Smile!

These are the best times in our lives. Noah is at an incredibly amazing age; everyday something new and cute surprises us! The other day, with the camera pointing towards him, he yelled out, "cheese!" and made the cheesiest smile you can imagine. It turns out he was practicing posing for the camera that day with his new friend, Faith!

Last Thursday we had a fabulous time running around, watching the trains and ducks, and climbing the treehouse at Morris Arboretum. Here is a cute video, where Trey runs non-stop and Noah adorably tells him to smile for the camera when he blazes by.

"Smiyull, Smiyull!"


Noah can count to 10, but 8 is always notoriously missing! He can recognize some numbers when he sees them, and definitely gets the concept of counting. The first time he counted on his own, I was holding him while he "helped" me cook pancakes (or was it banana bread?). I was describing what I was doing, as usual, and was measuring out cups of flour. I said, "one," and when I went back for the second, Noah said, "two..." What a surprise that was (it's been many months now)! He often starts to count when there are several items around he is interested in.

Some of Noah's favorite words these days are, "a light!!" "a tunnel!!" and "a train!!" He often uses "reach," and "stuck" Some of his favorite things are screwdriver (shoe-wada, then stew-wada), car (tah), bicycle (bicekul), wagon, swing, slide (side), stroller (stoler) and soap. Some of his favorite places are "playground" (paydown), "store with papa" and "coffee shop" (coffshop). One of my favorite expressions of his is using the word fun. He totally gets the concept of "fun" and says things all the time like, "It's so fun!!" "Bronwen Trey, fun!"

The other night as I was falling asleep, he called out in his sleep, "a tunnel!!" and then fell silent. He is definitely a sleep-talker, and his very active sleeping sometimes wakes him up (unfortunately for us).

I find it amazing that Noah is very good at sharing right now. If I ask him to give something to another child, he almost always does it. He also uses "thank you," though most often when giving something to someone else :)