"izza!"

Nolan was enjoying his favorite meal of "izza" (aka pizza) on Saturday for lunch. He stopped, looked at me and annouced "I like izza!". It's so fun to be able to have a real conversation with him lately. He loves talking about his "budda" (brother Kale). It's tough, because he can't pronounce Kale's name yet. However, he is super happy to shout out "my budda" every time he sees Kale. We learned this week that he is discovering the not so great joys of being a tattle tale. I guess I don't really know if it quite qualifies as that yet, but I'm sure it's a start. When I picked him up on Thursday from daycare he came running out of the toy room, pointed at the 2-year old twin girls who were crying because they had been fighting, and annouced to me "the babies cying" (crying). Jane let me know he had been doing that all day - pointing at things and announcing what was going on. I think Nolan is just so excited to be able to talk that he needs to give us a play by play. Kale got his helmet on Friday. I was really nervous about the appointment on Thursday night. It's a tough realization to know that for a temporary period of time, your kid is not like other kids his age. The appointment went way better than Adam and I thought it would. Kale didn't cry at all through the 3 different fittings he had. We were there for about an hour, going through all the details of the cleaning and putting the helmet on/taking it off. He didn't wear it much on Friday, but yesterday he was in it for about 4 hours, and today was about 7. Tomorrow morning I'm dropping off the kids at Jane's house so I can spend about 10 minutes with her, showing her how to handle the helmet. We didn't think she'd have to do anything with it, but based on the helmet schedule she'll need to take it off and put it back on Kale. She'll also have the ability to take it off and on when she has to change his clothes - which tends to be a lot because of all his spit up! Tomorrow is the first day he'll nap with the helmet on, and he'll sleep half the night with it on, too. That will be the real test. The helmet doesn't seem to be bothering him a whole heck of a lot at this point. Adam has the stickers all ready to be put on the helmet. Now he just has to find the time to put them on.

Nolan had swmimming lessons on Saturday morning, and Adam said he did really good again. He even figured out how to hold on to the edge of the pool and kick his legs. Nolan also got his haircut. The stylist was amazed at how low key he was during the haircut. He's going through a phase where he gets shy around people he doesn't know very well. I'd rather have him just sit and be shy then kick and scream! Last night we met up with Paulette and Ryan for dinner. Nolan had a nice, hearty meal of french fries dipped in ranch dressing, 2 bites of chicken strips and a cup of "ice ceam" (ice cream). He was getting a little wild and crazy after he ate the ice cream, but luckily the 20 minute ride home calmed him down.

Today I decided to take some time for myself and met up with Paulette to go shopping. She didn't need anything, and I was primarily looking for clearance clothes for the boys. I did find a new winter jacket/snow pants for Nolan for next winter. Kale needed his own snow suit for next winter, but after that he'll be able to use Nolan's hand me downs. I really try hard to take good care of Nolan's clothes so we can get more that 1 use out of them!

Last week I finally got my car washed. The poor thing had been neglected since Kale was born. It didn't even look black anymore! I go to a full service car wash, so I didn't see my car go through the process. I was waiting to see it, and saw this really nice looking black car coming through the line. I remember thinking what a great looking car it was - and was a little jealous it wasn't mine. Then I took a closer look and realized it was mine! What a great feeling to know I still love my car!

Our friendly neighborhood pheasant made an appearance yesterday, across the street in Julie's driveway. I was looking out the kitchen window and saw this really big bird swoop down. It landed, and sure enough it was the pheasant. You know there's too much snow cover when the poor bird needs to start looking for food in the driveway.