Noah's 3rd Birthday and Party

Can you believe that my boy is 3?!?!? Time does fly, yet it feels just like yesterday. Time is weird like that.

Unfortunately, with Noah's birthday being so close to Christmas we don't play it up as much as we do for Ava's or maybe it is the 2nd kid syndrome. But all of a sudden, it was Noah's birthday.

We had a low key day. We headed to Barnes and Noble for our free cupcake. We got there at 9am because they used to open then, but apparently they don't open until 10 am now:( So we headed to the play area. Of course, Noah stood by my side and watched and Ava played around and made a friend.


We had the cupcake after lunch. I made his favorite dinner, meatballs! Then we all walked down to Orange Leaf for some frozen yogurt.


He wanted to wear all those necklaces!!
When we came home, we opened presents. For whatever reason he was being shy and had Ava help him open his gifts.
I can't believe how big he is getting. He is still only in the 45th percentile for weight!! He is talking so much and having actual conversations too. He has really hit that why stage and he won't take "because" for an answer. The other day he said," Mommy, can I take a pet home from the store?" I replied "uhhh...NOOOO!" He said, "why" and I said "because" and walked away. He said "don't walk away, talk to me". HAHA.. he didn't like my answer and wanted to know why. He won't stop asking questions until he is satisfied with his answer.

The following weekend, we celebrated his birthday with friends and family. The weather was gorgeous and we had lots of kids there to celebrate with.

The kids helping me decorate the cupcakes!!

He couldn't wait to have his cupcake. He and Ava were picking out their cupcakes as soon as they were decorated.

We recently cut down on the amount of sugar that Noah gets because we noticed that his behavior was getting out of control. The second half of December the kids were sick and they drank a lot of juice and pretty much got to eat whatever they felt like so that we could get calories in them. We had finally had enough and one day just said no to the juice and all the added sugars. I can definitely say that his behavior has improved and you can tell when he/they have sugar because they are both cranky. We have even had to cut down on his fruit consumption. There were days when all he would eat would be fruit, applesauce, raisins, juice, packaged bars etc.. You see, sugar. We don't buy anymore bars either. They only get one when we go to Whole Foods and they go to kids club, but only if they have been good.

Noah has also been waking up a lot at night. Mike started this thing where he would lay with him for like 2 minutes before he went to bed, but they we noticed that when he would wake up at night, he would want us to lay with him to go back to sleep. He would wake 4-5 times a night. It was getting out of control, so we had to stop that too. Again, I think it has helped, but he still wakes up at least once most nights.

He is really into his trucks and trains and LOVEs to play outside in the dirt. He really loves all the fresh veggies from the garden.


He loves to come in from being out and about and he takes off his shoes and pants. He pretty much lives in his underwear. If you have seen that new show, the Goldbergs, he is just like Murray Goldberg in that sense!!

He is still not night potty trained. I think he is just lazy. If we take them away, I think he wouldn't have a problem, but I just want sleep and don't want to have to deal with getting up to take him to the bathroom at night or dealing with the first couple of nights that he would wet the bed and having to change the sheets at night. We are going to start getting serious on this soon because I am sick of buying diapers!!

Christmas 2013

Christmas 2013 has come and gone. Ours was really nice despite Ava being sick.(See the next post)

Our traditional Christmas Eve is spent at my step brother, Brian's house, but the kids were sick and we had to stay home.

We wrote a letter to Santa and left cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.

It says "Dear Santa, I hope you enjoy our cookies. Please give the carrots to the reindeer. Take care of Freddy for us! Love Ava and Noah Leptuch"

After we put the kids into bed, Mike and I, I mean Santa and his helper, put out all the presents for Christmas morning. While we were doing it, Ava actually got up and needed something. Luckily she didn't see anything.

We woke up around 5am Christmas morning. Ava ended up sleeping in my bed with me that night and Mike slept in Ava's bed because Grammy and Papa Dee were here sleeping in the guest bedroom. She was still at 103, so we tried to get her to take her medicine while we waited for Noah to wake up. Because the kids had been sick, I wasn't going to wake anybody up. To entice her to take her medicine, I gave her her stocking to open. She was pretty excited, but it didn't help with getting her to take her medicine.

Noah finally woke up around 6 ish and we headed into the Living Room. There were toys galore. I didn't get a picture of all the presents, but here is a picture of some of the presents.


Toys galore. The nice part about this Christmas is that we opened a gift and they wanted it opened so they could see it. It made it nice because they didn't just rip through all the presents. They got to open one and enjoy it, even if it was only for a minute or two. Halfway through, we did stop so that we could get a bite to eat and Ava could spend 40 minutes trying to get 1 tsp of medicine down. Ha!ha!

