Grandparents Russell, Tea, Bird Bingo

On Friday Nico's class had a Mother's Day Tea that I attended. They had the classroom all set up and I sat across from Nico at his desk. He pulled out his journal and we read through the entire thing while we waited for the other mothers to arrive.  I can't wait to share some of his journal entries with you all when the journal comes home at the end of the year.

When everyone was there, Mrs. Smith went around the room and each child got to introduce their guest and tell the others why they're special. When it got to Nico, he said "My Mom is special because I love her so much!" And while he was saying "I love her so much" he pretended to faint and laid down on the floor.

After everyone went around, it was time to serve the food. Nico asked me what I wanted and then he went and told Mrs. Smith and she handed Nico my order. I ordered one fruit kabob. After all the moms got their orders, the kids got theirs. Nico ordered a fruit kabob as well and also went and got each of us a glass of apple juice.

After eating, we got to open our gifts. Nico made me a cut out of his hand with clay, signing "I love you" with a rose between his fingers.

It came in a sweet bag.

He said to me this week: "Mommy, when you die... and then when I die, and in heaven, I will come find you because I love you sooooo much!"

Later on Friday we got to see the Grandparents Russell because they came into town!! They came over and hung out until Nico's bedtime. It was so sweet to see Nico snuggling with them! They brought Nico a Bird Bingo game and we played it that night, too!

Saturday morning we drove over to GG's house to visit her. It was the first time Nico and Guy had seen her new place living with her sister Pat. They have a pasture that lines their backyard and they often see horses back there close to the fence. We didn't see any this time, I am sure we'll catch them on one of our visits. The Grandparents met us at GG's house and we played another round of Bird Bingo with everyone, then headed home for lunch. After lunch we headed off to the Aquarium! 

We spent about 45 minutes there and then drove over to where the Grandparents were staying so we could take a dip in their hotel pool. Here's Nico and his sweet new spiderman towel!

Then we ventured back home with everyone and made pizza for all of us. 

It was a VERY fun and full day and I'm so glad we were able to spend that time with them! We will see them again in June when we *FLY* out there!

On Sunday at church I applied henna to someone on stage during the sermon. The tattoo illustrates the sermon, which was about clothing yourself with inner beauty instead of with fancy clothes. 

After church we went over to the Grandparents Salisbury house armed with our Bird Bingo game, and played a blackout round with everyone. Uncle Jonny, Aunt Alanna, and Lexie were also there! Oh fun was had!

On Tuesday, Brianna came over for dinner for the last time before she moves away. She will be visiting every few months so we will get to see her, but not as often as we have been.

Nico worked on his "Day of Learning" project today. It's an optional research and presentation project that anyone at the school can participate in. Nico put together a tri-fold poster presentation about the Purple Martin (bird). He is proud of it, and will take it to school to set up next Tuesday. We are checking out a bird book from the library this Saturday that may inspire him to add more to his poster, but he says he's happy with it the way it is. Fine with me!

Ok that's it for this week! See you guys next time!

Milestone

Last week of school, just one more day tomorrow of playing in the park with "new preschool" friends, and then a graduation ceremony with "old preschool" friends. Busy day. Last day. Sad day. Happy day! He will then be ready for a New Day. Ok that's enough of that.

Guy has worked like 15 days straight, and has 3 more to go before he has a day off. Wow! Even though he's working overtime, he still took Nico out on Saturday, to the Aquarium! They had a lot of fun and Nico apparently touched a fish! He asked to go back to the Aquarium the next day.

Sunday was Ivy's baptism, so Nico and I went to Jeff & Allicia's church to join them. They go to Beautiful Savior Lutheran church, the same one where Nico has his preschool, so Nico was familiar with it. He asked where Teacher Chris was. He looked for her. He found her! There was no Bible Study that night, so we had time to hang out as a family. To the park we went! Tried to fly a kite, we were successful for a little while, I think the wind kept changing directions so we couldn't keep it up for long.

