Wahooz, Poems, Snow Travel, and Word Crimes

I was out of town until just yesterday. My plan was to return Monday but I got sick while away and couldn't drive home until Wednesday.

I asked Guy to tell me about last weekend. I transcribed his exact words below. For reference, on Saturday morning Guy took Evelyn with him to pick up Nico from the Grandparents' Salisbury house, where Nico had stayed overnight. He then took both Evelyn and Nico to Wahooz to use the tickets they won by finishing the workout challenge last year. Also, "Odd Saturday", which Guy mentions, is a tradition that Jeff and Allicia and family do on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of every month. They invite friends over to play games and they eat dinner. We do not typically participate because Saturday is our pizza night.

It was snowing and pretty deep when we got there, I almost slid off the road, (but not in a scary way. In a very safe way). At Wahooz, the main attraction was the laser maze, which they went through several times to go avoid lasers. Then played some arcade games. Nico and I played Connect 4. And I won. And um then we tried bowling for a little bit but that didn't last very long. Evelyn wasn't interested. Then what they really wanted to do was play on the Ballocity which was like a giant play area with balls, but not like a ball pit but like a giant multi-story building that has tubes where you can shoot balls and they go in tubes and go all over the place. They disappeared in there for a while, running all over the place. Actually they were there the longest. Then it was time for us to grab our coats and go home, but Nico wanted to play on the spin-a-whirly game, like tilt-a-whirl. I thought he was going to get motion sick but he was all golden. Then when we got home, it was Odd Saturday, I played [games] and Nico watched a movie downstairs which turned into mostly rough-housing with Avery but for the most part they were having fun, and the adults were having fun. Sunday I don't remember what we did. Hey Nico what did we do on Sunday? Nico: Family Meeting. Guy: We did do a family meeting where we filled up my pills for the week. That was Nico's idea. The rest of the days were just kind of doing chores. We wrote poems. 

Here is Guy's poem:

He's a poet!

And here is Nico's (amazing!) poem: 

He took it to school with him to let his teacher read it, and she wrote that sweet note on the bottom. He then told me he has started writing Mrs. Kobe a poem that he's going to let her read when he's done. Here is the start of it:

We've got poets in the house!

Here are some pictures from Guy and Nico's time together: 

 Guy sent me this picture of Nico's perfectly square cheese, Nico insisted he wanted me to see it.

Nico spent the whole time I was away sleeping in our bed with Guy. Guy said Nico is a tornado.

On Sunday they went to see The Lego Movie 2 in the theaters after church. They were giving out these Lego sets! I'm sure they got popcorn and water too. On Sunday they also saw a Downy Woodpecker on the tree out front.

Tuesday, Nico and I were supposed to visit GG, but since I was still in Redding, Guy said he could take Nico. Allicia is out of town at the moment, too, so I was going to be watching the kids this week after school. But on Tuesday I was just going to be watching Evelyn, by taking her with us to GG's house. So, Guy and Nico and Evelyn all went together! They played Jumanji and Evelyn and Guy tied. Afterward, they hit up Jimmy John's.

Wednesday was my travel day home. I woke up in Redding with several inches of snow on the ground and no power at the hotel. I packed up all my belongings with a head lamp on, and dug my car out.

I put chains on my car before leaving the parking lot. I was so grateful for my "mountain training" when I lived with my parents before Guy and I were married. It helped me more than once on this trip - 1st in getting my chains on, and 2nd in not freaking out driving on snow-covered roads with my chains on. I had a lot of people praying me home. 

As I was climbing the mountain of that first pass, I came to a bridge where there were 3 semi trucks stuck in the snow, with just enough space between them for cars to weave through. A police trooper stopped me before I passed the 3rd one, I rolled down my window and he told me if possible that I should turn around and not go any further, that the roads would only get worse from there "They have two feet of snow in Burney!" I imagined plowing through 2 feet of snow with my car. I told him I was still going to go. He told me to make sure I had extra water, a flashlight, and extra blankets, I told him I did. I saw him glance at my front tire for chains and then he waved me on.

