Noah's 3rd Farm Birthday Party

We hosted Noah's first and second birthday parties at home. I enjoyed them, I liked doing them at home. But August is hot in NC and it's hard to contain kids and parents indoors for the duration of the party. It's also a bit stressful for me to have everyone in the house. There's cleaning, cooking, decorating. This year the search was on for another venue. A venue with air conditioning. We decided early on that it would be a farm themed party. Luckily, Maple View Agricultural Education Center at Maple View Dairy Farm fit the bill perfectly. It's a huge air conditioned building, full kitchen, several classrooms, full bathrooms with soap! I found this party to be so low on the stress level, but obviously higher on the cost level.

Everyone's favorite part of this party was the bouncy house set up in the main room. The kids loved it!

We opted out of a class because the kids are three, but Maple View had several options that sounded really fun for an older crowd.

 

There was also a hay ride out to meet the 350 dairy cows. By the way did you know a cow has to have a calf before it can produce milk? And that a 24 hour old calf drinks 2 quarts of milk twice a day? We also got to bottle feed a little day old calf- so sweet! The hay ride was a bit long for three year olds, but I found all the information fascinating. They have a small barn area where we met the other small animals and a playground that we didn't check out due to the 90 degree day.

Another big hit of the party was Maple View Ice Cream. All the guests got the choice between strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla.

I thought the ice cream was better than the cake, but others said it was a toss up. Either way, it was really good. When I picked up the cake, it slid around in my car which was annoying, but my fault. I guess it didn't end up too awful.

Luckily, the building is huge because after the cake and ice cream the kids just wanted to run and run and run and play Ring Around the Rosy- so cute!

It was great fun to get everything ready for this party. I worked on it for a few weeks prior to the party during which Noah was having a really rough sleep period. Working on his party stuff helped me mentally keep Noah in a fun place. I was so happy with how everything turned out for this party. So cute! And look out, they might just turn up again for Noah's big 0-4!

One of my favorites was this barn I made. I'm so NOT crafty and this was my crown jewel. The pennant flags... DIE! This may or may not still be displayed in my home.

Speaking of crafty... I used cardboard letters, fabric, and a whole lot of Mod Podge to make the 'N' and 'MOO.' I'm not sure I'll ever do fabric letters again. It was kinda a pain in the ass and I just couldn't get it perfect.

I went all out with the food tent labels (the photos came out a bit bright): pitch fork & shovels (forks & spoons), hay bales (pretzels), chicken feed (Goldfish), apple orchard (loved adding the applesauce pouches!), farmers market, vegetable patch, tractor wheels (oreos), farm fresh milk, water trough, and a hand washing station (hand sanitizer).

How cute are the milk bottles and straws? We bought milk from Maple View (milk from the cows we saw!) and filled them up adding a chalkboard name tag, cow print straws and baker's string. The bottles came with tops and we just closed them up and sent them home with the kids as part of their favors.

Noah very cutely handed out all his favors to his friends, bandana's tied with twine. Inside were farm stickers & farm Wikki Stix, a little farm animal toy, and a farm animal stamp.

 

This three year old was ready to party, while the rest of us look totally exhausted.

Cake: Mama Corie's Confections

Door Sign/Food Tents/Favor Tags: Etsy Shop The Birthday House

Baskets/Milk Bottles: Etsy Shop Pink Lemonade Party

Favors: Amazon

Plates/Napkins: Amazon

 

Noah's actual birthday, eating the cake I actually made. We went to Pullen Park to ride the train in the morning, had cake for lunch, and went to Frankie's Fun Park for go-carts and mini-golf in the afternoon all per the birthday boy.

And who doesn't love a side-by-side com

Happy 3rd Birthday Noah!

 

Frosty Movie Night

My favorite part of this whole Elf on Shelf thing is when Conductor clues Noah into an activity we planned. This has been my favorite full circle day.
 

Day 13 started with a gift from Conductor, Frosty the Snowman and hot chocolate and marshmallow! I basically bribed Noah into napping, and pretty much everything else this day, by saying, "You better... or we won't watch Frosty after dinner!"
 

