Swim

Nico and I went swimming today at the hotel that Grandma Salisbury is staying at. Nico's cousin Lexie was also there. Nico enjoyed the water a lot this time, but came out shivering. We gave him a warm bath afterward and that perked him up.

We got Jimmy Johns for dinner and Nico ate his entire sandwich. Breadless, but still mighty big!

Coffee

Grinding the coffee and waiting for Daddy to count to 20.

Cupcake

Nico, modeling the new pumpkin cupcake.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!! This morning was like any other morning except we read the Christmas story over breakfast and then opened a bunch of presents! Nico loved all his new things, but may have been a bit too overwhelmed by all of it because he had some crabby parts throughout the day. He watched his hour-long Curious George movie a few times, we ate a nice roast chicken dinner, played with his new train set with Daddy in the evening, and then we finished watching Totoro. A very nice day indeed.

We took the picture with our new camera (stay tuned for high def videos, I'm sure I'll be posting some!) We sat in front of the tree for a while, not sure when the self timer would go off, then we realized that it was taking a picture every 5 seconds until we turned it off. Cool feature, because we have a nice collection of about 10 pictures and we actually got a good one!

Christmas Eve

Grandparents Russell stopped by this morning for one last visit before they headed to the airport. We hung out at the table talking and playing with Nico and his cars.

This evening we watched the first half of the movie My Neighbor Totoro. It is so cute! Nico loved it the first time he saw the tiny totoro appear. When he disappears in the movie, Nico signed "MORE MORE MORE MORE" and then when the totoro reappeared, he laughed joyfully. It was very nice to snuggle on the couch with my boys.

Family!

Church this morning, then nap, then more family this afternoon! This evening we made popcorn in our new popcorn popper and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Nico ate his with our new collection of tiny Santa forks.

The picture is from a few days ago, but I had to share this great picture of Nico that Grandpa Russell took.

Family

Grandparents Russell came by again today, bringing G.G. (Great Grandma Russell) with them! We did a gift exchange, ate dinner, then FaceTimed Tom (Uncle Tom to Nico). Lots of fun was had!!

A Visit!

Grandparents Russell came into town today! We ate breakfast for dinner, opened a few gifts and then hung about.

The picture is of Nico and Grandma playing with his new sticker book.

Smelly bed

Nico's big boy bed was delivered today! After Nico was crawling on it for a while, we noticed that he had brown all over his hands. The bed's stain had not finished drying! And his room smells mighty terrible at the moment. By proxy it smells in our bedroom, too, but he'll be spending the night in my bed tonight. I'm hoping by tomorrow the smell has gone down a bit.

We'll get a picture of Nico with the bed as soon as the bed is approachable. The picture for tonight is of Nico playing with cars on our bed. We will turn in shortly and hopefully snuggle ourselves to sleep.

Advent train

Nico and Guy rebuilding the train on the advent calendar and watching it run. A daily occurrence.

Cars

Lining up his cars on the couch.

All better

Nico's fever broke a bit before midnight last night. He woke up as cool as a cucumber and quite his normal self. Go immune system! I gave him some homeopathy last night, perhaps that helped a bit.

I made scones tonight for when Guy comes home from work tomorrow. Saturday morning is our "date night". But I burnt them! Whoops!

Picture is of Nico watching MST3K on the iPad. He enjoys listening to the opening song and rewinds it after the song is over so he can hear it again. You can see his cupcake on his plate, and a little piece of the failed scones. Nico wasn't a fan of the burnt.

Fever

Nico woke up from his nap this afternoon with a fever. 102.2. We snuggled and watched Shaun the Sheep for most of the afternoon. He only nibbled on a banana, and he is asleep now at 5:45. I'm hoping he wakes up feeling better! He's got some reddish cheeks in this photo. Fever topped out at 102.9.

Ho hum

Sitting on the couch at the end of the day.

Coloring

Nico asked to color 3 different times today, always with VBS music playing. He is quite a fan! In the picture, you can see his plate, he was eating a "cookie" (a few slivers of a lara bar).

Also, every evening Nico and I do our computer-based advent calendar gifted to us from Grandma Russell. Tonight we built a train! Nico picked out the cars and I dragged them into place, then we got to watch an animation of our train on the move.

Curious George

Daddy and Nico finishing up watching Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas. A present from Grandpa Russell!

Aglow

Winter Garden Aglow tonight at the Botanical Garden. Yearly picture done!

Snuggles

Nico has lately been taking his blanket out of his crib and crawling up onto the couch and lying down with it. It's been a daily thing for about the past week.

WinCo

We went to WinCo this morning. Nico likes WinCo for a few reasons - he likes to "jump" over the lines on their floor. And he likes to help me with the self checkout. He squeals whenever he helps me put the money in the money taker. I also let him push the buttons on the screen.

We wrapped up our day by hanging out on the couch. Nico is playing with the "Little Red Hen" story book on the iPad. And I am updating the blog!

Also of note - you can see the rash on Nico's chin. I've surmised that he didn't have hand foot and mouth disease last month, because the rash on his chin, though it went away for a few days, came back and is still there. Not sure what that week long illness was that he had, but I'm guessing it likely wasn't HF&M.

Car Line

A lot of the time, Nico likes to take toy cars with us whenever we go anywhere. He piles them in his diaper bag. Well today, we emptied the diaper bag of all his cars, so he sat on the floor in his room and lined them all up.

Aquarium

We went to the Idaho Aquarium today for the first time. I remembered afterward that I was going to stay away from the mall area because of holiday traffic. Whoops! But we had fun. Nico was so excited he ran around to everything several times.

We also saw a real live train today! The tracks run right by the aquarium.

Matching

Nico and Daddy playing a match game. Nico loves playing this!

Train

We went to the market this morning. After Nico's nap we went to Barnes and Noble so he could play with the train. The traffic around the mall is really bad so we likely won't be going back until after Christmas!