About an hour into the trip, after I was over that pass, the chain on my left front tire broke. I had to take both chains off at that point. Thankfully, I was only 7 miles from the nearest town (Burney), and there was no longer snow on the road but just wet cement and a bit of slush. My mom directed me to the nearest Les Schwab, where I got studless snow tires for my car and another set of chains. The 2 feet of snow in Burney was true, but it wasn't on the road. They had piled it all in the middle, it was an easy town to maneuver through and they were well prepared for visitors. The ground was wet, there was no ice anywhere. I didn't have to use chains again! I went over several more passes but there was just sporadic slush. The snow plows kept the road pretty clear. It was a miracle in my opinion, after seeing the reports that the roads would be terrible. The wet roads were steaming themselves dry in front of me.

I arrived in Boise at 9:15 PM, and pulled up to the house to see both my boys outside in the pouring rain, waiting for me to arrive. They gave me a big hug and then helped me unload my car.

It's good to be home!

Here's a picture from today watching the kids after school. Guy came home early to help me out, since I'm still not 100% recovered.

Nico reading DogMan to Avery and Ivy.

All the kids had Valentine's parties today at school, Ivy came home wearing all pink and eating a pink heart sucker.

Nico's Valentine from his teacher was in his planner:

I got an email late last night from Nico's drama club teacher, they have assigned roles in the play they're doing! Nico was assigned the role of King Lobster. He is in Act 2, Scene 2, and then he plays  a different character (one of the sharks) in a later scene. Here's a shot of some of his lines:

There are two full pages like this one, plus another half a page, with his lines scattered like seen here. That's a good amount! Then he's got 3 lines as a shark. The total play is 18 pages long. I think there are 15 kids in his class. His performance is on April 11th, all are invited to come!! If you need specifics let me know!

Tonight Nico is contemplating writing a comic about "Word Crimes", based on a Weird Al video that Guy showed him called Word Crimes. Nico and I watched it tonight and we paused the video every so often so that I could explain what each word crime was (for example, using an apostrophe incorrectly). Then we read Captain Underpants so that I could point out every single word crime. We found about 15 word crimes in the first 2 pages. Captain Underpants is the best book for misspelled words and grammar problems. 

He has asked me to write him a story that has lots of word crimes in it, so I'm going to go do that now. Until next week!

Lost tooth, Bible Study, Valentine's Day

Nico lost his other front tooth Sunday after church! He is toothless. For a few days before this he was having me cut up his sandwiches into strips because biting them hurt.

We had our first Sunday night Bible Study group that night. Guy is leading the study at the Pastor's house and we had a good group of people there. Nico had Sammy and Aadam to play with since Tiffanie was there. I brought some train tracks and car tracks for them to play with. They have a dog, Lucy, that Nico enjoyed petting.

Nico rode his scooter to school every day this week, and has no school tomorrow or Monday. Just today it started raining and the wind started blowing, but the rest of the week has been mostly sunny.

Tuesday was Valentine's Day, Nico was so excited to bring all his cards to school to give his friends. I came to pick him up after school and I was 5 minutes early and saw they were having their party, so I went in. Nico saw me and ran to me and hugged me and said "Mommy you're LATE! You missed most of the party!" Hehe. They were finishing up Bingo.

Nico got a booster pack of Pokemon cards for Valentine's Day and he put them in his Pokemon binder.

Building monsters with the Creature Clash card game

We hooked Alexa up to some speakers, but she's sitting right next to them, so when there's music on she can't hear us. Often times you can hear Nico yelling: "Alexa, Stop! ALEXA, STOP!!!!" We still use her to set alarms and play music and to find out what time it is. "Alexa, what time is it? ALEXA! ALEXA! WHAT TIME IS IT?!?" We should probably move her away from the speakers! She is an integral party of every day. We often listen to music in the morning. Nico has been favoring the "Happy" song, and "What Does the Fox Say?"

He is reading...
Captain Underpants books

He is watching...
Home season 2
A new Pokemon series

We are playing...
Match a Pair of Birds (the official name of the bird matching game)
Creature Clash
New games on the iPad - jet skis, programming, running/jumping games

Valentines, Singing, About Me Book

Looks like the update I did last night was saved as a "draft" and was never posted. Never fear! Everything is A-OK here, I had a late night teaching a henna class and didn't have time to update. Last night's update was just to tell you that the blog would be updated mid-morning on this very day (Friday!)

So, jumping right in!

Last Saturday was the sensory friendly movie, The Good Dinosaur. I was looking forward to seeing it but it wasn't as great as I had hoped. On the way home from the movie Nico told me "I didn't really like that movie" and I told him that I didn't really enjoy it either. I asked him why he didn't like it and he said "because of all the bad stuff in it". Yep, it wasn't the super feel-good animated movies we're used to.

