New Year's Eve

We had a good day today, although not a very typical New Year's Eve. Joe and Nicholas ran some errands this morning and let me do some work on my syllabi for the classes I'm teaching this spring. The plan was for me to then take Nicholas to the zoo after he napped. Well, the little boy's nap schedule has been thrown all out of whack with travelling and holidays and excitement and he would not nap. After the second time we tried putting him down with no success, I told him about the zoo and explained that he had to nap first. It seemed to work at first--he asked to nap and went down without a peep. But he was up again in a few minutes, proclaiming, "No nap. Zoo. Animals."

After a couple more of these I gave up and we left for the zoo. Knowing full well that he would probably fall asleep in the car, I took my journal along for something to do. And sure enough he was out within 5 minutes. And he stayed asleep when I parked and turned the car off.

A good 45 minutes later he woke up with a start, proclaiming, "No nap. No nap. Zoo. Animals. No nap." And I just broke out laughing and tried to explain to him through my laughter that we were in fact at the zoo and he could stop acting all indignant.

We had a really great time at the zoo. Because of all his antics it was already 2:30 and had gotten cloudy and a little cold, but it was still in the upper 40s and so tolerable (as long as you kept gloves on). Only about half of the animals were out, but Nicholas seemed to be in the mood for intensive viewing today anyway, so I let him spend 20 minutes on a single animal at a couple points. Today's animals of interest--the cheetah, the giraffes, and the monkeys. With each of these he would watch for a bit, start to walk away, and then after getting a few steps away he would suddenly turn around and run back, yelling "more more [insert name of animal]!"

Here Nicholas is trying to touch a frog:

From 2010 December

After I explained that the frog was walking when it moved, Nicholas started going to each frog that was moving and explaining, "frog walking."

We then had friends over for dinner, which was wonderful for me and Joe, and Nicholas loved having an audience again. Spoiled.

Wishing you all the best for a very happy New Year!

Or, in Nicholas-ese:

From 2010 December