Pee, Ah-bee!

Before I talk about this week, there is one thing about last week that I forgot to mention. We checked out a book from the library for Nico about Classic Cars. He loves it, and on his way through it the 3rd or 4th time, we turned to a page with a Mini on it. I said "Mini" and he repeated it right after me. Then he said "Dah dah!" and pointed to his room where his cars were. He went to his room and found a hot wheels MINI! He kept saying "Mini" over and over again. He talks about the Mini all the time, finds it in his book, pulls his own out, points to both.

He is also now able to identify a Beetle ("Bee-dee") and a Bug ("Buh"). He says so whenever he finds them in his book. I've started pointing Bugs out to him whenever we're out and about.

We went to the zoo on Friday. I brought Nico's snack with us and we ate it on a bench. We stayed at the zoo longer than usual. We saw the butterflies, fed the goats, and tried to avoid the dinosaurs.

Saturday we went to visit Lizzie and Bruce and Rory again. 

On Monday, the Library. We've been trying to go to the Library as a family every Monday afternoon.

At the Fish Park on Wednesday, we saw 3 fawns total, two of them were feeding on the Mommy deer, it was sweet to see. Didn't catch a picture of that, but was able to get a picture of Nico and the deer.

And Nico and the owl.

Fun with water (it's been so hot lately!)

Fun with holey socks.

Advances on the potty front: Nico pees standing up! For the first time today. All over the iPad. I've been letting him go into the bathroom by himself sometimes, and this morning I went in there about a minute after him, and there was pee all over the floor and he was standing up. I figured he had tried to empty the potty into the toilet and had missed. But then it happened again, and this time he was standing over the iPad, saying "Pee, Ah-bee" (Pee, iPad!) I wasn't sure what had happened... But then Guy got up for the day, took Nico potty once, and before he left for work he warned me: "Nico peed standing up today, so be careful if you ever let him try to pee by himself." Ah ha! So this evening, whenever he walked into the bathroom, I bolted in after him. Sure enough, he lifts the lid on the toilet and tries to pee right into the bowl. I think after his practice sessions today, he almost has it down!

Another new-ish thing that Nico has been doing is getting out of his bed at night. I told him that if he has to go to the bathroom, that he is able to get out of bed and go potty. Last night we hit a new record, he got out of bed about 4 times right in a row before he finally admitted he had to go potty. Once he went potty, he went right back to sleep. Cool!

That's it for this week!

Picka Park

On Friday we went to visit G.G. in Nampa again. Always have a fun time there!

Saturday we went to visit Lizzie and Bruce and Rory.

For Father's Day I made some peppermint patties that Guy really enjoyed. I used this recipe. That evening we went to a park we hadn't been to in a very long time. We asked Nico to pick a park, and he started saying "guhba guhba". Turns out he was saying "pick a park", thinking that Picka was an actual Park. That was quite endearing. So we chose to go to a park that we hadn't been to in a while (a VERY long while). It's now called Picka Park, the actual name of it is Baggley, which sounds very similar to guhba guhba. See video for the Picka Park/guhba guhba dilemma.

While there, Nico started playing with a little girl a little older than him (4 or 5 maybe?) This girl adapted really quickly to Nico's lack of words. She heard his "dah dah" and started communicating back to Nico by saying "dah dah" just like he was. They had a lot of fun. When she would want to go to a new area of the park, she'd point and say "dah dah". Nico would do the same. She would also talk to him, and seemed to understand and act on his yeses and nos. It was so much fun to watch Nico interact with her. Guy and I are excited for this fall when Nico will get to be around a lot more children every day in preschool!

Today we went to the Botanical Garden with Allicia and Evie. We saw a lot of the garden this time and stayed for about an hour. Nico kept cracking up when Allicia would use her silly voice to say "Uh oh!"

This afternoon Nico had another speech therapy appointment. Last week Marcia and I were talking about activities that I can do with Nico to help strengthen the language part of his brain. One of the things is to play pattie-cake type hand clap games which require Nico to cross his left arm to the right and his right arm to the left. Also when we dance to music, to hold his hands and cross them. When I put a diaper on him, to cross his legs back and forth for him (he wears a diaper at night and at nap still). This apparently helps the left brain talk to the right brain. So I started incorporating movements like this into our play.

