I got my breakfast cooked for me, a beautiful orchid (that I’m going to try desperately not to kill), and a set of All-Clad measuring spoons (that I’ve been wanting for a while now, but feeling silly for wanting expensive measuring spoons) this morning, but this little guy is what makes Mother’s Day amazing for me.

I’ve coveted the Pottery Barn easter baskets for 2 years now.  $50-60 on an Easter basket, however, was out of the question.  So I made my own, albeit inferior, personalized easter basket.  With the help of Uncle Rich’s embroidery machine, Noah now has an almost-fancy basket in which to collect his easter loot.  Yay!

Jake had gone to one of the community Easter services, so while we waited on him to get back, Noah learned how to operate the “mote car” his Grandpa had given him the previous day. I have to say, it was pretty cute to see him sitting against the wall, legs crossed, while he drove that thing all over the living room.

When Daddy got home we tore into the Easter basket. Candy is great and all, but a monster truck? That’s where it’s at.

When we were finally able to tear him away from the monster truck, we went outside to hunt Easter eggs.

Followed by emptying the eggs and tallying the bounty.

We then got dressed and headed to church with all of Jake’s family, followed by a lunch at Jennie’s house.

When we got to Jennie’s after church, Noah was way more interested in the swings than taking a family picture. So, uh, here’s our “happy” little family…

I couldn’t have asked for a better day!

Here’s our little well-on-his-way-to-a-farmer’s-tan cutie:

And here’s what his daddy decided to put together on a Saturday afternoon:

Yes, it’s warm outside.  But I’m not sure that it’s hot enough to be running through sprinklers in the yard.  Especially with the little breeze that was blowing yesterday afternoon.  But convincing my husband that it’s not quite summer yet is an exercise in futility…

As Noah grows, I’m trying to remember to take pictures of the everyday things that define his life as of right now.  The mundane things that he loves.  The little things that I might forget about as he get older.

Noah LOVES being outside.  He’ll beg to go.  He’ll bring me his shoes.  He’ll point to his jacket.  He’ll stand at the window on his tippy-toes pointing and signing “please.”  When we get outside there are all kinds of things that he likes to do, but swinging and riding his car down the driveway are two of them.  Here’s what I mean by riding his car down the driveway…  There’s a little ramp down from our carport to the rest of the driveway.  One of us (or Andrew if he’s in town, as he was yesterday) will will stand on the carport and give Noah a little 1… 2… 3…  and then push him down the ramp to go flying down the driveway towards the other one of us.  It’s super fun.  Kinda makes me wish I could fit in that little car and give it a whirl.  It can also be accomplished with just one adult, but then you have to push him and then run behind to keep him from driving on out into the street or crashing off the side of the driveway into the grass.  Here he is in action:

After our fun in the driveway, Andrew snagged the camera and got a few pictures of Noah wandering around the yard.  When he does this, it’s important to him that he touch every. single. bush.  (I’m worrying that we may be raising a little Monk here.  More on that later…)  But how about Andrew’s mad photography skilz, what?

Did I mention that Reese joined us for some fun as well?  Jake’s mom was keeping him for the day, and they came over for a visit.  He’s not nearly as impressed with the car.

I feel like he’s saying, “Really?  This is all it does?  No lights?  No music?  Come on, guys…”  :-)  He is a little cutie, though, isn’t he?

We’ve been wanting for a while now to have one central location to post our family pictures.  Sure there are some on Facebook, some on the blog here, some we email to family members, etc.  But we wanted to ONE place where they ALL went.  If Great Aunt Suzie Q in Oklahoma wants to see the latest pictures of Noah & Reese, she should always know right where to go.  Enter family.jakeanddiana.com :

Ta da!  Our online photo album solution.  It is our goal to post all of our family photos on this site for our friends and family.  Sure we’ll still blog some of them.  A few will probably wind up on Facebook.  But family.jakeanddiana.com will be the central location where all of them will live.  At least that’s our plan for now.  :-)

We’ve been waiting for Noah to walk for what feels like FOREVER.  The baby books all say to start watching for it as early as 10 months (although a few babies will walk even sooner than that), but that most children will walk somewhere around their first birthday.  Apparently Noah didn’t read the baby books.  He was 14 months on December 11, and still no sign of mobile independence.  He’s been walking while holding on to someone’s finger for a while now, but he just never would gather up the courage to let go.  I had really hoped he’d be walking by Christmas, because some of the gifts he’ll be receiving will be much more fun for a walking child.  I remember telling Jennie when I picked him up yesterday that I’d given up on him walking by Christmas.