And so on to the milestone. Nico has learned to ride a bike! I think it was Monday night, Nico was hanging out outside in the backyard like he is oft to do in the evenings lately. Apparently Jeff was in the garage working on some stuff and Nico was showing interest in riding his (Nico's) bike, so Jeff helped him with it and took him out to the alley. And a few minutes later they had gone around the block and showed up at our front door. Jeff knocked. I answered. "Do you want to show your Mommy what you can do?" Huzzah! We went back around the block to the alley and it was incredible! He still couldn't steer very well but he was riding a bike! The next morning we booked it to the park, with Evie, to practice riding his bike in the big basketball court there. A LOT of room to learn how to correct steering and balance issues. He was PRO after only a few minutes on the court. I felt myself bursting with pride that he learned a new skill. I just couldn't believe it. I often forget that he is a child and is still learning things, I expect him most times to just stay the same. SO when he learns something new, when he improves in speech, when he is kind and thoughtful out of the blue, I am taken aback and I just marvel. He has been so much easier to talk to these days about feelings and how to treat people, he is responsive and I have actually been seeing fruit from it.

Anyway, Evelyn didn't bring her bike and so Nico gave her a turn on his. You can see all this in the video below.

We went to the park the next morning. And then this morning as well. Early morning park visits are awesome. I am feeling a tad bummed that the Literacy Academy will take up Nico's mornings for a whole month this summer. It will be harder to play outside in the afternoons when it is sunny and hot, and when bedtime is 7 PM that doesn't leave a lot of time for the air outside to cool down before having to hop into bed.

We have started watching Bill Nye the Science Guy with Nico, and he is very interested in it. There are a few that he is watching over and over again. One about volcanoes and one about digestion. He knows the word "chyme" now. hehe. There is a scene from the volcano one that he rewinds and watches over and over again, laughing every time. He quotes it, too. You can see him do this in the video.

We put a Bill Nye book on hold at the library, as well as a few books about volcanoes. Nico asked this morning "I want a volcano Bill Nye activity book" haha.. well, there is no such thing. Oh well.

Picture below is of Nico doing one of his "challenges". I would never have thought of this if it wasn't for my mom doing this same sort of thing for us when we were little. "Nico, I have a challenge for you. Ride circle-eights in the basketball court 3 times." "Nico, you're next challenge, is to ride your bike over to the park, go down a slide, and then come back, and do that 3 times." I did this for both Evie and Nico when they got tired of just riding in circles on the basketball court. I had to give each of them different challenges because Nico didn't want Evie to have the same ones as him.

Bill Nye the Science Guy

Waiting for the bus. No more bus for this little dude.

May 2015 Snippets

High Fives while Biking

Apples and Fried Green Tomatoes

Nico had Friday off from school so we took a trip to the Aquarium. We got there a little early and so we sat in the car eating our snack, and we were pleasantly surprised when a train decided to pass by. Nico was excited about that. At the Aquarium we saw a turtle eating sand. That evening around the dinner table, Guy asked Nico what he saw at the Aquarium and he told him turtle. eat. Then he signed sand. Sure do love it when Nico tells us about the things he sees. He is repeating so many more words and phrases. It is a marvel to be able to communicate with him on this level!

Saturday we went to the Market. We walked to one of the fountains downtown, and then ventured into a game store to look around. It's never too early to get Christmas ideas! :)

On Monday my cousin Sarah came over for a visit. Nico, Sarah, and I spent some time coloring on Nico's collection of fuzzy posters. It was so great to see her and to catch up!

On Wednesday I went to Nico's school to volunteer for the first time. This week is apple week so I cut out a lot of apples! I didn't get to see Nico in his classroom, but it was fun thinking that he was in very close proximity to me. In another two weeks I'll be volunteering again.

For apple week, Nico and his classmates are learning about the life cycle of apple trees. Today they got to taste three different kinds of apples and choose their favorite one. Then they made apple pies. Homework was coloring three different apple trees: one for Spring, Winter, and Fall.

This week we also picked the rest of the tomatoes in our garden and tried out a few green tomato recipes. Nico LOVES picking tomatoes.