Last week Nico and I sat down at the table and put together some speech tools. We are working on B, M, N and P. The letter goes in the middle of the page and each vowel sound goes around the letter in a circle. We practice saying the letter with each of the vowels following it, and we put a small pink gem on each vowel after he says it. We also covered each page with stickers of words that start with that letter, and we practice saying each of the words. He puts a gem on each sticker as he says them. He can't say the whole word, so we work on the letter with the vowel sound following. For example, for "monkey" I have him say "muh". For "bat" I have him say "bah". He's been doing really well and knows the routine now. We only do two letters a day so as not to get them jumbled up too much in his head.

And yesterday, our walk in the rain. The sun came out right after I took this picture but Nico walked the whole way with the umbrella open and over his head :)

Video time..

p.s. As seen in video: New bike seat (new to us) is from Grandma Salisbury. Tried it out once, will have to update more about it later!

Cousins, Sniffles and Storms

On Saturday morning, Nico and I met Lizzie and Bruce and Rory at Municipal Park to plaaay! It was great to see all of them. Bruce is so attentive to Nico and loves to help him do things and make sure that he is being safe on the playground. He also really likes to make Nico laugh. What a great cousin!

On Sundays we are continuing to go to a Bible Study hosted by people from our church. They are very welcoming of us and of Nico. We bring cars for Nico to play with and they also have a bag of cars for him to play with. He lies on the floor and plays with the cars, or gets up and walks around showing the cars to the people. About halfway through he'll wander over to where we are to get a snack. I bring him a banana or a baggie full of cut up dried apricots and nuts. It has been very nice to be a part of the group. There are about 6 regular attenders other than us, all of them older, and they refer to themselves as "grandparents" to Nico. 

Sunday morning Nico had started randomly sneezing, and Monday morning he woke up with a slight fever and a case of the sniffles. Grandma Salisbury came over for a visit and brought with her some essential oils since I had run out of Melaleuca (the one I use to ward off ear infections). It was great to have her for a visit!

The next day, Nico was really itching to get outside. Even though he still had a bit of a heightened temp, we went out to go for a walk. WHO can resist the mild temperatures and the sun and the birds singing and the fresh air?? I was pretty sure it would be good for us! When we got outside, Nico literally RAN around the block with me. Then we walked a second time around. He had a lot of built up energy!

We have had mild weather days, but we've also had a few storms. We had thunder so loud Monday night that I about jumped through the roof. Guy also mentioned that it was the loudest thunder he had ever heard. It shook the whole house and continued shaking it and rumbling for about 15 seconds. Nico wasn't fazed by it at all. We also had quite a wind storm last night that was pretty incredible. When I went to bed in the evening there were leaves all over our bed that had flown in through the window.

On Wednesday both Guy and I woke up with sore throats. Looks like the cold has become a family affair! I had to reschedule our monthly visit to G.G. for next Friday instead of tomorrow. I don't want to spread it around!

I got a call from the school district today and we set up our next meeting to talk about preschool. It looks like Nico is officially set to go to preschool in the fall - August 28th is the first day of school, a mere month after he turns 3 years old. At the meeting we will talk about logistics and I will likely know at that time which part of the day he will be going, and how many days per week. The meeting is Wednesday May 22nd, so a few weeks away. I am looking forward to it!

The nightly ritual of playing on our bed

Running some errands - Nico has his harmonica

Running up the stairs at the library

No speech therapy this week, but Nico has added a few words to his vocabulary. Grandma is "nama", Banana is "nana", iPad is "O-bah". We've been trying to remember to enforce all of them! Guy remarked that he has noticed Nico has been babbling a lot more and trying out a lot of new sounds.

Trip to the Fish Park

Train

Went to Barnes and Noble tonight and Nico played with the toy train while I read a book about gardening. We ran into the little boy Miles that Nico played with once. Him and his mom (Liz) and dad were also there.