**Warning** This is super long!
First let me apologize for the brief hiatus. Obviously the holidays alone are enough to keep anyone busy, but when you hear about mine you will understand why I have been MIA for so long. We all had a wonderful Christmas and truly enjoyed spending time with family, but it wasn’t without it’s “discomforts.” I think Noah had the hardest time, but I think it’s best to just explain it chronologically.
Thursday – December 22nd
Thursday evening we left Jacksonville and drove to Tallahassee to have dinner at my sisters house with my Dad, Brother, Sister and their families. It was fun, we had steak and opened presents. The only mishap was my 3 year old niece was trying to keep Noah from getting at a toy and didn’t understand that he can’t walk backwards yet, so when she pushed him (not hard, it was more of a suggestion that he back up) he fell and banged the back of his head on the hard wood floor. He knocked it pretty good, but all in all not so bad.
Friday – December 23rd
Friday was relatively calm. My mom, sister, nephew, Noah and I all went to have a portrait session with a wonderful Tallahassee photographer, Dina Ivory. My mom had bought a groupon and wanted a picture with Jamie and I and our boys. I can’t wait to upload the pictures for you too see. They were great!
Saturday – Christmas Eve!
After having oysters with family at my sisters house, nothing says Merry Christmas like oysters on the half shell, LOL, we headed to my mom’s house. Dinner was great and it was so much fun watching the kids open their presents. My mom’s family does a yankee santa (dirty santa, whatever you want to call it) exchange between the adults once all the kids have opened their presents.
During the commotion of the gift exchange we were all keeping an eye on the little ones because we were downstairs and their wasn’t a gate setup on the stairs. The entire evening Noah was being such a wonderful little boy playing in the middle of the big circle of people we had all formed. I had caught my nephew bee-lining for the stairs a few times, but Noah never even paid them any attention. You can probably see where this is heading. When all of our attention was focused on my gator-fan aunt who had chosen a gift that was a Florida State purse and we were all laughing, I heard the worst sound in the world. It still churns my stomach to remember it right now. 
Noah had managed to slip past all 16 adults and make his way up the WOODEN stairs. As best we can estimate he was probably trying to make his way back down and slipped. By some miracle of God he managed to roll down on his side and land on the small carpet runner at the foot of the stairs, instead of the concrete tile. I still can’t believe that it happened and let me tell you, it made Eric and I feel like the worlds worst parents. It still does. We are just so so lucky that he is ok. It could have been SO MUCH WORSE. I scooped him up and ran upstairs. It’s so weird how when your baby is hurt your fist instinct is to get away from what hurt him and other people. I was so happy he was crying cause at least that meant he was conscious. He only cried for 4 or 5 minutes and then we were able to check all of his limbs etc. My sister-in-laws mother was there and she is a nurse. She checked him out and told us to keep a close eye on him and if he threw up or lost consciousness to take him to the emergency room, but that he looked like he was going to be fine. Once I realized that he was ok, all of the glue that was holding me together just let go and I lost it sobbing. Ugh, this might be why I have been avoiding writing this post. I still feel horrible just thinking about. I probably always will.
It wasn’t too long after the fall that we needed to get going as we were driving back to Jacksonville so that we could wake up Christmas morning and open presents in our own home. I am happy that I had the chance to watch Noah sleep in the car for the 2 1/2 hours home. It gave me some piece of mind to be able to check on him. After much debate on whether to put him in the pack and play in our room or in his crib, we decided that he would sleep better in his room, but I cranked the monitor on high and set my cell phone alarm to check on him multiple times through out the night.
Sunday – Christmas Day!
Christmas morning was wonderful. Noah had a great time opening his presents, and a few of ours too. 😉 He showed no real signs of last nights tumble except for a little bit of carpet burn on the side of his face. He wasn’t even sore! Kids are so resilient…. I was super excited to open my present, my new Canon Rebel T3!!! Up to this point all of the pictures here were taken with my old point and shoot, from here on with my new Canon!! Love love love it!
After opening presents and playing for a little bit we put Noah down for a cat nap and got ready for church. We had planned on going all along, but our thankfulness for Noah’s safety got rid of any lazy doubts about whether or not we were going to church. We dropped him off at the nursery and headed into the sanctuary to say about a million more thank yous to God for taking care of Noah.
When went to pick him up after the service we walked into the nursery only to find Noah in the lap of one of the nursery workers in 
a rocking chair with people crowded around them. My heart of course jumped up into my throat. Turns out that another somewhat older little boy had tried to take Noah’s pacifier out of his mouth with their teeth and instead bit him on the nose. In comparison to the prior evenings trauma I honestly had to keep myself from laughing. Bad momma! But I was so relieved that I just scooped him up and accepted the nursery workers apologies and assured them that he would be fine.
They say everything happens in three’s right? So this should be it, right? Wrong.
Monday – Wednesday
The next few days were relatively uneventful except that we car pooled in my aunts minivan with her, my mom and cousin north to North Carolina. We dropped them off north of Charlotte and continued on to my in-laws where Noah got to open more presents! 
We had a great visit and spent Wednesday driving to Boone, NC to see snow. I got to take some awesome pictures with my new camera.