Noah has never had hot chocolate or chocolate milk before.

blurry photo because he could not stand still

What do you know, he liked it.

blurry photo because he could not stand still

Ready for the movie!

And the day ended with all of us in matching snowman PJs.

PJs' are from The Children's Place. If buying for a man, buy a size larger than suggested.

 

Happy ?? Holidays.

It's been a little rough around here lately. I've been struggling; Noah's been struggling; we've been struggling to like each other all day long. We dealt with some major jet lag for at least 6 days after our return to NC. Right after Noah started sleeping through the night again, he stopped napping. UGH! If there is one thing I cannot muster through it's a no nap day. Noah has never been a good napper and if he doesn't nap no one in the S household is happy- NO ONE.
 
I take Noah not napping very personally. It's anyone's fault but Noah's. For more than a year of his life, I was convinced the reason he didn't nap was because the front door opened too loudly, the Editor walked up the stairs too heavily, I didn't bounce him on the God-forsaken exercise ball long enough, I turned to the left instead of the right when I put him in the crib. Now I pretty much know he doesn't nap because he needs to take care of some bathroom business that he likes to do in his crib. (Potty training is still going well- an accident every 7-14 days but we are not nap or sleep trained... because we haven't even begun to go there yet.)
 
I want the Holidays to be fun and jolly and for us to do fun things together. But when Noah hasn't napped in 6 days he doesn't like me, I don't like him and we are both misbehaving and it's not fun. I've felt like the fun things I've planned go unappreciated (hmm... by a two year old- do they appreciate?). It's not fair to anyone.
 
So I've been trying to set up some fun activities in the morning before we can both go off the deep end.
 

Fingerprint Candy Cane & Reindeer Feet (courtesy of Pinterest)

I have to include some throw back photos just because I love looking back at my little boy.

 

Last year we made salt dough ornaments.

Salt dough doesn't taste good...

We actually decorated salt dough magnets at a JCC Hanukkah function this year too; but Tucker ate them (anyone remember my post on how Noah & Tucker are very similar, yup I still stand by that).

 

This year we made cinnamon ornaments.

Noah wanted to wear an apron, just like Momma. He was so excited.

excited face

And our finished products. We haven't painted them yet, but I think we will some morning soon.

And for the record, Noah did nap today and yesterday! I think we've hit either 5 or 6 naps for the month of December now and we can have a pleasant afternoon.
 
Salt Dough Recipe
 
Cinnamon Dough Recipe
The cinnamon ornaments are more fragile than the salt dough. A few of mine broke before I could get them off the pan. I also had a hard time making holes for the ribbon with the cinnamon ones so I bought some magnets to put on the back. But I found the cinnamon dough easier to work with initially. It's more fun to use applesauce and to shake in the cinnamon.
 

And Now We Can Go Anywhere

This is literally what I said on Saturday when we were in the Fast, Park, & Relax van back to our car, "Well now we can go anywhere."
 
We flew from Raleigh Durham to Dallas-Fort Worth to Kahului in MAUI HAWAII! With Noah at 27 months. And then we sunned, beached, Luau-ed, snorkeled, parasailed (well just me), swam in the Pacific, and played in the Pirate Ship for 7 days before we flew from Kahului to Honolulu to Dallas-Fort Worth to Raleigh Durham.
 
We've been planning this trip for a good 10 months with full on discussions if we should even be going with a two year old. It's a partial work trip for the Editor (four 6-8 hour days of working away from us- not out of the hotel room) and we have been before. When you only have one child it's impossible to know what kind of 2 year old you'll have when your kid isn't even 18 months old yet. Plus the flights. Honestly, a lot of it was the flights. But in the end we just said, "We should go while we can go, you never know what the future brings." Before we left I emailed my mother-in-law that it would be the best vacation if 1- Noah doesn't pee on me on the plane and 2- Noah doesn't wake up at 2:30 in the mornings (it's a 5 hour time change!).

So excited to get on the plane.

