Paul Frank Birthday Cake

Happy 1st Birthday, Noah!

Happy 1st birthday, Noah! Daddy and I love you so very much. The past 12 months have been a whirlwind of surprises, challenges, happiness, and love. We have been truly blessed since the moment you entered our lives. We love you, Noah Bear!

 

1 Month

2 Months

3 Months

4 Months

 

5 Months

6 Months

7 Months

8 Months

9 Months

10 Months

11 Months

12 Months

Giving Birth

My little boy is turning one tomorrow.

As I'm reminiscing over the past year, I realized that I never once blogged about my experience giving birth to him. Don't worry, I'm not going to go into any graphic details, but I did want to share some fun facts.

Fun Fact #1: I didn't labor for very long.

I'd always heard that the first time you have a baby, you will labor for a long time, typically 24 hours or something like that. So last year, John and I prepared for a long labor - we packed tons of magazines, uploaded a bunch of apps on our iPads, charged our cell phones and computers. But we were at the hospital for all of 4 hours before Noah came into our lives. I'd started having contractions at 5:30 that morning, but I knew I wanted to labor at home for as long as possible. So I spent the morning cleaning, doing laundry, taking a shower, and yes, actually putting on makeup. By 11:30 am, my contractions were a minute apart and coming on strong so we decided to head over to the hospital, but we hadn't eaten lunch yet so I suggested we go stop somewhere to eat on the way. HA! John and I still laugh about that today. What were we thinking?! There was no time to grab lunch. During the 20 minute car ride to the hospital I went from, "Oh, ok, this is not so bad" to "Get me the epidural NOW!" 

When we got the hospital, everything was such a blur. It all happened so quickly. I remember getting changed into a hospital gown and sitting in the pre-delivery room. When we took a tour of the hospital a couple months before Noah was born, we were told we'd first wait in the pre-delivery room and then get transferred to the delivery room once I was close. We literally spent maybe 5 minutes in the pre-delivery room before the nurses were like, "Ok, we need to move you now. You're about 6 cm along." I was pretty proud of myself for making it that far. When we got to the delivery room the nurse even asked, "Are you sure you want the epidural? You seem to be doing fine." I was like, "Are you kidding me?! Give it to me now!" I think I have a relatively high threshold for pain and I hide my pain well (there was no dramatic crying or yelling or pulling on my husband's arm like you see in the movies), but that didn't mean I wasn't thinking or feeling all those things in my mind. We still had to wait a good hour before the anesthesiologist arrived, so I did not get the epidural until about 1 pm. After that I felt nothing.

Fun Fact #2: I didn't meet Noah until 4 hours after he was born.

This was the first time I held Noah, four hours after he was born AND after everyone else had already held him.

So this is always the funniest part to tell about my birthing experience - I fell asleep while giving birth to my son. I had a weird reaction to the epidural and it made me SO sleepy. Honestly, I'd never felt more tired in my life and there was NEVER a time in my life where I'd wanted to stay awake more. Everything was such a blur, but I do remember the nurses and John yelling at me to wake up and push, but...I just couldn't. So I fell asleep. Noah was born at 4:48 pm. I woke up at 8:30 pm.

Later on, John told me how nervous he was to see me like that. Even the doctors and nurses were like, "That's odd" so of course that made John even more nervous. But everything turned out just fine. I'm only disappointed that I met him last. Me, the MOTHER! I'd always envisioned holding him in my arms right after he was born and holding him close to my chest just like how they taught me in my breastfeeding class to increase milk production. But oh well, I got over it. And it's a funny story to tell now.

Fun Fact #3: We watched The Walking Dead together as a family.

I met Noah at 8:30 pm. The Walking Dead season 3 premiered at 9 pm. We watched it together as  a family that night, and we will watch season 4 premiere as a family again tonight.

Noah's First Haircut

John and I decided to finally give Noah his first haircut. 

It's about one week before his first birthday. We didn't necessarily wait this long to get him his first haircut just because we wanted to wait a year like most parents do. We were just tired of everyone thinking he was a girl. 

His curls were adorable, but they were quite hard to maintain and he often looked like a cross between Einstein and Abe Lincoln. We just felt it was time to get him a haircut.

Before

So we decided to take him to The Art of Shaving. I know, quite fancy for a baby. But John has been going there for a while and his barber has always joked about cutting Noah's rattail for us, so we decided to take him up on his offer. 

Noah getting ready for his first ever haircut.

The very first snip.

Needless to say, he was none-too-happy.

So we decided to distract him with some snacks.

It seemed to work.

Overall, I think he did very well. The barber said that he did better than most kids. Usually they're shaking their heads around, but Noah sat (relatively) still. Only freaked out a couple times when the barber had to cut his sideburns. 

And then when it came time to blowdrying his hair, he was none-too-happy once again.

So this time we distracted him with my cell phone, one of his favorites.

We wanted to get a group picture with the barber, but Noah was still a bit distracted by his snacks.

After

Now he has just a teeny, tiny rattail. I miss his curls already.

And like every obsessive mother, I kept his curls.

This boy cleans up nice!

We were so proud of our little boy today! What a handsome little man!