Well, last night he was in an ill mood, and Jake set him down on the floor crying, but instead of falling to the floor and crawling, he just stood there in the middle of the floor crying.  After a few seconds, he took two steps toward me on the couch.  Elaborate celebration ensued, and he got really excited and proud of himself, so Jake picked him up and set him a little further back from the couch.  He walked to me again!  At this point Jake grabbed his phone, and I got up to see if he would keep doing it, and sure enough, he did!  He was walking all over the house!  We got a little bit of it on video to share with you guys, of course.  :-)

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG_h2aEshD0']

P.S. – Please excuse the large prominence of my rear-end in a couple of the shots.  I was too busy being excited about Noah walking to pay attention to exactly where Jake was with the camera.  :-)

We stopped by and visited with Jake’s brother Josh for a little bit on Saturday.  The last time we were out there Noah was around 6 or 7 months old and the horse kinda spooked him a little.  He was okay with the horse this time, as long as he was firmly on the ground or in Josh’s arms.  He wasn’t too excited about being placed up on the horse’s back though.

The horse had quite the personality and wound up following Noah & Josh all around the yard.  I don’t know if she liked him or if he made her nervous, but she didn’t let Noah get too far out of her sight.  She was, however, a little suspicious of Jake and felt the need to sniff him out.  She hangs out with dogs all day…I think she may be confused about what species she is.

Noah wandered all over the yard and finally insisted, through a series of grunts, whines, and pointing, that Josh put him up in the trailer.

So he could play with the rocks.

I think Rio wanted to play too.

Or maybe she was just trying to keep this new little creature in her yard under close surveillance.

Needless to say, Noah had a blast (despite being sleepy and hungry at this point), and pitched quite a little fit when it was time to go.  :-)

We got our Christmas tree this past weekend, and while Sam is usually a little suspicious of anything new we bring in the house, he has cozied up to the tree quite nicely.  As in, it is his new preferred place to hang out.  Maybe it’s because our tree skirt is just a re-purposed old bed sheet.  Or maybe the crotchety old dog has a soft-spot for the holiday season.  Who knows.  We’ll see how he feels once it becomes overrun with festively wrapped & decorated presents…

Noah’s been finger feeding himself since he was almost 7 months old, but we’ve still had to feed him when it was a food that required a spoon.  Until recently.  All of a sudden, he’s decided that he MUST be the one holding the spoon.  You can help guide him a little, but don’t dare try to pry the spoon out of his ridiculously strong python grip.  He’d pretty much just rather you stay out of it entirely.

And that’s great and all.  I’m all for him growing and learning and gaining independence.  The only problem is that he has quite gained mastery of the “eating with a utensil” concept…

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOPZY-STqFQ&list=UUdn03vFuo8EctO2MfuZ8SUw&feature=plcp']

We embarked on our annual journey to the tree farm this morning to retrieve the tree that we had tagged a few months earlier.  Actually we wound up picking out a new tree, because we had tagged a tree appropriate for a cramped garage apartment, and since we now live in what still feels like a huge house to me (all 1000-square feet of it) I wanted a bigger tree.

We found a little Noah-sized tree…which is cute and all, and he thought it was fun, but I still wanted a bigger tree.  When we finally found “the one,” we had my mom take a picture of our little family in front of it.  Awwww.  Then my dad insisted on a picture with the 14-month-old holding the saw.  What?!

While we waited for them to shake and bag the tree (I guess they call it bagging it?), Jake introduced Noah to the pony.  Who proceeded to eat his hay as though there weren’t an adorable little boy right in front of him trying to get his attention.

And finally, two more pictures to show what a difference a year can make…

Jake and Noah, December 2011:

Jake and Noah, December 2010:

(Here’s the blog post from last year’s Christmas tree expedition:  Christmas Traditions)