Moments

I am very lucky.  Part of how I know this is that I've had a lot of "best year of my life" years.  I feel a little bit like Nicholas, who declares things the "best ever" quite freely.  But I am struck quite often by the fact that as crazy as life is right now, this is a year/phase that I am going to look back at in old age as one of those best ever ones.

This is the realization behind the sudden increase in the number of videos I'm taking.  When Nicholas was a baby and toddler I naively thought I'd remember it all.  I mean, how could I forget the sound of his voice saying those early words?!  And yet I now know how fuzzy that has all gotten.  And I just don't want to forget them at this moment.  And since goodness knows I am not good at posting anymore, I won't have a written record.

So what is it that I'm trying to capture?  What is it about this phase?  It is each of them individually but even more it is the two of them together.  They are at a sweet spot in their sibling relationship, where Elizabeth is old enough that they can interact and yet Nicholas isn't so old as to not want her following him around.

Elizabeth wants to do everything Nicholas does.  Today he got a temporary tattoo and so she wanted one.  So I drew on her arm with marker.  And she is 1 so she considered the green circle I drew on her arm completely equal to his minion tattoo and spent half the day blowing on her arm because she had seen Nicholas blow on his tattoo when we first put it on.  And the grin on her face when she did it!  She was like her big brother!  She calls him "Ni-Ni" pretty reliably right now, which is basically the equivalent to Mama or Dada when you think about it, repeating the first sound of the name twice.  ("Lizzie" by the way is something like Di-dee.)

And when Nicholas decides to click into big brother role he is truly amazing.  There are times when I catch him reading to her or playing with her or helping her put her shoes on that my heart almost bursts.  I love that they love each other so much and I also love that he has such a good and caring heart.

Not that it is always perfect.  Nicholas sometimes just wants to do his own thing and doesn't want to play with her, which is completely fine except for when we're outside in the snow because it makes my life much easier if he'll go down in the sled with her.  And occasionally he is too rough with her, although that really isn't often and he is very rarely actually mean.  Most of the times he hurts or upsets her are actually because he forgets he isn't an adult and tries to carry her somewhere (today resulting in having his arm wrapped around her neck) or tries to stop her from doing something she isn't supposed to.

From 2015 March

From 2015 March

From 2015 February