Nolan’s Birthday | 10 Gift Ideas Under $100

Hello!

I am so excited to do this post, I actually wanted to do this last year but I wanted to make this more for other families who have a little boy around Nolan’s age range so what was suppose to help our families, can help everyone! You can purely look at this as a wish list for him but you could look at this as ideas for Christmas too, although most of the items are under $20–I didn’t plan on that, it just happened!–I went for stuff he would love for the summertime. Every item I talk about in this post is subject to change, but even if some of them do, it would still be under $100 on Walmart’s website!

Nolan has a lot of interests, and according to his babysitter and OT, he is very smart and has a good imagination! He is very busy but he loves to get cozy with his blankets, books, stuffed animals and watch movies. And like every other little boy in the world, he loves anything wheels… so he has over 300+ cars, tractors, trucks, and a single toy wheelchair that is affectionally dubbed “Meghan’s” everytime he finds it through the basket at our house! I tried to remember the main things I knew he would enjoy the most for when I was creating the post but I think it could work for any kid in his age range too.

Blippi: Let’s Look and Find Book – $8.08

This year, I think, the theme will be about Blippi because he is utterly obsessed with this dude! He doesn’t watch him at our house so I’m not exactly familiar with him but I knew if I didn’t add anything Blippi related I’d probably get in trouble with him, so I was very happy to find this book. To me, it looks like this generation’s “Where’s Waldo” and/or “I Spy” and I think he might like it for that because he’s always had an eye for finding things – when he was a baby, he could find holes in things like clothes you didn’t even know about at the time!

It actually looks pretty hefty which considering the rest of his boxes, he might be ready for these thicker ones now.

Pinkfong Baby Shark Ultimate Sticker and Activity Book – $5.88

Last Christmas, when he went to visit Brandon’s family, he came back with a sticker book that he thoroughly enjoyed and when I saw that they had one of Baby Shark, I thought it was too cute to ignore. Nolan enjoys singing along with the songs and even has Aunt Meg doing the hand motions with her feet (thankfully they’re very easy for me to do!) but nothing is more funnier than dad trying to dance and Nolan getting mad at him for not doing it the right way!

Marvel’s Superheroes Board Box – $10.47

Nolan is starting to fall in love with superheroes, and so far he likes Marvel characters. Although at first he was saying “Batman” but now he is obsessed with the Hulk and Spider-Man.

There is a show all about the Hulk and his mates on Disney+ and I think he started watching it with the bigger kids at the babysitters during the week because we didn’t introduce it to him. I want to show him like X-Men but I also don’t want to scare the little dude either so I’m trying to hold off on as much as possible.

So while looking through Walmart’s website I saw this box full of books about Marvel’s characters, even I became a little jealous! The site says there are 12 books included and considering how cheap the entire block is, that’s really nice! They also have Pixar, Paw Patrol and Frozen blocks as well.

Large Plush Sloth Toy – $10.00

Besides his Hot Wheels cars, he also has a large amount of stuffed animals. He has two of my Husky pups in his toy hamper at our house but he also has Mimi’s cow she use to have on the kitchen table too! So, it was only right to include another one of his favorite animals to the mix, which is a sloth. There were a lot of different sloths but this was my favorite because it looks so cuddly and cute. He really would love it to pieces!

Bubble Play 64oz – $14.99

Another one of his favorite things in the world is bubbles! He has always loved bubbles since he was itty bitty, and it is so nice to see that he loves them so much because it is something that I still love too, so I thought it would be smart to include it in the list too.

M&M Character Candy Case – $3.00

This one might be a little weird, but for the past six months, Papaw has been giving him a handful of M&Ms from his secret stash and for a while, it was the only chocolate thing he would eat, but we think because they were covered in various colors that he wouldn’t see it as chocolate because everytime we tried to give him ice cream with chocolate syrup or chocolate chip cookies, he’d stay away from them.

I was hoping to find M&M plush toys but I think I will have to go on Amazon for that but then I saw these and I was like, I think he’d enjoy having the figurines up in his room.