Well I just want to brag and say Noah is a rock star on vacation. The Editor and I woke up at 5am and we got Noah up at 6 on the day we left for "the beach." Our flight to DFW was really pretty good; Noah & I were separated from the Editor on all our flights out. It was actually Noah's longest flight to date at around 3 hours and we landed around lunch time. And then proceeded to get delayed while a woman told me not once but twice that Noah "is quite active isn't he?" At this point Noah had not used the potty in 7 hours! The Editor and I took him to the potty at least 7 times in DFW before we had to get on the 8.5 hour flight to Maui and he did NOT go. So I put a pull up on him while he cried. I had extra clothes for both of us, but I do not want to get peed on like one of the Butler assistant coaches' wife was by her daughter on our flight. And you know what, Noah did pee in the airplane bathroom! Every single time. He kept the pull up dry. He also managed to "call the lady," as in press the flight attendant button every.single.time we were in the bathroom. The one thing Noah would not do in the pull up or airplane bathroom was #2. The only time we had any issues on the flight was for about 12 minutes when he HAD TO GO but didn't want to. There were some tears but once I gave him permission to go in his pull up we were good. Noah even clapped when we touched down in Maui around 5:15pm local time (10:15pm EST). To this point he had still never slept on a flight.
 
The best part of the flight was when I realized that you not only have to BUY/RENT the movies from Amazon but you have to download them, taking about an hour, while connected to the internet, before you can actually watch them. I researched movies and rented them and then never downloaded them so Noah had no movies for the flight! He watched a 4 minutes clip of Thomas the Tank Engine countless times and played lots of apps.
 

Once we got in the rental car (a sexy Ford Tarus thank you very much) and headed on our hour long drive to the hotel, Noah passed out quickly. Once we got to our hotel, got checked in, we parked and unloaded all our bags and then tried to find our room. The resort was huge and we got horribly lost. Noah was so out of it, it was after midnight EST. While we are running around and asking people where to go Noah's pull up exploded on the Editor. I felt so bad for Noah but I don't think he even noticed. He didn't say a word while we looked for our room, got in, gave him a super quick rinse in the two person jetted tub that only Noah got to use, and got him into the pack and play.
 
The weirdest part of this whole thing is as we step off the parking garage elevator absolutely exhausted and loaded down with bags and a half asleep toddler two people say to us, "Did you go to Carolina?" We thought they were being smart asses because we couldn't find our room. Turns out I went to college with them and the wife lived in the apartment below mine for two years. We ran into them and others from college all week long. Turns out they left their two kids at home.
 

We went to bed at 9pm local time, which is 2am EST and woke up at 7:30am local time tired but adjusted. Coming home... not so much!

Looking out our window our first morning. Happy to be at the beach!

How did we travel? I had a suitcase, handbag, Lands End Large Tote, and Noah in the Ergo. Noah had an adorable Skip Hop Elephant backpack, and the Editor had a suitcase, Pottery Barn Kids duffel bag, laptop bag, and insanely heavy carseat. We don't travel light!

18 hours into our travel day- landed in MAUI

Noah did sleep on the way back home and I did download a few movies for him too. The gate agents felt sorry for us this time too and we actually got to sit together on all three flights. We left Maui at 5:15 Friday night and arrived back in our driveway at 12:30 Saturday afternoon. But we cannot wait to go back and even though we've been jet lagged it was worth it- absolutely, definitely worth it!
 

Toby or Paci?

Noah uses a pacificer (paci) at bedtime and naptime. He always has and we succesfully limited to the bedroom only a long long time ago. Noah's dentist said the sooner we get rid of it the better off we'll be. So it's been on our minds for a few months, especially after he turned two.
 
After my brother and sister-in-law got pregnant I formulated the grand plan. When baby cousin was born, we'd gift the paci's to him in a grand ceremony and give Noah a little replacement gift since he was becoming a big boy.
 
Lucky for us, baby cousin arrived the day we returned from vacation. A long vacation with a 5 hour time difference. I am using the word lucky sarcastically.
 
