Noelle's Kind of Fun

So sorry there are still no pics up. It is just so hard to take the time to bring the camera all the way to school and wait for them to upload when I would much rather be at home sleeping, eating, playing with Noelle, etc. But I just thought I would write a little bit about the fun things Noelle has been doing lately.

She is a chatterbox. She has some real words, her vocabulary is growing daily, and she knows several body parts, but she still just mostly chatters away in gibberish and then looks at us like we should have some very profound response to the obviously profound statement she just made :)

She LOVES to read her books. We go to the library to get some new selections almost weekly, but she still loves her old favorites too. Reading is her favorite way to play. (Although some of that might have to do with our abysmal toy selection. Good thing Christmas is coming.) And her favorite way to read is in Mommy or Daddy's lap, having us read to her then her read to us :)

She is learning to sing! She loves trying to sing the ABC song whenever we are reading her ABC book, or the Baa Baa Black Sheep song (which coincidentally are the same tune) when we have that book out. She doesn't quite get it right, but it is close enough that we can actually tell what she is trying to sing. She also makes up songs to sing to herself while I am doing housework :)

She loves playing in drawers and cupboards. Which has been a bit a trying thing for us. We have been able to teach her, for the most part, which drawers and cupboards she can play with and which ones she can't. With the exception of her clothes drawers. She used to rip through them every day with delight. I say "used to" because we finally got smart and put child locks on her drawers. We put them on all the drawers except her top one because she won't be tall enough to reach that one until she's five. We thought. The morning after we put the locks on was Sunday, and Erik and I were both VERY pleased that Noelle had seemed to sleep in until 8:30! She usually is up by 7 or 7:30 at the very latest. But Sunday seemed like a huge blessing. Until I wandered into her room to find that she had, in fact, been awake for quite some time, and she had been very quietly pulling everything she could reach out of her top drawer, which she could pretty easily reach from her crib. It was so funny we couldn't even be mad. But now that drawer has a lock too :)

She just continues to delight us with her sweet nature and willingness to give Mommy and Daddy hugs and kisses every day. I feel bad that she is so scared of everybody else, whether they be a stranger, a friend, or a family member, but hopefully that will start to change as we get to spend more time with family during the holidays. She is the light of our lives :)

You Think Halloween is Scary? Read This!!

So we live in sleepy, safe ole Cedar City. We have had a few interesting little encounters at our apartment due to the fact that we live near a bar. But we have never had anything really bad or scary happen to us. Until last night. It was so scary. I had gone to bed about 9 because I had to get up early, but Erik stayed up and I told him not to stay up late. At 1am I had to go potty and I woke up and Erik was still awake. I got up and got grouchy with him about staying up so late and made him come to bed. He got ready for bed, I got a drink and we turned off the living room lights (including bright Halloween decoration lights we had up in the windows) that were still on. We walked into the bedroom and I got into my side of our bed. Before Erik could even walk around the bed to his side, all of a sudden we heard a banging at our windows! We looked out and there was a silhouette of a person outside our bedroom windows, and he was trying to open them! It was so scary.
Erik ran out and pushed the panic button on the alarm and then called 911 and got his gun. I ran to Noelle's room and turned on her lights to make sure no one else was in there and grabbed her and ran to the living room. I guess all the lights and commotion scared the man away. But we are blessed and live very close to the police station (I will never complain about hearing sirens late at night again) and they were there in no time. They caught the man as he was trying to get away. Our apartment is the only one in a long row of old buildings that are all connected together and are full of offices and business. We suppose the man was just trying to find an easy window into an office and try to get what he could get. When he saw that people lived there it must have surprised him (even though if he had had any sense he would have looked around and seen our lights on only seconds before he tried to get in). The police were there for about two hours and we finally fell asleep at 4am.
We thought that was the end of it. Not so! We found out this morning that there was likely an accomplice who was apparently not apprehended, and that one of them had a gun! It was found thrown on the ground in a doorway of a business a few doors down as the employees showed up for work this morning. The night was scary, but finding this out has given me chills all day. I am so grateful that 1) the man did not try to get in Noelle's bedroom windows, which are right by ours, 2) the man was not able to get in at all, 3) that he just ran away instead of doing something awful, and 4) that we had such a quick police response. It was very scary, but we are all just fine. And now more anxious to graduate and move out of sleepy old Cedar City.
p.s. As we were waiting for the police to come up and talk to us Erik says "I bet you're glad I stayed up late tonight, huh?" Yes, I was very, very glad :)