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We had an excellent Christmas vacation this year, complete with family visitors and even a little snow, albeit a few days late. It was just the three of us on Christmas morning, and Nolan definitely seemed to enjoy the event more this year than last.

Here he was introducing himself to some new toys. Grandma Leah and Grandpa Dan sent these adorable puppets, which immediately got cuddled. The owl’s beak was too tempting for Nolan, like a little thumb; he started sucking on it right away. The moose got away with some big hugs.

It took Nolan a few tries to get the hang of ripping open his packages; he kept wanting to do it using his tongs, which have never been dethroned as the alpha toy. He used them to tear paper, surgically remove toys from their packaging, and manipulate their parts.

Grammie Rita and Grandpa Nelson flew in late in the afternoon, and we drove up to get them. Once I got dinner going (a standing rib roast with all the fixings) and a few snacks out to tide us over, Nolan opened more presents. What he was looking at there is just the packaging from a toy, which he particularly loved because it opened and closed like a book and had images of recognizable Sesame Street characters inside.

The next few pictures were taken after church the Sunday after Christmas. Nolan got to try out the church nursery for the first time, and he behaved beautifully while we were otherwise occupied; we were told that he went around kissing all the other kids.

You can also sort of see our Christmas tree, which I fashioned from a tower of boxes and a swath of green cloth. After these photos, we disassembled the “tree” to get at the boxes, which contained Nolan’s last few presents, building blocks and a little car and gas pump. And since there is no soundtrack to these still photos, just imagine the earsplitting shrieks of joy that Nolan was emitting during the entire photo session. He had a great time sitting in the big boy chair.

We had great fun with Grammie and Grandpa, including trips to Toys R Us and OMSI. Nolan was particularly enamored of his Grandpa, but Grammie was able to steal his attention sometimes too. They were very impressed by how much he’s grown since their last visit: walking, running, climbing; starting to drink from big boy cups, wielding tongs with great proficiency, giving wonderful kisses and hugs (complete with a pat on the back), and saying lots more words, with a few handsigns thrown in for good measure.

This last photo was taken the morning after Grammie and Grandpa headed back to Colorado. Nolan (and Freyja, for that matter) was eagerly looking out the window, expecting their arrival again.

A few new pictures of our funny little man! He refused to wear this crown at his birthday, but he likes to wear it sometimes now (or put it on Mama and Daddy). Poor kid desperately needed a haircut but wouldn’t hold still long enough for me to do it.

This teapot is one of his very favorite toys. He first played with one like it at his little friend Lola’s house, and loved it so much that we ended up getting one for him despite its very girly decorations. He loves pushing the music button to play songs and dance along, open and close the lid, and has gotten very good at pretending to pour and drink tea from the cups with us. I should note that it appears to be a right-handed teapot based on the orientation of the face and handle, and Nolan still prefers using his left hand for most activities.

His hair looks so much better now, eh? The key was a high chair/ Sesame Street combo. In this photo, he’s watching Sesame Street, and cannot be distracted unless you block his view. Funny how he could care less about television one day, and the next, you mention his favorite show and he runs to the TV and gives you the remote to start it up.

Here Nolan was cuddling with his daddy and his patient puppy. Yes, he was sitting on top of her, and she didn’t twitch a muscle.

Now we’ve got a few photos from Thanksgiving. Jeremy’s Uncle Walt and Aunt Sandy were kind enough to invite us to their home in Vancouver this year. Nolan had a blast playing with new toys, exploring, and cuddling up with all of his relatives—and he didn’t make out too badly tasting all of the food at dinner either. He especially seemed attached to Great Uncle Walt.

We had about 5 minutes of shyness when we first arrived, then he caught sight of the matchbox cars and the toy top, and after that he only stopped playing long enough to impart big hugs and kisses on everyone in sight, and make sure they had at least a few toys to hold onto. Here is Great Aunt Sandy getting some love.

Some cuddles with Monkey and Great Aunt Miriam.

Nolan was particularly busy after dinner, when everyone was in the kitchen opening cupboards and putting food in the fridge. Every time a door or drawer opened, he was right there to help close it. He also gave hugs and kisses to anyone bending down in front of the refrigerator, in this case Jeremy’s cousin Michelle.