Wednesday morning Noah must have had a lot to drink because when we finally made it to Boone and straight to a restaurant, we were all starving, I noticed halfway through lunch that his diaper was wet. I went to pick him up and then realized that he had soaked through his pants. Great. I get to the bathroom and guess what! No changing table. I am so shocked at the number of establishments that don’t have changing tables. It is ridiculous!! The van was parked way to far away and his little butt would have frozen solid before I could have made it there. So I had no choice but to change him on the floor. Yuck! And not just his diaper but his ENTIRE outfit! That’s when I realized that all I had in his bag for clothes was a long sleeve onesie and a zip up hoodie. I changed his soaking wet onsie and had no choice but to put his wet jeans back on. Of course as we left the only bathroom in the place, there was a long line of women waiting. I sheepishly apologized as a zoomed by them and one lady at the end of the line said “Your lucky he’s so cute” I’m sure she was just joking, but I wanted to punch her in the face.
We went across the street to see if we couldn’t find him a new pair of pants at the Mast General Store. No such luck. I did find a really cute fleece leopard print onsie by Columbia, but Eric said he would hurt me if I put Noah in it. LOL Luckily all the walking around and browsing we did there allowed Noah’s pee-pee pants to dry. We all headed back to the van and drove to the original Mast General Store in Valle Crusis, NC. This place was really cool and I had lots of stuff to take photos of. I love the picture of the barn.
After Valle Crusis we headed to Sugar Mountain determined to find some snow that Noah Eric and his brother Nick could play in. 🙂 We headed straight to the ski lodge and had to park in one of the overflow parking lots. Everyone was making such a fuss about Noah’s smell in the back of the van that I decided to change him before we headed up to the lodge. Turns out he had barely pooped, it was just really stinky. As I’m trying to clean him up he starts crying and I can’t figure out why. Turns out the cold air on his butt made him pee and it went all over his sweater and his face. Seriously!! It also got the second onsie wet! Luckily I had put his jeans in the floor board so they were dry. I put the hoodie on him with his jeans and his jacket and we headed up the mountain. We stopped in the gift shop and picked him up a t-shirt though. Everyone had a great time playing in the snow.
Thursday
We were planning on going to see Eric’s Nana and then hittin’ the road back to J-ville, stopping and picking up my Mom and Aunt along the way. Of course things didn’t go exactly according to plan. We got to see Nana and had lunch at a deli near her house. Everyone was having fun Noah was smiling and talking and having a great time. About ten minutes after we got there he threw up. Not spit up, but threw up. I was stunned, this was the first time Noah had ever thrown up. I took him to the bathroom, which incidentally didn’t have a changing table, and washed his hands and face in the sink as best I could. By the time I got him to the bathroom he was playing in the water and talking the walls. Hmmm, must have been something wrong with the milk. We went back out to the table, which everyone had already cleaned up and waited for our food. Noah was fine, chatting and smiling away. There’s that resilience again.
After lunch we headed back to my in-laws before hitting the road. Noah fell asleep in the back and once we got there I was peeking in the window trying to see if he was waking up or not when I heard him start coughing. I tugged at the handle on the automated door and waited what felt like a million years for the door to open. Before I could even get my hands on the car seat lock he started to throw up again. This made the incident in the deli look small in comparison. He threw up all in his car seat, which is still a bucket seat so it went all over him and his blankets. He was having trouble because he couldn’t lean forward, so he was kind of choking on it.
I quickly got him out of the car seat and stood him on the driveway. We stripped off “new” hoodie and he proceeded to throw up on the driveway a few more times. At this point he started to cry. My mommy gears kicked into overdrive at this point. I guess I somehow knew that he was done throwing up because I ripped off my fleece and threw it at my brother-in-law and scooped Noah up and cradled him in my arms. I wish someone could have taken a picture of the expression on my brother-in-laws face when I did this. It was priceless. A mixture of disgust and horror as I cradled my little puke laden baby to my chest. I headed up the stairs to the house where my mother-in-law, God bless her, was already upstairs running a bath. After stripping him down and getting him in the bath he proceeded to splash, and play and chatter away. Kids aren’t just resilient, they are freakin’ weird.
After cleaning his ENTIRE car seat out and everything he threw up on we finally got on the road. We even had to use my father-in-laws air compressor and a blow dryer to dry the car seat cover, since you can’t put it in the dryer. We kept Noah on a strict diet of small amounts of water and bread for 24 hours and he was fine. Thank the Lord he didn’t get sick on the way home or anytime after that either. Whew!
That was probably the most exhausting Christmas I’ve ever had and I had a 2 week old last Christmas. I was just happy it was over…… or was it?
Sunday afternoon I started feeling sick. Yep, that’s right! I had a stomach bug. I threw up Sunday night and was nauseous and generally felt like crap for 2 days. I was a little concerned/freaking out that I could be pregnant, even though the rational part of me new that wasn’t possible, but still, you know, you worry. I’m finally feeling better and back to the land of the living.
Even with all the craziness we are happy that we got to spend Christmas with our loved ones and that Noah, amazingly, had a great time.
PS – Eric just called and he’s headed home from work because he feels like he’s going to throw up……the fun never stops.
Hope you had a happy and “healthier” holidays!!
-Tracy