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

Wordless Wednesday: Texting While Driving

From 2010 December

Christmas 2010

Nicholas had a wonderful Christmas! In many senses this was his first real Christmas, since last year he was completely unaware of what was going on.

His favorite part by far was all the time with his aunts, uncles, grandparents, family friends, etc.

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

Although he certainly loved his presents and will continue to love playing with them for months and months to come.

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

He also enjoyed the Christmas lights and other decorations, as well as baking and eating Christmas treats.

Hampden Miracle on 34th Street before we left:

From 2010 December

Making brownies:

From 2010 December

The little boy just ate up the entire experience of Christmas:

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

And then there was the Boxing Day blizzard:

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

And, finally, what might be my favorite picture from the trip:

From 2010 December

It took us 15 hours to drive the roundtrip (it should be 8-9), which was painful, but the trip itself was wonderful. Nicholas was spoiled with love and attention--the perfect Christmas. Tomorrow may be a rough transition back into the real world--just Mommy and Daddy.

There are a ton more pictures in The Gallery.

Merry Christmas!

From 2010 December

Christmas Eve

It doesn't seem real that it could possibly be Christmas Eve already. I'm hoping that in a couple hours when we all get dressed up and head out to church it will start to seem real.

Nicholas is having a great time with all of his relatives here, as well as the friends of ours who came over to visit today. We've taken some pictures, but I haven't gotten around to loading them, so you'll just have to wait. He has been pretty good about not touching all the beautiful breakable Christmas decorations and has only hit his head twice running around. Per usual for our trips up here, however, he is not napping well. I eventually got him to nap by lying in a grown up bed with him. He is now sleeping up there by himself and I am jumping at every peep so I can get to him before he can fall out.

Have a very Merry Christmas. I'll try to post photos soon.

Wordless Wednesday: Laundry Dive

From 2010 December

Nicholas Glasses

From 2010 December

Why is Nicholas wearing sunglasses in the house and in the middle of winter at that? I'm glad you asked.

The other night at dinner Nicholas started pointing to his eyes saying "Nicholas glasses." (He hasn't yet figured out possessives.) Now, his pronunciation isn't always great so since his words didn't obviously correlate to any visible object, it took us a couple minutes to figure out.

"Nicholas glasses?" Huge grin letting us know we had correctly interpreted.
"Mommy glasses. (pointing at me) Daddy glasses (pointing at Joe). Nicholas glasses (pointing to his own eye)."
"No, bud, you don't wear glasses."
"Mommy glasses. Daddy glasses. Nicholas no glasses."

He repeated this last line at least 3 times, pointing to each of us in turn. And since he seemed upset to not have glasses like Mommy and Daddy, we pulled out his sunglasses. And it did the trick--he was happy as a clam. He also thought that looking at the Advent candles with sunglasses on was pretty fun. I'm sort of curious what they looked like.