Michelle’s two children, the owners of the toys and Nolan’s second cousins, were also in attendance. When 4-year old Harrison woke up from his nap, Nolan ran right up and tried his darndest to give Harrison a kiss. It took Harrison a moment to realize what Nolan was up to, but Nolan just kept saying “mmmmmmm” and grabbing at his shoulders until Harrison bent down a little. Nobody was left out!

Nolan slept in late on Thanksgiving, so he stayed up the whole time we were there. Near the end, he did get a little groggy, and preferred to sit on laps rather than running around. Here he snuck in a few minutes of finger time with Daddy, prior to napping in the car on the ride back. It was a lovely Thanksgiving, and the only part we missed was leftovers the next day!

Just a few new pictures of Nolan playing. He loves being pushed around in the laundry basket, and is so proud of himself for being able to climb in and out without help. This game isn’t easy on Mom and Dad’s backs, though.

Nolan rescued a pair of my tongs from the dishwasher a few days ago as I was emptying it, and he’s barely let them out of his sight ever since. At first he just carried them around, poking at everything like he does with spoons and other tools, then he started using them like he has seen me do while cooking, pretending to stir in a bucket or squeezing them open and closed.

After a few days of practice, he finally got the knack of the squeezing motion, and started picking things up with the tongs: blocks and other toys mostly, but this morning he got a big kick out of opening my dresser and picking up every pair of my underwear with the tongs and lining them up on the bed. He’s such a big boy now that when I asked him to put everything back in the drawer afterward, he very cheerfully did just that.

Nolan likes to sit on the furniture like a big boy now too. He loves climbing onto the sofa or Daddy’s big chair all by himself, tossing a stuffed animal or blanket up first in anticipation of cuddling, and turning around to sit with his back against the furniture just like we do. He can’t quite climb onto this chair without assistance because it isn’t heavy enough and has no arms for leverage, but he couldn’t be happier to pretend to use the computer sitting in a grown-up chair. The computer wasn’t on this time, but that didn’t bother him in the slightest. The buttons are the important part anyway.

A few weeks ago, I was cooking and gave Nolan a little spray bottle of water to play with. He was never able to figure out how it worked before, but I’d say he has gotten the hang of it now. He sat there spraying himself in the face over and over until the bottle was empty, and just thought it was hilarious. Remarkably, his clothes hardly got wet at all… not sure I can say the same for his daddy, though!

Look close and you can see that mouthful of teeth, molars, canines and all!

Just a few new pictures of our goofy little guy, being busy.

We’ve made quite a few trips to the playground this past week, and Nolan is starting to get the hang of it. He seems to be having fun, although he is always so solemn in new situations. He likes to watch the ground sliding back and forth under his feet in the swing.

His favorite activity at the playground has quickly become climbing up and down the stairs. They are nearly too big for him to climb without some assistance, but that doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

Daddy distracted the dog by playing fetch at top speed while I did some stair-climbing with Nolan. She played herself almost to exhaustion, and collapsed in the shade, while Nolan kept tabs on her. He is very fond of holding her leash from the stroller when we’re all out walking, and took the opportunity to wrangle her here too.

It is starting to get difficult to take photos of Nolan because he is always on the move (and also because he runs straight over to me whenever he sees the camera come out). Nolan is 100% toddler now, and he has been learning all about the benefits and perils of walking full-time.

Walking is great for playing with certain toys. He pushes his duck-on-a-stick all over the house, setting it upright again when it tips over, adjusting its angle, picking it up to avoid obstacles and then taking off again across the floor. He tried pulling his little doggie at the same time, but it tips over more often and its little string is more difficult for him to keep a grip on. He also found walking to be a great boon to playing with his ball, bouncing it off the floor and then going to chase it, at least until the dog chased it too—it is now flat as a pancake.

Nolan is so busy walking that he finally doesn’t seem to mind wearing a hat now and then. Daddy’s hat is a perennial favorite…

but he wears his own too. (See those bottom canines coming up through his gums? Ouch!)

The phone has always been fascinating for its buttons, but Nolan is finally figuring out how to hold it properly, and babbles whole conversations into it while pacing around the house.

Last but not least, Nolan has become fascinated with Mommy and Daddy’s shoes. Every so often, he’ll bring us a pair of our shoes, and then try to climb into them himself. If I give him a hand getting them on, he then tries to walk around wearing them, and gets incredibly frustrated because they are heavy and of course come right off his tiny feet. He did manage to make a little progress wearing just one shoe, though.