We had been talking about this for a long time. Noah knew he was getting Toby from Thomas the Tank Engine. He has been lusting over Toby for a while. There was a whole day that I had to listen to "I need Toby right now!" I ordered Toby before we left for vacation since the baby was due while we were gone. Noah knew the plan, could tell you what was going to happen, why he was getting Toby, the whole deal. I was pretty sure we were all on the same page.

 

We drove to my brother's house when his baby was 3 days old to meet him and make the 'exchange.' I had wrapped a box up and we put tissue paper in. Noah stamped a card for his cousin. He kept saying, "Probably going to get Toby." Probably is his favorite word to interject into any sentence. So we made the gift exchange a big part of the day at the very beginning. I sneakily handed off Toby to my sister-in-law who nicely put it into a gift bag for Noah. Noah did great. He was excited - well mostly excited because he was getting Toby.

Visiting family is always a no nap day, which we felt like would help us. What is not helpful is having a two year old toddler with jet lag. He's been napping from 7pm-9pm and waking up. And staying up until 11pm or 1am. He's pretty much hysterical about being in his crib during these wake up hours. We've heard a lot of, "I's not laying down!" and "Turn the light ON!" Seems like a great time to make a bedtime routine change, right?
 
So our first test went well. It's about a 1 hour 45 minute drive back home and Noah fell asleep within 10-15 minutes and stayed asleep the whole car ride. We got home right before 8. Usually I just dump him in the crib and he rolls back to sleep. We'll not tonight. He was up for maybe an hour. Calmer than the nights before, and definitely clutching Toby in his grasp, but he never ever mentioned paci. Second test went pretty well. He slept until 8:15am.
 
Third test would be nap time. I was home alone (the Editor met a friend for lunch) and am jet lagged and tired too. As soon as Noah hit the crib at naptime he was crying and standing up asking about paci. I tried for about 15 minutes to get him down. Finally I caved. I said if he wanted paci then he couldn't play with Toby. He was cool with that. So I confiscated Toby and he fell asleep in about 5 minutes. The Editor was a little peeved that I strayed from the plan so easily to say the least. Parent fail.
 
Lucky for me (really lucky this time), I had bookclub so the Editor had to put Noah to bed. I was honestly happy to not be involved. When I got home around 9:15, Noah was sleeping... for only the last 10 minutes. The Editor said the minute he hit the crib, Noah threw Toby out and started a mantra of, "I need paci! I want paci!" So I asked the Editor the all-important question, "Does he have paci?" YUP! And again it was lights out the minute he got paci. I feel a bit vindicated that the Editor failed in the same manner as me, though he did stick it out for a lot longer than I did... an hour and 45 minutes longer!
 
Anyways, we'll revisit in a few weeks or so. I think the jet lag is a huge problem right now. Let's not add to the sleep issues right? Is the paci thing like potty training or solid foods? Just try again in a few weeks if they aren't ready now? My whole potty training plan worked out so well I thought this would be just as easy.
 
Now the question is, what am I going to do when Noah begs for Toby tomorrow?
 

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

I really struggled with what Noah should be for Halloween this year. In the past he was a cow, and Kermit the Frog. I was at a loss for cute toddler boy costumes. I wasn't hit with any warm and fuzzy feelings while scouring all the Halloween magazines that arrived at my door starting in August. Honestly, I'm tired of firetrucks and Thomas the Train already.
 
Pretty much the only idea we had was to dress Noah up as Tucker and Tucker up as Noah. Years ago, and I mean 2003 or 2004, we dressed Tucker up as a Carolina frat boy complete with a Carolina Blue doggie polo and croakies attached to kid sized sunnies. The only thing missing was doggie Rainbows. It was pretty funy. But I couldn't find any brown dog costumes that looked like Tucker for Noah to wear.
 
I went to my go-to, Pottery Barn Kids, and picked up a costume there. I didn't love it, but Noah still looked cute. And the Editor went to The University of Richmond so... Go Spiders.

Noah is generally agreeable about clothing and wore this costume to a Halloween Playgroup Party on Tuesday and for Halloween on Wednesday. We actually didn't even talk about it before Tuesday either, so that was lucky.