You can also see the small leaves of a chard plant sitting on top of the bowl. None of our beans or greens grew very big this year. I'll do some troubleshooting and try again next spring. I think the bulk of our crop next year will be beans. Probably 1 tomato plant, and maybe a lettuce or two. 

So the first recipe I tried was fried green tomatoes. I didn't add enough seasoning and Guy said they tasted much like breaded broccoli stems. ha ha! So I spiced 'em up the second time around and Guy loved them! Adding sugar to the mix seemed to make a difference.

With the rest of the tomatoes I made a salsa. Just green tomatoes, 1 jalapeño, 1 red onion, 1 clove garlic, some olive oil, and that's that! I pureed it all in our food processor and Guy ate it with chips. Yum. Garden success!

On to next week!

Sprinkler

Jumping right into pictures here..

We harvested from our garden for the first time - broccoli!

Playing

 At the Aquarium

He read his tractor books and decided to attach some floss to the hitch on the back of his tractors. You can kind of see the floss at the bottom of the picture.

Nico wasn't feeling well on Saturday, woke up with some stomach problems. But we have finally reached the milestone of Nico knowing when he is going to throw up! He asked for his bucket several times, and hung his head in there to wait for it. I don't think it was viral, as he made up for missing breakfast and more after his nap. I think we're dealing with some food intolerances.

We skipped church on Sunday to make sure he was fully recovered.

Nico seems to be a lot more interested in repeating sounds and words this week without being asked. I've stopped recording individual words that he says, because he now repeats too many things to keep track.

Short and sweet today. Leaving you with a sprinkler shot!

Strider Strides

It turns out that it's a hit and miss with dried apples at one or the other market. They switch back and forth! We were out of luck in choosing the right market last Saturday, but thankfully there was another vendor selling dried apples that we were able to buy from. Nico also got a balloon snake made for him. And then we actually ended up going to BOTH markets since we were able to easily find a parking spot for the other one. We bought some bok choy and radishes.

Stopping at some benches to eat some dried apples before walking back to our car.

Lots of parks this week. We've discovered which ones are best as morning parks and which are best as afternoon parks. The best of the best afternoon park is Memorial Park.

At Memorial Park

In the afternoon the entire park is covered in shade! So if it's a hot day, this is the only acceptable park to go to in the afternoon. The Fish Park would be 2nd, but a lot of it is still in the sun. At Memorial Park last week, we started a new thing - Nico gives me a high five on the way down the slide. He enjoyed this so much that the other kid at the park wanted to do it, too. So for a while, Nico and this little girl went up and down the slide, each giving me a high five as they passed. And when I say they went UP the slide, I mean it literally! They would both give me high fives on the way up, too.

Nico's fever seemed to return on Monday, so I went back to  using the essential oils and humidifier in his room. I've been running his humidifier every night since then. I figured tonight would be the last night, since he hasn't had a smidge of a temperature since Monday and his runny nose is all gone. I may have decided to run it tonight only because I preferred filling it back up with water over dismantling it and putting it away.

On Tuesday we had an appointment to get our vents cleaned out, but when the technician was down in our crawl space setting things up, he found that the top part of a section of our vent had been replaced with a strip of fiberglass insulation, and it had caved in. The picture he took showed us that the insulation had caved in and was almost blocking the entire airway. We told our landlord and he will be sending someone out to take a look at it.

We went to the aquarium on Wednesday, and met a friend and her two small sons there. Nico also had another speech therapy appointment on Wednesday. She brought a whole bunch of new toys and new strategies. She gave me a handout and left some activities for us to do during the week. She encouraged me to spend time helping him make sounds. So I added it to our morning routine. Right after chores we'll be spending some time focusing on sounds. Marcia makes it look so easy!!

A typical evening

Nico likes to "tighten" the bolts on his Strider. And hook up the pump to the fake air intake valves on his tires. I love this picture because you can see how excited he was that he got the pump hooked up. He puts his hands on the back of his hips and smiles.

Testing out the spinning wheel

And a Nico Snippets VIDEO is coming up!! It is still uploading to youtube (40 minutes left) but will be posted soon! Nico has really started to catch on to riding the Strider - you will see some of his smooth moves in the video!

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.