Melissa & Doug’s Wooden Train & Race Car Paint Kits – $13.40

One of things that Nolan has been really interested to do is paint! I have to thank his occupational therapist for this because he use to hate having his hands dirty, and considering his mommy and I use to spend most of our childhood digging along the sidewalk of our nana and papaw’s house was very odd. Thankfully, he doesn’t mind getting a little messy now!

What I really liked about these kits is that they are wooden, so they are sturdy (hopefully) enough to last through Nolan’s playing and can be packed up and stored somewhere after he has grown out of them too. I just thought they would be cute to do with him or he could do them with his parents!

Garbage Truck Toys – $30.88

I have not included a lot of cars and trucks into this post because he has his fair share of these items already but if you are looking for something that could keep your child happy with multiple toys in one present, this might be your ticket for a lot of excitement!

It has over 10 trucks included and they range of various careers like construction to farming, and I thought it was pretty impressive honestly. It definitely could be worth the $30 in the end, you never know!

Play Food – $9.97

My nephew still loves his play kitchen, unfortunately, it didn’t come with food and for some odd reason, he still doesn’t have any after two years! I feel bad for him because he still “makes” us things and will use his actual snacks in the dishes so I feel like the poor kid needs something and thankfully, they are incredibly cheap on the website so that’s why I decided to include it on this post.

Melissa & Doug’s Vehicles 4-in-1 Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles – $9.79

Another thing that he really likes are puzzles. My mom bought him this little tin of puzzles for Christmas but nothing is in English nor did it come with an actual picture of how it was suppose to look like after you finish! We’ve had to hide it from him because we still don’t know what to do with it.

Once I started searching for puzzles, I was very careful as to what I was looking for, easy for all ages and most importantly for the adults, the main language is English! And I found Melissa and Doug brand of puzzles and I thought these would be perfect as you get more than one puzzle and again, they are wooden so they will definitely last longer than any of puzzle piece I think. And of course, they are of various vehicles, so I think we have a winner here.

I really hope you find this post helpful for you, as at this moment, I will not be doing a post for toddler girls but in the future, if you would like me to do it for Christmas, please let me know and I will consider the option. For anyone who have used these products in the past or present, I would also like to hear your thoughts (both good and bad!) and will relay the information back to my family.

If you could, what is one item on this list that you would purchase for their little man?

A-Z Disability Challenge | L : Life Lately

Hello!

It has been a while since my last post. Thankfully we are at the letter “L” on my A-Z Disability Challenge because instead of doing what I had planned I am going to change it to a Life Lately post. I hope you are all good right now so let’s get into this!

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As you may know back in June, I talked about the fact that both July and August were fast approaching and I had begin to worry about how I would respond to them since I went through a huge depression spell last year and was basically miserable. I felt like I really needed to keep myself busy with blogging, in hopes that my brain wouldn’t be reminded of that time. I had lots of cool topics I was talking about on here and then one day I just got really bored and decided that I didn’t want to write anything. I just wanted to enjoy myself for a few days–which slowly turned into weeks–and I think I realized how happy I have become lately!

Since we’ve moved into this house I have been getting out of my room a LOT compared to the other house. It was a pretty small home with tiny hallways and caved-in floors. When I officially moved in at the beginning of January, I just thought I would continue my routine of staying in my room majority of the time, but my mom had other plans. She was given this nice kitchen table and wanted all of us to use it, but I thought we would only use it for holidays, so the fact we actually sit together and enjoy our meals as one, is pretty surreal!

One of the things that I have really enjoyed is when my mom is home from work. She’ll put me in my wheelchair and let me have breakfast or lunch at the table. If she has to cook or has something else going on while I’m in there with her, I’m usually looking out the back patio doors and counting our cats. I’ve figured out that both Tavis and Felix are the ones who are out there the most in the mornings. However, if nobody is there I try to find ChiChi on the couch. She likes to cover herself with many blankets and try to get some extra Zzz’s but sometimes when I see her peeking through the blankets, I can’t help myself I like to boop her on the nose and if she gets out of her little cave, I crunch down to attempt to get a kiss, trying not to hurt myself in the process, but even if that happens I will still do it because I like getting kisses from the animals.

