The Oistad Family: Fun in the Fall with Noah

I know this update is long overdue but this fall has been a very busy one for our family as we adjust to life with a newborn and a pre-schooler! The kids and I have been filling our days going to the zoo, play groups, and on play dates, meeting daddy for lunch, having coffee with girlfriends, going on walks during the day, napping during naptime, etc. Noah has pre-school two days a week which has been fun for him and also gives Mommy some one-on-one time with her favorite girl, Miss Callie. On the days when I just have Callie with me, it seems so easy! It has been funny for me to recall how overwhelmed I felt when Noah was a newborn as a new mom. Now, a newborn seems so easy in comparison to a very busy 3-year old or managing two kids at once!! Lucky for me, my mom is retired and lives just a few minutes drive away. She visits us a lot which has been a HUGE help with the kids, but it also has been fun spending so much time with her.

In an attempt to try and not miss recording anything our two kids are doing, I am going to try to do a post for each of them each month. We'll see how long I last... Here is Noah's update:

Noah is doing great and we are having so much fun with him at this age. He is an absolute WHIZ at puzzles and loves to put them together! He can put together a 24 piece puzzle in less than three minutes! It is so fun to watch him do it! To challenge him, we mix his four 24-piece puzzles together and watch him build each puzzle one by one. He is also good at building things out of legos and lincoln logs. His favorite things to make are "garages" for his toy cars. We definitely see the "mind of an engineer" in him just like his daddy! Two of Noah's favorite games to play with us this month are "I Spy" (with the McQueen flashlight that Kendra got for him) and "Hide n Seek".

Noah seems to love being a big brother. When I drop him off at school or pick him up, he very proudly introduces his "sissy" to his friends at school. The first few times I drove him to school without his sister in the car (she stayed with my mom while I dropped him off), Noah looked over at the empty car seat base and said in a panic, "Oh no! Sissy's not here!" He is such a good big bro looking out for her!

When Callison was born, we expected Noah to be jealous, but so far he hasn't shown any signs of not liking her or anything like that. He loves to pat her head, turn on her music in her bouncer chair and play with her on the playmat. However, he has regressed quite a bit on his potty training and going to bed on time. :( We are working on both with him. Noah's latest move is that he sneaks into bed with us in the middle of the night. One minute he is sleeping away in his own bed and then we roll over and all of sudden he is sandwiched between us (with his dank and puppy)! Admittedly, Wes and I are both pretty hard sleepers, but it is still a shock to us when he seems to appear out of nowhere!

Some of our favorite sayings from this month:

Noah: "Noah is happy. Sissy is happy. Mommy is happy."
Me: "What about Daddy? Is Daddy happy?"
Noah: "No. Daddy is at work!"

Noah: "I want to show you something, Mom, I want to show you something..."
Me: You want to show me something?
Noah: OK!!! (as if I was the one bringing it up.. he does this with EVERYTHING now. so cute!)

Noah: "The pumpkin is broken" (a bulb burned out in the electric pumpkin at Grandpa's house)
Me: "Yeah, the light burned out."
Noah: "Yeah, Lucy did it (Auntie Renee's puppy). Auntie Nee has to fix it" (poor Lucy had nothing to do with it, but for some reason she got all the blame)

Noah: "Uh oh, _____________ is broken." (Noah would say this whenever he spotted a ceiling fan not turned on, a light bulb burned out, a broken toy, a street lamp in the park that wasn't on, a police car that didn't have his lights going... )
Noah: We have to wait til Gong Gong (my dad) comes home to fix it". (This is hilarious because anyone that knows my dad, knows that he is not very handy. My poor dad had quite the list of things he was supposed to fix when he got back home from two months in Denver.)