I’ve got a bit of a backlog of photos and information to share, so I hope you’re up for another image-heavy post.

Nolan is almost 16 months old now, and still our smiley string bean. At his check-up at the beginning of July, he was half an ounce short of 20 lbs—which is right on track for his personal growth curve—and a respectable 31″ tall. His first set of molars came in, so he now has 12 teeth, and I’m pretty sure he’s currently working on his canines. The photo above shows Nolan giving us what we call his full-body smile: he grins right down to his toes sometimes.

Jeremy’s folks came out for a visit around our anniversary last month. They were only able to stay for a few days, but got in lots of good quality snuggle- and play-time with their grandson. And they brought him a duck-on-a-stick, which is now one of his favorite toys! (More on that in a moment…)

Another one of Nolan’s favorite toys right now is my favorite fish turner. He steals it out of the dishwasher in order to carry it all over the house and bang it against various objects. It makes a particularly nice resonant clang when he spins in a circle and rubs it against the linoleum.

It’s also good for beating on daddies with… I had to get photographic evidence of that!

Nolan’s finally gotten over some of his separation anxiety about leaving me, so he has been spending more time hanging out with his daddy, and even chases him around a little. He still loves going with Jeremy when it’s time to let Freyja out, and even helps turn the doorknobs now. This photo was taken after Jeremy rescued him from the dreaded kiddie pool on the 4th of July, so he was still a bit discombobulated.

Nolan is still my little cuddle-bug. Some mornings he wants to spend two hours just cuddling with me and sucking my finger, almost like he’s trying to make up for the time lost overnight. He’s started giving both of us tons of hugs, which is awfully sweet, but also makes him kind of hard to pry off my neck at bedtime. This photo was taken one lazy weekend morning just after his first bottle of milk.

Nolan had some major milestones this past week. He’s been cruising like a champ ever since he first started crawling in May, and for the past month or so, he’s been brave enough to take a few steps on his own, just between the furniture. But all of a sudden on Wednesday evening, he decided he was brave enough to venture all the way across the middle of the family room on his own two feet, and ever since then, he’s been walking like a champ. Granted, he shuffles like a little old man, but he has a huge grin on his face the entire time, and we know it won’t be long before he’s running around the house. Within hours of walking, he had figured out how to squat down and pick up a toy without losing his balance, dance to the beat of his toy drum (with one hand on my knee for stability), and climb up onto the sofa all by himself in order to get on my lap or look out the window.

The aforementioned duck-on-a-stick has been a good motivator for getting Nolan on his feet. He’s getting pretty good at pushing it around, while crawling or walking, and also likes bringing it to me for further entertainment.

This last photo is for my mom, who I know will get a big kick out of it. She found this little chair at a garage sale and mailed it to us, and it is just Nolan’s size. He spent a good 20 minutes when we first set it up, sitting there and pulling book after book off the shelf to look at in his little chair, and then most of the afternoon climbing in and out of the chair repeatedly with various toys while I held on to make sure he didn’t take a tumble. Looks pretty cozy, eh?

We took Nolan to the Oregon Zoo for the first time today. We headed out early to beat some of the heat, but I think we picked a pretty great day weather-wise because it didn’t get too hot or bright while we were there. Here are a few pics from the day.

Nolan fell asleep in his carseat not long before we arrived, so he was pretty groggy for the first few minutes, to the extent that he couldn’t even be bothered to pull off his baseball cap. That didn’t last, though.

We found as we went on that Nolan was almost more interested in people-watching and checking out the fences than he was in the animals. They had to get pretty close to him to catch his attention, and most of the time when we tried to point at the animals, he would automatically point the same direction without looking (or grab our arm to try and get out of the stroller). What he was mostly ignoring in this shot was a hippo.

Since the weather wasn’t too hot, we were lucky to see quite a few of the animals active, which helped catch Nolan’s eye. This hippo was moving around pretty good for a hippo, but that’s not saying much.

We visited the petting zoo area, but Nolan wanted nothing to do with the pygora goats. Every time I lowered him down close to one, he clung on to me for dear life and tried to get away.

Nolan seemed to like watching the birds because they were so bright and busy, and these lorikeets came very close to everyone in hopes of getting some nectar. He was just about ready for a nap at that point, though, and slept in the car the whole way home.