I like to stay in my chair for as long as possible and even keep my mom company if dad is still in bed. We have some great chats and there are times where she’ll put me to work, and I’ll mop the floors or break up boxes to put them in the trash. I can be very handy at times, just let me pour pasta inside a bowl, apparently I have lost my touch.

She likes to read Closer Weekly magazines, and honestly I enjoy some of their articles too, but in the back of it they have an entertainment inspired Word Search you can complete, and I absolutely love working on these puzzles! My papaw loved Crosswords but I always found them to be a little difficult – to be perfectly honest he also had issues as well especially if they were about a lot of the recent pop culture stuff. It was interesting because there were times where he would ask my mom or us kids if we knew what the answer was; unfortunately there was hardly ever one I knew on the spot! So, that’s why Word Searches are my thing, but they weren’t always though, I have had trouble finding the ones going vertical or backwards in the past, but I have gotten better at them now!

I have found out that I am at the perfect height to reach my foam box while I’m sitting in my push chair. At the beginning of the summer, I went back to coloring again. Before my nana moved away she gave me these crayons that you can twist to keep them sharp, everytime I use one I immediately think “where were these things when I was in school?!” They’re very handy! After two days, I grew out of that because I tend to grip them too hard, I was literally causing my toes pain as I continued so that sucked!

After Nolan had his birthday party in June, he was given a lot of new toys, and there were so much that we were given a chunk of them to keep in his room. He has a new love of Hot Wheels now so I am even more happy that I purchased that city rug for him, because he can really put it to good use with these little cars! What is funny though is that Brandon and I, we were perfectly fine without it. They move better on the wood floors and since there is so much space in the living room, they can go pretty far; Nolan gets a big kick of it. Every time I ask for a car, he’ll give me one and put it in between my toes so he loves it whenever I play with them too!

One day I got the idea about playing with these little cars in his room. At least, that was my original plan, but I ended up changing my mind when I figured I could play basketball instead. They also left this large bag of these brightly colored plastic balls, and since he has like two baskets I thought this would be kind of cool, and I was right! I love being active and the fact that I am using both of my legs to do this makes me happy and I enjoy having fun with playing again, it has become a blessing in disguise. I wasn’t doing too good at throwing them in the basket at first, but I am slowly getting better at it as time goes on! Practice makes perfect.

I am still trying to get Nolan into basketball. So, I am plainly trying to get better at my shots so that maybe it’ll inspire him to play along with me! He does know how to dunk because he has a basket at his house that he pushes a basketball, soccer, and whatever stuffed animal is nearby into it. At least he gets the idea so that’s a plus! Maybe when he comes over on Christmas, he can watch an NBA game with me? It’ll only happen if I can get him to crawl (or walk as he is trying to do it!) into my room without anybody knowing he’s gone. I doubt that’ll happen as Blondie and papaw freaks out about everything he does!

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What helps you relax or get you out of a funk? Have you learned anything new about yourself or a hobby this summer?

Nolan’s 1st Party!

Hello!

Last weekend we celebrated my nephew’s first birthday with a big party! It’s been a long time since I have been at his house. I told my mom that he had to been around three months at the time, because Brandon and I were watching Black Panther after it just came out on DVD. It was very difficult to keep my eyes on the screen and not on a certain little baby in the pack-n-play! He was surprisingly very good for us, until towards the ending where he wanted to be fed quickly and he wasn’t – he wasn’t very happy! He has yet to grow out of that by the way!

The theme of the party had changed a few times over the coming months, but ultimately they decided on one thing: Llamas! So, in March, my sister found him this cute little llama stuffed toy at the store for Easter and he apparently liked it so much that she set out to find other items to fit in that theme, thus making the entire party about llamas. The only thing that wasn’t in a llama shape was the cake, although she did try to find someone to make one for her back in May!