Yup! Pretty much sums up how we all felt about Ava taking medicine!

One of my favorite things was Ava's gift to her cousin Sophie. She got Best Cousin necklaces and gave her one half and kept the other. We were sad that we couldn't be there to give it to her, but she was so excited to get it.

Here are some pictures from Christmas Day.




Noah eating some of Grammy's cinnamon rolls.

Baby Sam! He was so cute. In great spirits for the day.


This was the next day, but the best gift ever! The kids got a convertible car. I always wanted one as a kid. Asked every year and every year, I never got one. My mom says Santa was poor then!!! They do really like it and have lots of fun in it.

Watch out world, she is a distracted driver!!

The next best gift was the Santa's express train. They love it and watch it for hours.

The best part about Christmas is that the kids have lots of new toys to play with that they don't even ask to watch TV.

Can't wait until next year!!!

Case of the Sickies

Well, we have been sick. And by sick, I mean really sick.

It started with Ava. It always starts with Ava. She gets it from school. It started 2 Sunday's before Christmas. I think it is allergies that starts it all. She was home from school for 2 days. I was happy that at least she was sick before Christmas. Noah got it 4 days later. For about a little over a week with the 2 sick kids, there was no sleep here. The kids would be awake for about 3 hours each night. Noah would wake every hour on the hour for about 5-6 hours. We made it through the week, sleep deprived and all, but were on the mend. At least I thought we were.

The Monday before Christmas, Ava seemed to be getting worse and Noah was not getting any better. So off to Urgent Care they went. They were diagnosed with upper respiratory infections and given meds. The doctor said Ava had a touch of a fever, which was odd. That night, things went downhill. Ava came into our room around 9ish and she had a 103 temp. We tried giving her medicine, but giving that girl medicine is like pulling teeth from a baby. All she has to take is 1 tsp and it takes about 30-45 mins of crying, gagging and all around tomfoolery. Her temp would go down to about 101.5, but she still couldn't kick it. The next day, Mike took her to the ER. They found that she had a bladder infection that was causing the high temps. They gave her new meds and sent her home. Again, she still couldn't kick that 103 temp. She was up still sick Christmas morning/day. On Friday, we finally took her to the pediatrician because she started to develop a rash. uggg. great... The pediatrician called the hospital for the urine analysis only to find out that the type of bacteria that she had was resistant to what they gave her and now had to switch her yet again!!! I think we are finally on the mend. We are keeping an eye out for rashes and itchies, which she still as a little bit of.

Mike woke up and finally decided to go to Urgent care on Saturday because he thought he had a sinus infection and indeed he did.

So far, I have sorta escaped unscathed. I know my body is fighting to keep me healthy. Yesterday I actually had a temp of 99, but don't feel sick except really tired. My sleep has been absolute crap. I took some NyQuil last night in hopes of a better night sleep, but it was only ok. I am hoping to rest up today and just relax and keep taking my vitamins and drink a ton of water so I don't get it!! Keeping my fingers crossed!!

Holiday Traditions

December is the time of holiday traditions.  Now that the kids are a little bit older, I am hoping to add in some new traditions. This year sorta got past me. It seemed like such a short holiday season. Anyway, I kicked it off with Black Friday shopping. I go every year. I like to shop from 4-8am. There are not a lot of people out and about so it is nice and quiet, except Toys R Us. This year they had a 5am door buster sale, so it was busier than I expected, but not too bad. While I was out shopping, I bought Gingerbread Houses to build. As soon as I brought it inside, Ava asked every hour when we were going to make them. So we ended up doing it that weekend.


Then as soon as it was built, they asked hourly when they could eat it! LOL! After a day, I put the timer on and said "Go" and they went at it.

We did that for a few days and then we threw it out.

We bought our Christmas Tree the weekend of Thanksgiving also and they were both so excited to decorate. Ava did awesome decorating the tree.


It wouldn't be Christmas without the Santa's Beard Tradition. It is our version of the advent calendar.

The saying goes: "Santa's beard is very bare, on his chin there is no hair, so each day add a puff of white, when they are all on, he'll come that night". I found it on Pinterest and printed and laminated it to use each year.

It wouldn't be Christmas without Freddy, our elf on the shelf. He always arrives the evening before Dec 1st. He arrives at the door and the kids open the box and we read the story. They love to find him in the morning. Usually Ava would tell Freddy where to hide, so it made it easy. Ha!Ha!
One day, Freddy ended up in our wine fridge.