Sunday was the Super Bowl, and no Bible Study that night. Monday was the Discovery Center! Got a video this week with some Discovery Center stuff in it, you can take a look at that at the bottom of the entry.

On Tuesday I volunteered in Nico's class. I really enjoy watching them do the calendar. Nico has become really good at recognizing days. If I already mentioned this, I apologize! When he tells us about things he has done in school he sometimes stops himself and says "No wait, that wasn't today, that was on the 2nd" or whatever day it was. hehe. He told the class on Tuesday that on Monday he went to the Discovery Center with Evelyn. So the kid in charge on that day (Michael) gets to drag and drop stars onto any special date on the smart board at the front of the class. So he dragged and dropped stars onto Monday because of Nico's special Discovery Center date. Wednesday morning on the way to school we encountered Evelyn in the front yard and after we said goodbye to her he said "My friend Evelyn is very nice and very pretty."

OH are you guys ready for some cute school work?

They did an experiment with soda and found out that it eats the enamel of your teeth. I explained to Nico that this doesn't refer to the soda he drinks, in case he was scared, since his soda is just carbonated water. Unless it's the carbonation that hurts the teeth? I sure hope not!

"Tell me about this picture, Nico."
Nico: "This is me and Bruce, we're eating cake"

Nico would like to travel to California. Why? Because they have many cool things there, like horses for example. And he does want to be a cop when he grows up! Just like his Uncle Jonny!

His favorite thing about himself is his heart. I asked him why and he said "Because it's sooooo biiiiiiig, because I love you sooooooo much!"

This is Nico and me on the left, and Allicia and Evelyn on the right. With a door between us. He was sorry he forgot to put arms on me and him.

On Wednesday Nico had his Valentine's Program at school, all the parents came, and they performed songs in the gym. See the video below!!

Thursday was his Valentine's Party at school. Games. Fun. The girl on the right sitting next to Nico is Cairah (pronounced like Kara) is his speech buddy. They are pulled out of class together to get speech therapy with Mrs. Williams every Monday. On Tuesday while I was helping in class, I spent some one-on-one time with Cairah helping her with her math journal, and she snuck the word "poop" into our conversation about how many hearts there were on the page. She giggled uncontrollably. I couldn't help thinking that Nico may have influenced her. Acelyn is on the left, she was in Nico's preschool with him.

To compensate for Nico not being able to eat cookies at the party, I gave him a stick of raspberry chocolate when we got home. It was a large stick. 

Nico was invited to a birthday party for one of his school friends next Saturday. Wahoo!

Ok so now some explanations for what you will see in the Snippets video. You and Me Time one morning consisted of us taking turns singing songs and recording each other doing it on the camera. You'll see some of that. Also, Nico helps me make Guy's lunch every morning. He sits up on the stool at the counter and fills up a jar with yogurt and granola. Lately he has taken to singing while doing this. He sings all the songs he knows and sometimes we take turns. Singing while we work! We make Guy's lunch while Guy takes a shower in the morning. 

Ok I think that's it. I'm hoping I didn't forget anything!

Valentine's Program

Snippets

New Preschool, and New Books!

Monday was a holiday, so Nico's first day at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Preschool was on Wednesday. And darn, I did forget to bring my camera to take pictures. I will try to remember tomorrow. When he gets to class the first thing they have him do is wash his hands, then he can play! I brought in a whole bag of safe Nico snacks for them to use as needed. One of the other students, Michael, made Nico a Valentine even though Nico didn't go to their Valentine's Party. Michael and Nico really hit it off as friends, too. Nico came running up to me excitedly while I was talking to his teacher after school, and asked me if he could go play in the grass with Michael and another boy. Michael is also going to Adam's Elementary next year, just like Nico! They are trying for afternoon session, though, and I am vying for mornings. But, it might work out anyway.