One of my favorite things that had llamas on it, were our shirts that Blondie found for us. Both sides of the family were given customize T-Shirts of a black silhouette of a llama with whatever we are to Nolan. For example, I am his “auntie” so that’s what I got on mine, but both of his grandmothers have different names. My mom is “Mimi” while Brandon’s mom is “Grammie” to him. I have always had a small stack of tops that fit perfectly on my shoulders and if there was a special design on the front, it isn’t blocked by my hands the whole time the stack was even smaller! I’m very glad to tell you that I can add this to the pack! You can see everything, I love it so much!

My mom and I were the first ones to get there. I was greeted by Chipper and the cats. Chipper was SO excited to see us, but the look on Nolan’s face when he realized that Mimi was the one waking him up from a nap in his crib, was so cute! He was so surprised! He looked stunned when he found out I was there too! We were there about 10 minutes before my dad and our “uncle” Russell came over. Nolan was very happy to see his papaw! He just wrapped his small arms around his neck (and beard) and my dad was all too happy to deny him. Nolan was a little unsure about Russell at first but after a couple of minutes, he actually asked to be held by him and it was so adorable.

They were originally supposed to have 30+ people coming to the party, but since we were under a Tornado warning all afternoon, we were happy with the small get together instead. It was an interesting mix of people though, the best thing was everybody got along perfectly! We ate food, chit-chat with one another, played with Nolan. Our friend Jayde, who is expecting her first baby boy later this year, ate around three cupcakes. She and I made a deal that she could have the cupcakes and I can have the broccoli. I love broccoli! She fully agreed to that! I’m actually shocked on how little I snacked though, because I’m known to eat quite a bit at parties but there wasn’t a lot of room for me to eat by myself or have my mom feed me easily without being in the way of little guy eating his strawberries in his high chair! Honestly, I made myself a deal at the end of the party, I was going to have one vanilla cupcake. I did get my cupcake, but I almost regretted it on the way home…

After everybody grabbed a seat, we decided it was time to open some presents. He got a LOT of interesting toys for his birthday! The first one that “he” opened was from his Grammie and his aunties too. Blondie opened the cards first, which is always a nice gesture even though they are usually the last present anybody ever wants to open, because they usually have a message inside that could make you cry in front of your guests. Nolan was another story entirely, he loved his cards! The one that his Grammie got him had shiny glitter inside the number one symbol on the front, so you could essentially shake it like a snow globe and everything will move around. He literally did not want to put it down! It was in his right hand during the rest of the unwrapping.

These are some of the gifts that I could remember of the party.

• A small red and blue slide (that was wrapped in Batman paper! I loved it, and I’m not a big fan of him either!)
• A large stack of different summery clothes.
• Bubble making lawn mower
• Tool bench and belt full of tools he’ll need to fix my ‘broken’ wheelchairs
• A standing drum set
• A big yellow truck to put all of his toys
• Paw Patrol trucks with characters of the show
• A book for bedtime made specifically for him as it has a blond baby named Nolan.

There were a lot more that you will see at in the gallery below. He will certainly be really busy making lots of noises in the next few months! My sister actually sent mom a picture of him standing at the drum kit in the middle of the pack-n-play without any help of the walls after the party was over! We’re getting closer to seeing cutie pie walking around on his own.

Once we were finished with the presents, we moved on watching him eat his smash cake. For this, he had to become semi-naked and as much as he loves being like this, he absolutely hates taking off his clothes! After everything was off, he was placed in his high chair again. I will be inserting the before and after pictures of the cake itself in a minute, but Nolan isn’t necessarily a messy eater, he likes to inspect things so he was really puzzled by this cake at first. He literally only would stick one finger into it at a time. Brandon quickly realized that we’d be here forever if he continues doing this, so to make things go faster, he literally grabbed Nolan’s hands and planted them right into the cake! Nolan was not sure what to do with all of the icing on his hands so he was literally shaking his arms but he actually accepted the fact that it did taste pretty good!

