10 min..we were dying laughing. They’d pound together, watch each other and pound alternatively, they’d reach over each other and play. Then, they both decided they were done and slid off the bench.

Perhaps this was still parallel play but there were glimpses of them actually playing together!!!!

It’s become a routine…daddy comes home with noah, we all walk out into the backyard and Noah makes a bee line for the garden to pick himself some asparagus…

So, we’re slowly starting to figure out Noah’s words. For the most part he says gah goo, gah gee, etc…just babble. But in the last few days I’ve managed to get something legible about of him – Cheese! This is certainly my child:)

He’s also started point and saying “ma”…we were really confused until I saw him start to sign “more” and it clicked…”mas” is more in Spanish. His daycare providers use Spanish quite a bit when caring for him so he just naturally connected it. So now he has more, mas, and the sign for more all connected to the fact that he can point and say/do and we’ll give him more of whatever he’s pointing at. I call hat his first real step in comprehension:)

Looking back Noah’s been a bit absent from my last few posts and since this is technically his blog, I figured I should put something up for him:)

So, since DH has been a little crazy with his new smartphone and “testing out” the video we have lots and lots of freaking adorable vids of Noah playing, talking, sitting…etc.. I thought I’d share a few:)

This toy has a hammer but after he put a huge goose egg on my forehead, I feared for his (and anything glass in our house) so now he just uses his hands. Just as effective:)

If you make it thru all 2:20 of this one you really love us:) The cutest stuff is at the front. He has a new kiss thingy they taught him at daycare. He blows them at everything now.

We’ll be with family this weekend so hopefully we’ll get more adorable pictures of him and all of his cousins.