Christmas at Mimi and Popo’s went swimmingly this year!

Papa lead the troops out in front of a snow storm a day early in our trusty Prius and we made it to St. Louis with clean dry roads.

Noah, Popo, and Mimi all had a wonderful time playing with each other for the days around Christmas, and we were all sad to leave at the end.

Amazingly, Santa came to Mimi and Popo’s house to deliver Noah’s presents while he was sleeping! Somehow he just knew that Noah was in St. Louis for the holidays, instead of in Boulder.

And the much requested “mountain race cars” arrived in a special present just for Noah.

After talking about them for over a month, the elves managed to make some up for Noah exactly as he wanted.

And Noah got a collection of toys from the North Pole that he never expected.

Hope you enjoy the video! Make sure to jump over to Noah’s blog to watch it, as it won’t appear in your email inbox.

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Noah has reached a big milestone in the last couple weeks. He transitioned from the strider/run bike to his big boy “spider man” bike with no training wheels. One night at the velodrome, he rode his strider for almost an hour on the wooden tracks in the middle of the adult race track and then we went outside the track to another kids riding area to try his spider man bike without training wheels.

I put him on top of a small ramp to give him some time to get the pedaling figured out while he was moving, and he got it right away. As soon as he came back around, I turned on the video camera and caught his second and third rides. My heart was quite happy to see him riding and smiling and focusing (with his patented “fish face” of concentration.)

Now all he wants to do is go to the velodrome and ride his bike. Looks like we’ll have to get a season pass for him.

In the video below, you’ll also see him cruising around in his new soccer class, which he loves. He’s almost always the youngest one out there, but holds his own with the bigger kids. He’s still kicking mostly with his left foot, and lately he’s starting to use his left hand more than his right…looks like we might have a lefty in the family

Lastly, in the video, you’ll see a quick moment of him in the locker room at one of the pools in town. After we went swimming for a while, we came back into the locker room to get changed, and once he had his clothes on, out of nowhere he said “Can I go home and sing the Hannukah song with Mommy?” “Sure thing, buddy,” I replied. “Which song are you talking about?” And he started singing a little bit of it. Him singing Hebrew songs melts Mama Bear’s heart.

In addition to the video, I’ve also added a photo gallery with a collection of photos from the last month or so. To see the photos best, it’s better to view them on the site, rather than in the email notification of the post. So just click on the title of the blog post in the email, if you’re reading this from the email notification, and head over to the site to see the video and photo gallery.

Lastly, there’s an audio recording that I captured while all three of us were laying in bed last night. Noah and Mama were singing another Hannukah song together, except that this time, Noah was singing it all by himself. He learned all the words from him and Mama singing it a few times together and wanted to sing it all by himself.

Photos from the last month:

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Noah singing a Hannukah song in bed:

Noah is starting to make some good friends at school, which we are very grateful for as it makes his time there much more enjoyable for him. In particular, Josh and Naiya are two kids that Noah has a great bond with.

Below is a pdf with some photos and notes from the day with Mimi at school. Make sure to click on the fullscreen view button to be able to see things more clearly.

Noah and his friends at school dug into some pumpkins today. They had tons of fun and Noah came home telling us all about what’s inside pumpkins. He loves scooping out the gooey stuff.

Below is a pdf with some photos in it. Be sure to click on the “view as fullscreen” button at the bottom of the pdf viewer on the site to see both pages in the pdf document bigger.

Today Noah discovered the joy of painting your own face with super fun face paints!

I’ll let the image above describe how he felt about it.

Here’s a little video slideshow of the adventure

A few days ago at school, we got a lovely little update from some events at Noah’s school that day.

Seems like we have a pretty sharp scientist in Noah

You’ll have to click on the small thumbnail preview images below to see the full sized image, which contains photos and notes from the day.

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A few days later, there was a small festival down by the Boulder Creek path for Labor Day Weekend.

At long last, Noah weighed enough to give the big bungee jumping ride a try. He’s been wanting to go on these things for a long time, but he’s been too small at past events. Well, no longer!

You’ll see in the video below that he had zero fear. The boy loves to jump and fly!

Lastly, yesterday, on Labor Day, we decided to head out on a family canoe adventure at the Boulder Reservoir. We all had a super pleasant, peaceful time out in the canoe, and we spent a good bit of time silently observing about 150 Canadian Geese on a quiet shore of the lake. We were about 15 feet from them in the boat, so we got to see them super close.

Here’s a pic from our canoe adventure:

And here’s another from a stroll on the Pearl St. Mall over the weekend. Noah is showing Mama bear the pretty flowers, because he knows that she loves flowers almost as much as she loves chocolate.

Okay, don’t worry, I’m not going to be posting every daily slideshow video we get from Noah’s new school, but since this is only the second one, and because there’s a lot of pics of Noah in this one, I couldn’t resist.

He’s in love with his new school and doesn’t want to leave when we come to pick him up!

Noah is making lots of new friends at his school and has wasted no time getting fully engaged with all the new activities and learning and playing to be done at the Journey school.

Go Noah!

Just a quick update…

Noah started at a new school today, called Journey School.

He had no problem adjusting to the new environment and started making new friends right away when I dropped him off this morning.

I was prepared to spend some time with him to make sure he was okay at his new school, but he didn’t need me around for very long before he started to dive in and explore everything at his new school.

Within a few minutes of exploring, he wanted to leave his classroom and go down the hall to see the rocket ship and the race car right away. These seem to be his favorite parts of his new school. They are hand made wooden vehicles that you can get in with lots of buttons and lights. He loves them.

His new teachers sent what appears to be the first of daily slideshow videos. As you’ll see, Noah made his way to the rocket and the race car. Seems like he’s been having a great time at his first day at school.

Here’s a quick shot I took just before I headed out the door. Noah, one of his new teachers, Ashley, and a new friend, all plopped down on the couch together to look through Noah’s “A book about Noah” book, which has 20 or 30 little photos of his family, things that bring him comfort, and some of his favorite experiences.

All the kids have a book like this that they share with each other…like an analog version of a Facebook profile page in picture form.

Over the weekend, Noah entered his first real bike race at the local indoor velodrome race track, and he had a super big fun time!

He was the youngest rider in the 3 to 4 year old category, and he ended up winning the race!

It was amazing to watch and so much fun to see him having that much fun. He tried really hard and did great, and he had so much fun that when he finished the second little obstacle course race, he went back out on the track by himself and said to me “I should run around one time and then ride my bike around as fast as I can.” It was like he was training for the next race, though he was only doing it again because it was so much fun.

I hope you enjoy the video, and I apologize in advance for the shaky recording during the race part of it. I was running around trying to film at the same time that I was trying to help him do the race. Next time Mama will do the video camera