Noah's hungry caterpillar treat bag is also from PBK.

He was very proud of the pumpkin he painted.

We trick-or-treated in our neighborhood with four of Noah's girlfriends. We had two wagons, which meant that one child had to take a turn walking. Surprisingly, with a group of 5 two year olds, they were pretty agreeable about sharing the wagon spots; I don't remember any tears (and we treated from 6pm to around 7:30pm). Noah was quite the gentleman and pulled his lady friends around a bit too.

 

I made some Hot Apple Cider for the parents to carry around. Sadly I didn't have any alcohol that lended itself to a cider drink. But it was good and it actually got cold (you never know in NC) so I'm glad I made it.

 

Noah was super excited to trick-or-treat and ring the bell. With a neighborhood as big, and as laced with kids as ours is, he didn't have many opportunities to ring the bell because most people had a steady stream of kids, but he handled it all really well. Even the scary houses. He said "Trick-Or-Treat" and would take 1 piece of candy. Then we would tell us what color he got, "I got a red one!" He didn't eat a single piece, and I don't think he ever realized what he was getting was edible (last year for that I'm sure). He told anyone who asked that he was "a spider web."
 
 
Hot Apple Cider Recipe (adapted from HERE)

• 12 cups apple cider
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 3 cinnamon sticks
• 1 orange cut into 4 slices

Combine all ingredients into a crock pot, cover and cook on low for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. (I only had two hours, so I finished heating it up in a saucepan on the stove to get it piping hot).
 
 

1 Pumpkin, 2 Pumpkin, 3 Pumpkin, 4

Did we really go to 4 pumpkin patches this year? Yes, we kind of did. Our area of NC has no shortage of pumpkin patches with corn mazes, corn pits, hay rides, train rides, pony rides, tunnels, and more. And we definitely have a few favorites.

Noah with his loot.

We ended up at the first patch a little by accident. Green Acres opens at 11am on Sundays and we were looking for something to do on a beautiful Sunday morning in late September. So we decided to check it out. Noah had a lot of fun here, but honestly I didn't like this farm. You don't get a pumpkin with admission, which was $10, and we had to pay more inside for all the activities Noah wanted to do like ride the ponies and ride the train. We were able to ride the hayride with our admission price, but the tractor driver was an hour late to the farm that day.

Green Acres is Noah's dream, though. He could not wait to ride that little train, the ponies, and sit in all the 'diggers.' Though we had read enough seasonal books for him to also beg to pick out a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch so he was a bit disappointed we left without one.

Our second pumpkin excursion was almost exactly a month later, at the Museum of Life & Science Pumpkin Express. This was a lot of fun and definitely worth the $12 admission price with our museum membership. We got to ride the train out to the pumpkin field, pick a pumpkin (finally!), decorate it, and sling shot a few pumpkins. Noah even got to sit in the engineers spot before we rode the train back to the station.

Posing around hay bales proves to be awkward for us.

We actually hit up our favorite pumpkin patch twice... in two days. We had plans to go to Gaynard Hills Farm with friends and the Editor's sister on the Sunday before Halloween, but then Hurricane Sandy threatened to rain out our plans. We only had one little tiny pumpkin, we were less than a week from Halloween and this was our favorite pumpkin patch last year. I really wanted Noah to be able to go even if we got rained out on Sunday so Friday afternoon after nap, I made a quick decision that Noah and I would go by ourselves. We were disappointed to leave the Editor at home working, but we needed pumpkins and I really wanted Noah to have the experience again. So off we went and we had a lot of fun!

Lucky for us, it didn't rain all weekend, even though the forecast was pretty dreary. We were able to keep our plans with friends and family to go back to Gaynard on Sunday, making it our fourth stop. Noah had just as much (if not more) fun the second time around.

More awkward posing & this is also when I decided my hair is way too blonde.

What did we do with our pumpkins? Noah painted one on Monday when Sandy actually came through NC.

And we carved 4 of them.