Nico did get to go to his Valentine's Party at White Pine, though! Grandma Russell had sent Nico some boxed valentines that she had found in Great Grandma Gohl's stuff, so Nico chose the Spiderman ones and made all his friends a valentine. He wrote their names on the valentines all by himself, and also signed his name. Going down the list of kids in his class, he came to his own name and made himself a valentine, too. To Nico, From Nico. He also made some for his teachers. They were going to decorate cookies in class, so I sent him with a huge gluten free chocolate chip cookie plus some homemade pink frosting and some pink sprinkles from Whole Foods. I couldn't find a good gluten free sugar cookie, so he got to make himself a frosted chocolate chip one :)

So he still loves his pigeon books, but lately he has been really getting into Curious George. He has "The Complete Adventures of Curious George" book that we got him for his birthday 2 years ago, that came with a CD. He loves to listen to the stories and flip through the book. He is getting very good at this, even though the stories that are read aloud do not have that useful sound that tells you when to turn the page. He has figured it out. He is recognizing more and more words. Orange and zoo are two I can think of off the top of my head.

Then a few days ago he pulled out a different Curious George book that he had, and we read it, and then he flipped the book over and saw that there were 7 other Curious George books that he DIDN'T HAVE! So he asked me to get them from the library. I put them all on hold and this morning we picked up the first two. He is turning into quite the reader. I think he would enjoy more read-aloud picture books so I think I will search for some of those at the library. Any suggestions?

Nico had a stuffy nose for the past week, and then on Monday he had a fever, I think it got up to 101 something. I kept him back from school on Tuesday so he could rest. He now just has a slight cough and stuffy nose.

Tonight at dinner Guy and I were talking about this funny website about Women Laughing Alone With Salad. I just happened to be eating a salad so I joked about taking a picture of me eating it while laughing. Nico heard me talk about taking a picture so he asked me to take a picture of him eating his hot dog. So I did. Then I gave the camera to him and he took a picture of me eating my salad while laughing. He did a pretty good job of framing it I think.

Speaking of salads, the Grandparents Salisbury have been providing us with sprouts that they have grown. Sunflower sprouts, alfalfa, bean, all kinds! Grandma gave us a tray of sunflower seed sprouts that were still growing in their soil and everything, so I've kept it on the counter to harvest them at will. At dinner time I tell Nico to go pick out two or three for himself and he harvests them and then eats them. He doesn't seem to mind that they're green and vegetable since he gets to pluck them out of the soil himself.

See you all next week!

Lexie, Parks, Signs, Stooges

Friday was Valentine's Day and Nico came home with a bunch of Valentines from his friends. It was very fun to open them all. Friday morning I had asked Nico if he wanted to give the bus drivers a Valentine and he said Yes. So we put two of them together. One for Dan, the morning bus driver, and one for Miss Donna, the morning bus attendant. Nico signed his name on both of them! He carried both out to the bus, gave them to Miss Donna as she helped him up the steps, and then stopped when he got to the top so he could take one and give it to Dan. He wanted to communicate something, I could tell, he kind of mumbled and stood there for a bit. They were both so happy and said thank you and Dan shook his hand. Dan and Miss Donna are so friendly and I am so happy Nico has them in the morning! Nico often stops when he gets to the top of the steps so that he can shake Dan's hand.

Then Friday night, we hung out with Lexie while Jonny and Alanna went on a date. Nico had a blast watching Curious George with her late into the night.

Lexie even introduced him to a different cartoon on Netflix about pirates! There is always fun and excitement whenever Lexie is around. 

We had some SUN and warmth this past week! We took full advantage of it and went to the Goose Park two days in a row. I woke up with sore arms after the first day, from pushing Nico on the swing! 

There were also several walks around the block this week. One of note was on Tuesday night. Nico emptied his lego bucket, the one with wheels, put a screwdriver in the bucket, and kept asking to go outside, and kept saying what sounded like "sun". Did he want to go outside into the sun? Guy took him for a walk, and Nico pulled the lego bucket behind him. When they got home Guy told me what the purpose of the walk was. Nico wanted to take his wagon around the neighborhood, not because of the SUN, but to collect SIGNS. An instance of Curious George mimicking! There is an episode of Curious George where he takes his wagon around the town and uses his screwdriver to take down a bunch of signs and put them in his wagon to take them home. Then he goes back out and returns them all. Nico got a good dose of pretend play, they pretended to unscrew signs and put them in his bucket, then pretended to screw them back on.

