It seems that a lot has happened since my last post. One of the biggest happenings, and the thing that has required a lot of adjusting to, is that I started back to work on October 19. It has been two weeks now, and while I continue to enjoy my job and the wonderful people that I work with it is still so hard to leave Nolan in the mornings!!! The six weeks home with him after he was born were so precious and passed way too quickly. I wish I would have been able to take more time off or better yet that I could be a stay at home home, but that isn't part of our reality at this point in time...so for now he spends his days at Angie's. Angie and her family live in our neighborhood making dropping Nolan off before work and picking him up after very convenient. Angie has a 3 year-old and a 1-year-old of her own and also watches several other children between those ages making Nolan the youngest. He seems to be doing pretty well and I know he gets a lot of attention. Avery (Angie's 3-year-old daughter) adores Nolan and loves helping us take him out of his car seat, putting him in his car seat, and making sure he has everything that he needs. She often gives me a play by play about what he did for the day and whether or not he smiled at her. I am lucky that work is only about 7 minutes away so I have been going to Angie's during my lunch break to feed and spend some time with Nolan. Avery will often ask to see my keys and she enjoys helping me take a picture of Nolan on my phone to send to Kevin. Nolan often has a smile waiting for me when I get there at lunch (if he isn't sleeping), which I love arriving to. I'm sure that as more time passes it will get a bit easier, although I'm sure I will always wish it was me taking care of him all day....

Other things that have happened since the last post:

• Nolan started sleeping between 5-7 hour stretches at night (he will wake up after this stretch of sleep to be changed and to eat and will go back to sleep for another 2-4 hours depending on when we have to get up in the morning).
• We started a bedtime routine of taking a bath (which Nolan LOVES), swaddling, nursing, and bed. We decided that although Nolan is probably still too young to pick-up on this routine we wanted to get ourselves into a routine that Nolan can fall into once he is old enough to. It is nice because we usually start this routine between 7:30 and 8:30 depending on what is going on and when he had is last nap. This puts him to sleep between 8:30 and 9:30 leaving me and Kevin with some time to relax together before going to bed ourselves.
• We attended Grandpa (Great grandpa) Gingrich's 93rd Birthday gathering in Goshen. We made the quick trip up to Goshen last weekend to spend time celebrating with family. All of my aunts and uncles were there along with quite a few of my cousins and even some with their own children. It was wonderful to be able to spend time with family that we hadn't seen since our wedding and to introduce Nolan to the extended family. My only wish is that we would have had more time.
• We bought and carved Nolan's first pumpkin (also the first time that Kevin and I bought and carved pumpkins together).
• Nolan dressed up in his first Halloween costume (red chili pepper) and we all attended our first Crickwood court block party.

Here are some pictures from the last several weeks. The ones of our little chili pepper will come soon.