Boy Stuff

Noah is done with his first year of public school! All in all, it was a pretty good year and he enjoyed it. He'll be going to summer school in a couple weeks but I'm thrilled not to have to share him with others for a while. I STILL miss him terribly when he's away at school!

He had some regressions (potty training) but he had many more progressions! We're seeing expressive communication blossom and just in the last month his pinching and self-biting have decreased tremendously! I'm hoping that the decreased pinching is a direct correlation to his increased ability to communicate his needs with words. I'm fairly certain his decreased self-biting has everything to do with his loose tooth! Scroll past the next two photos if you're squeamish at all...

Noah's tooth is super wiggly, but not quite loose enough to pull out. The night we took these photos, he held his mouth open and let me try to pull it.
This was taken right before the nightly teeth brushing so you'll see a little blood on the loose tooth and a little chicken on the neighboring tooth. :-)
For the last month, we've gone to the beach at least once a week. Sometimes twice. The last couple beach trips have had nice weather and calm seas. Unfortunately, the calm waters allow jellyfish to hang out close to shore. Noah got stung pretty badly about a week ago.
But he was such a trooper about it! He barely complained and kept wanting to go back to the water!
The very next day, the rash was SO much better. You can barely tell he got stung at all.
Yesterday, Mike took the boy to the beach (the girls stayed home) and they both got stung on the shins. The rash is much smaller than the one that wrapped around Noah's leg and he hasn't complained about it at all. Mike says the feeling is a mild burning that's slightly annoying, but not overwhelming. I'm hoping that's all that Noah feels, too.

This is one of my favorite beach photos from this year. Noah really enjoys body boarding and has learned to watch for and anticipate good waves.
And I'll leave you with a vid of the boy on a wave!