Some photos of our busy boy from the past month or so!
Daddy came in from mowing the lawn and gave Nolan a little yellow flower. He immediately ran off to sit in the corner with his monkey and shred it in peace. Notice the freshly trimmed hair: Nolan needs a haircut once a month now, and Jeremy says the way I cut it makes him look like a Romulan.
Nolan loves his stroller to death. We leave it out all the time because he uses it like a chair to hang out in. Mention the word “walk,” and he immediately climbs into the stroller, exclaiming “Wa! Wa!” He is especially fond of going on jogs with Daddy and Freyja, but he’s also been to the farmer’s market half a dozen times this summer with me, not to mention countless trips to the playground. This shot demonstrates how tiresome he finds the paparazzi—no flash photography, please!
We received a surprise package in the mail from Jeremy’s aunt and uncle containing a soft stuffed moose and a cuddly handmade blanket. Nolan was very appreciative, and immediately wrapped himself up in the blanket and pretended to fall asleep on the couch with his new moose, not leaving out Monkey, of course!
Nolan at his most impish. This child loves his mama’s baking, and is tall enough now to help himself to cookies and muffins cooling on the counter. He knows that he isn’t allowed to just help himself, though, since food sitting out on the counter is likely still hot from the oven. Instead, he does a little snacky dance, stomping his feet and waving his hands in the direction of the treat in question to let us know he wants some—and if we don’t comply within about 10 seconds, he tries to help himself anyway.
In his diaper-box fort.
Eating strawberry brown betty….yum!
Our little trouble-maker is now tall enough to reach light switches and the bathroom sink handles without help, and strong enough to muscle the cabinet locks open. We now have to keep the front door dead-bolted because Nolan realized he could just open the door and go take a stroll, a skill Freyja was all set to take full advantage of. He also discovered he can and throw all his toys over the gate and down the basement stairs (yay for gravity!) and climb on top of this end table for a different vantage point in the room.
Monkey has had a rough month, between being vomited on and dunked in the toilet. I scrubbed him to within an inch of his life with all-purpose cleaner, let him dry in the sun for two days, and he is now cleaner and less smelly than he has been for a year. This photo catches him with Nolan in a less-stinky moment; Nolan spent a good part of the day drumming on the bottom of that empty canister.
One of the big developments in the past month or so was finally weaning Nolan off of our fingers. He was so adamant about sucking on our fingers every time he wanted to cuddle that we thought it would be a much more painful process than it turned out to be. We had one or two meltdowns when our sleepy kiddo just wanted some comfort, but it has been over two weeks now and he doesn’t even ask anymore. We’ve consequently had fewer naps during the day, but Nolan is still our little cuddlebug. Here he waited expressly for Daddy to get out of the shower after a lunchtime jog in order to climb on his lap and pass out—I didn’t see Jeremy complaining. 