We also spent a day making some sugar cookies to decorate for Santa. Since we didn't have any of the usually decorations, we used the Easter colors. Ha. They mostly wanted to eat the batter and lick the frosting.


We also drove around and looked at Christmas lights, but not as much as I would have like too. But at least we did it!

Hoping to add in some new traditions next year.

Ava's School Recitals

Time for some catch up!!

Ava has had two performances this December where her class and the other 4 year old class sings.

The first one was during a mass at her school's church. She got dressed in her chapel shirt and off we went. They had the kids sit in the front to the right of the main area and they didn't sing until the end of the mass. Ava sat patiently the entire time. When it was time to sing, she did awesome. I didn't know how it would go. This was the first time that she would sing in front of a bunch of people that she didn't know. She only started singing at school this year. It was so amazing to watch her. We took some pictures while getting ready.


There she is!! She doesn't look too happy. Turns out, she wasn't. That night she started complaining that she didn't feel well and it went down hill from there.

Her next recital was her Christmas program. This was on Dec 18th and was AWESOME!! Ava almost didn't make it because she was still sick, but we stayed home from and she felt well enough to go. They sang about 10 Christmas songs and Ava was front and center and she sang so loud and did GREAT!! I was a proud mama. Her Auntie Jackie and Uncle Nick were able to come and watch her too!







I have videos of every song and they are so awesome. Seriously though, I can not be more proud of her!! She did amazing. She sings again in a couple of weeks and then has a Spring program.

Long Overdue

Wow! This past month flew by. Let's do a little catch up since Halloween.

This past month we finally got Noah potty trained, except for the night time. It was a rough road, but we got there in the end. We had a good week to week and a half where he kept pooping in his underwear. I was at my wits end cleaning said poopy underwear all day long. We did everything to get him to stop, no TV in the morning, made him stand in the laundry room, no dessert and nothing was working. He finally one day just decided to do it and we haven't gone back since. He actually loves to do it and talk about how big it is and how it comes out. Kids are funny! He is currently napping without a diaper too. The night one is just tough and I am not in the mood to wake up and change bedding, so for now, he can wear his diaper.

Ava is still loving school . She had a Thanksgiving Party at the end of November where the 4 year olds sang. It was too darn cute.


Thanksgiving was awesome! My Dad and Patty came into town for the week. They got to spend a day at our house playing with the kids. Ava was in full on craft mode that day, so Nana helped her with them.


Here are some pictures from Thanksgiving.


Baby Sam and Grammy

Noah thought he would start by himself

Ava with Uncle Brian watching her first movie, ELF!

Love this picture. This is the kids with their only living great grandparents!!

The weekend before Thanksgiving, my sister had her son baptized.  Mike and I are the godparents. It was a very nice and short ceremony.

Halloween 2013

Can't believe Halloween has come and gone. Christmas will be here before I know it and then, Boom, another year done! Geez! Time does go fast.

Anyway, I feel like Halloween kinda came fast too! Ours started with a Halloween Party at Ava's school the Friday before Halloween. She was so excited to get dressed up.

I just love this picture!! Noah is wearing underwear in this picture.

That weekend, we had Susan and Troy over and we carved our pumpkins. Well, Mike and the kids did.

They are looking at the inside of the pumpkin.

These next couple of pictures are my favorite. Mike drew Ava's face on the pumpkin and Ava didn't like it so she started to cry. (Is it bad that I found it a bit humorous?!?!)

The crocodile tears are starting... and next is the pouting..

Apparently Mike found it funny too! And still pouting...

Then she got a towel to wipe it off and start again.


The final product.

A one eyed googly (Mike's signature face) and Ava's sorta offset heart pumpkin.


Then came Halloween. We went to Brian and Melissa's House to Trick-or-Treat. Ava was a fairy and Noah was a Ring Bearer. I didn't want to spend money on getting Noah a costume that he would potentially not wear, so we just recycled his costume from Susan and Troy's wedding. Here is Ava. Isn't she sooo cute!



The only good picture I got of the two of them.

Ava, Baby Sam and Noah

All the kids. This is as good as it gets. Noah wouldn't let go of Mike's hand, Alex is in half his costume because he was pissed and said his costume didn't look good and you can kinda see Sophie in the background, she is the black figure with 2 red eyes!!!

We had such a good time. We let the kids eat a bunch of candy and they haven't had any since and haven't even asked for it. But, they were cranky the next day from all the sugar. We detoxed and will give them some candy here and there!!