I said naps not nads.

As I always say – Noah is an angel baby and I’d clone him in a heartbeat, except for the sleeping. He’s always been a sucky sleeper. His father is a poor sleeper, and so I blame it on him. I however am a championship sleeper, and boy do I miss having eight hours plus of uninterrupted sleep. Lately we started some bizarre variant of sleep training – mainly an attempt to separate nursing from sleeping and get Noah accustomed to falling asleep in his crib. I’m still not in the CIO camp – I’ve been sitting cribside doing what it takes to aid him off to dreamland. The first couple attempts at this it took nearly two hours for him to finally conk out – he’d stand up asking me to take him out, asking for hugs and kisses, for juice, tissues and diaper changes. But he knows the drill now and it’s been taking about 15 minutes or so now, which is great. One big problem though is that for the most part he still falls asleep with his hand in my mouth. YUP. That wasn’t some weird series of typos – he puts his little hands through the crib bars and into my mouth to fall asleep. He’s pawed at my face and mouth while nursing and falling asleep since he was born and it might be harder to break that habit than the nursing. But we’re taking it one step at a time. Once Noah has mastered falling asleep in the crib I will be able to finally stop the nursing – which is is fantastic. I always thought I’d like him to stop around two and it looks like we can make that happen. It won’t be easy or fast – but it will happen and in a way that makes me and him most comfortable. It’s nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Somewhat tied to the nighttime battle is the nap battle. Recently we’ve had a couple of busy family days on which Noah went napless and I was pleasantly surprised at how well he dealt with missing his nap on a busy day. But much less pleasant is that Noah has refused to take a nap this past Friday and today. Could he be ready to give up napping? How will I cope if he is? (I NEED THAT BREAK!) Is this just his way of rebelling against the evening sleep training? And if I do phase out his nap will that improve his nighttime sleeping? So many questions, so little time to myself to think about the answers.

Let’s move from quandary to cuteness. Oh wait, the weekend. Friday night the three of us went to a party. Saturday the boys had haircuts, we hung out for a bit at the chilly Northern Liberties Music Festival, and then had a lovely dinner at A Full Plate café. Sunday we went to a baby clothing swap which was less than fruitful (unfortunately most of the 2T stuff was for girls) and then took a bus ride downtown and home again just because Noah wanted to ride the bus. Okay – cuteness.

Few get to see what a chatterbox Noah is because he’s shy, but at home he talks CONSTANTLY. Here are just a few little snippets that have come up lately.

- “Mama, talk more.” I’m certain he’s the only person on the planet who has ever asked me to speak MORE. Usually people are begging me to shut the hell up and stop being so damn indiscreet with my personal life.

- “The pet store too. I love it. Little bunnies.” Noah’s response when I asked him if he wanted to go to Lowes, which is next to Monster Pets. Noah has begun saying “I love it” about everything – people, trains, food, animals, clothing, you name it.

- “Ma, that Noah plate right here, Ma.” – I had decided I wanted to be a Mama instead of a Mommy, but in the last week or so Noah has called me “Ma” almost exclusively. In fact it both precedes and punctuates most of his conversations with me.

- “Pa Joe wait in line; get on bus.” I think my best lifetime purchase has been the vintage Fisher Price 1960’s school bus and the old fashioned Little People that use it as their means of transportation. I bought them all off Ebay because I was nostalgic for the ones I had when I was a kid over the fat ones they manufacture these days. And this must be common because the Ebay sales are pretty cut-throat. We’ve given all the people names – those of our beloved friends and family members and Noah plays with them and the bus almost all day every day. The bus has to travel with us to each floor of the house we’re on and getting Noah to take a bath means bribing him with “You can bring Oma, Bella and Pop Pop with you to ride on the boat.”

- “Want something to eat? How bout that?” Most often our little family departs the bus to eat in a restaurant we have assembled out of wooden blocks. They sit at tables and a plastic Zing Zing Zingbah takes their orders for salads, soup and steaks, prepares their meals and serves up the grub. He’s the hardest working orange lump in the restaurant industry. It's also amazing to hear Noah pick up my speech patterns and catch phrases. I hadn't realized how much I say "How bout... X or Y?" but now I can't help but notice.

- “Where’s Jim, Ma? Where’s Jim? Jim lost, Ma?” My Little People brother has disappeared. We fear he has gone on some sort of bender. Please keep your eyes peeled for him. He has a silver hardhat and a mustache.

And of course there is SO much more. The dialogue of the Little People restaurant could fill a book alone. He kills me with it every day.

And one last thing – my skin is always a disgrace but it’s worse right now than it has ever been and I’m not sure why. (NOT PREGNANT - so don't even think it.) I’m sure all the toddler mouth poking and prodding has something to do with it, but it doesn’t explain why it’s gotten so much worse in the last couple of weeks. I currently have several large painful pink pimples on my face –the worse one being on the center of my nose. If I colored it in with an eye pencil it would be great start for a witch costume. Seriously though, WTF is up with my skin? I feel like I should be having horrific anxiety over my first high school dance for God’s sake. I can’t be bothered worrying about MFing wrinkles – I’m still applying CLEARASIL. It never ends with this crap.