Other things that Nico wants to do because of Curious George: plant a garden, build a car wash, fly a kite, build a sand castle. I've started making a list of things to do this summer, I mentioned two of them already in a previous entry, but the list is growing, and here it is:

1. Fly a kite

2. Shoot off a rocket

3. Go swimming

4. Go to an apple orchard and pick apples

5. Plant a garden

6. Paddle Boats

7. Feed the ducks

8. Discovery Center

9. Apple Pie

10. Build a sand castle (if possible!)

And a few long term goals (ideas gathered from reading books)

1. Build a car from a kit

2. Fly a plane. Or at least, fly IN a plane.

There is also a ritual that has recently started. It doesn't happen every morning, but perhaps 50% of the time. After breakfast, Nico will get up onto our bed with Guy and watch an episode of Three Stooges before Guy goes to bed. Nico laughs and laughs and laughs and reenacts. We've had to talk to him a few times about not hitting, and Guy is being careful in what episodes they watch (he is, after all, in a mimicking mood these days), but it has been a lot of fun for both of them.

Guy's elimination diet has revealed a sensitivity to lemons and to peanuts! Lemons gave him a migraine and made his trigger finger swell. Peanuts gave him a migraine. We are slowly reintroducing foods, tomorrow we trial grapefruit. And an unexpected outcome: Guy has lost a lot of weight in just the 4 weeks we've been doing this.

This week in school Nico is learning about Dinosaurs. For homework, we had to ask Nico how to cook a dinosaur, with some leading questions, and then write down what he said. Nico agreed that the dinosaur had to have a bath first, and that he had to be boiled. I asked him if he needed to be cooked with vegetables and Nico said broccoli. When I asked him again later how to cook a dinosaur, he pointed to the oven and said "Rrraaaaarrrr!!" I wrote all that down on the paper and sent it back to school with him today.

This morning I taught another essential oils class for pregnancy/birth/babies. It was so much fun! I love teaching that class. I have one more planned for March.

Guy got up to go to the bathroom and when he came back, Nico had grabbed his computer. Multitasking with the iPad!

Watching Curious George on the BIG BIG computer while playing with cars.

 He fell asleep at 6 PM tonight while I was reading him a book about cars. Zonk.

Valentines and a Muddy Park

Nico had his very first snow day on Friday! We were still struggling with illness at the time, so weren't able to take advantage of it by going outside much, though we did take a trip to the Co-op. We needed to buy some walnuts because we just got a nutcracker and we needed to try it out. We cracked some walnuts and talked about squirrels.

On Saturday we had a special dinner. I had asked on Facebook if anyone had the Cars movie that we could borrow, and someone told me she had two copies and that we could have one. Yay! So on Saturday we picked up the movie, and then for dinner I made buffalo burgers (hamburgers made from ground buffalo) and we watched Cars while eating. For dessert we had freshly made cashew butter with molasses (Nico's current favorite treat). I know, molasses, right? It actually tastes pretty darn good, though :)

Saturday is also when Nico's fever started coming back and I started getting sick again too. We hadn't quite gotten over the last cold before this new one hit us. Guy caught it just yesterday, so he's going through it right now. We stayed home from church on Sunday because Nico still had his fever. But we had fun building parking lots with memory game cards.

Monday it was so sunny! Almost 50 degrees outside. We still had the sniffles, but we ventured out to go to the Co-op, and once that fresh air hit me I KNEW we had to stay outside much longer than the few minutes we were planning. So we went to the Fish Park after the Co-op. Snowy and muddy there still, but fun. We also crossed the big stretch of grass to get over to Municipal Park for a brief stint on the playground. The grass was covered in goose poop and mud holes, and we did NOT make it out unscathed. Nico had a bath when we got home and the shoes stayed outside.

This week in school he is learning about Valentine's Day and the post office. They are having a Valentine's party tomorrow, decorating cookies and handing out Valentines. We got Nico some Cars valentines that we put together on Wednesday. The school provided us with a list of names that we cut out (Nico is so good at cutting straight lines, wow!!) and then glued on.

Nico asked me to take a picture of him with this white clippy thing on his nose. He brought me the camera and said "take-a picka Mommy". 

He's been experimenting with saying "Mom" instead of "Mommy", and still says "Guy" sometimes because he knows we think it's funny. He enjoys telling us what he learns in school, and has started singing along to the songs in the car. My favorite one is the Tom T Hall song where he says "and I love you too".  Hearing Nico say that out loud along with the song is just so sweet. He also quotes long sections of Curious George cartoons, in action and in sound effects and in speech. He has a lot of them memorized. One of his favorite things to do is eat his bowl of cashew butter and molasses while lying on the floor watching Curious George and lining up his cars along the edge of the iPad.