The part that made me remember that I am still teaching him things without even realizing it, was when he started leaning his mouth into the cake. As everybody was laughing and taking pictures at this, I was like “oh, crap!” Whenever I eat in the kitchen, he is at the same level as me, so he can watch me like a hawk, because I do lean into my plate so my tongue can reach everything. So seeing the now one year old mimicking what I do for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, was pretty cute! He was trying his best to get into it, to the point that my sister actually had to hold the cake up in front of him to reach with his mouth! He’s such a smart cookie!

Once he was done eating the cake–well, actually his mommy had to take it away from him! He wasn’t very happy about that, but after he was basically washed down with many, many wipes, he was rewarded with his new toys! He quickly went back to his tool belt and started waving it around in the air. This was also the time where half of the guests were leaving to go home. Russell and dad were one of the firsts to leave because we needed them to be ready to get back into the house, which was a fun mini adventure on its own!

My mom and I left about 10 minutes later, but we were going to get food from Applebee’s and it was roughly a 20-25 minute wait to pick everything up, we decided to go look at the expensive houses in town. I’ve been watching Property Brothers like crazy lately so this was my jam! However between the two of us, we realized how different our tastes in houses were as far as exterior design goes! I still love my ranch-style houses, but even I started finding some of these larger houses to be very beautiful, especially that Tudor house! Once our 20 minutes were up, we went to pick up our food and eventually made our way home!

I had an awesome time spending the day with a great bunch of people, and what I think really made it better was the fact that after the small storm we had, the sky actually perked up. It was sunny again, which was really nice considering how much rain we’ve had in the last couple of weeks or so! I also had lots of fan watching my little nephew enjoy time with each family and friends as well!

What do you think is the most weirdest theme for a birthday? What did you think of my day too?

Dog Lover

I am a Husky/Wolf lover. I’ve always had a thing for them since I was little. I’m not afraid to admit I have four or five Husky stuffed animals, this just ended up being the closest to me. Not like, my favorite but reachable. I love all of them the same. This one is the softest of all of them. I have two beanie baby Huskies and weird part is I got them at the same place, just different years.

My first was medium size stuffed animal. Our first time going up to Shriner’s and actually staying up there for more than a day was the day where I saw my first Husky toy. At Shriner’s there’s a place with offices on your way down to the elevators. They had a line of stuffed animals on the floor by the window. The second one was the Husky dog toy. I was happy but sad because I wasn’t allowed to have it.

After awhile at Shriner’s, my mom or dad told one of my favorite day nurses I had a thing for Huskies. She brought in a picture of her Husky, she let me keep the picture and we taped it on my foot pedal so I could always see it. I have that picture somewhere, no telling where it is though. I think around September or October I got a very interesting surprise from this nurse. Remember that stuffed animal I wasn’t allowed to have, well I told her about it and the next thing I knew it was mine. That’s one way to become a favorite.

A few years ago, probably either after or before I had my surgeries my family became babysitters almost. My dad’s friend had a husky mix and a wolf and they had pups. Dad’s friend said the female wouldn’t let them feed or something like that. So we ended up having close to maybe 12 or 16 pups in our kitchen. My sister and I were in LOVE with these little things. We all had favorites and we didn’t want to give them back to be sold. But we had to. A year later, dad’s friend came back to the house. Brought one of the grown up pups to the house. Emily and I had fun playing with such a big dog. Even though we were used to big dogs for some odd reason this one stumbed us.

After we moved into the house we live at now. Dad’s friend came over with a surprise for us. A puppy. I don’t really remember where Emily was but I had the puppy and he just loved me and I loved him back. Even after he peed on my bed. I still loved him. I didn’t want this one to leave at all. He had already fallen asleep on me twice and I just fell in love with it. Dad’s friend was just about to leave and I knew dad wasn’t ready for another dog yet. I bawled my eyes out and wasn’t happy about giving the puppy back because when I started crying it was like it didn’t want to leave either. He put his cute little head on my neck and rested it there. Then when somebody lifted him up he gave me a kiss. I still want that puppy even though I know it’s probably a giant now.