Friends and Family

We visited G.G. on Friday! She got Nico a police car which she had ready for him when he walked in. He was very excited about that. She also shared some of her garden's bounty with us. Onions, beans, lettuce, so yummy! We will get to see her again this weekend at Nico's birthday party. He will be 3 years old!

On Saturday we went up to the cabin for a BBQ. Lots of cousins for Nico to play with. And a Papa, who attempted to build for him the most difficult lego possible, because Nico asked him to :) They have a lot of fun together.

Reading a book with Papa.

Nico's 3 year checkup was good. Right on target for growth, etc.

On Tuesday our friend Josh came over for a visit. We knew Josh in college, and he was the one who played the mandolin at mine and Guy's wedding. He also lived with us for a while when we lived in Washington. He brought us some tools to transfer our VHS tapes to digital. He also gave Nico some Korean coins to put into his piggy bank. He has been a school teacher in Korea for the last few years, and will be heading back there in the next few months. He plans to be at Nico's birthday party, so we will get to see him again soon.

Nico and Josh building towers.

We gave Nico one of his birthday presents early - a $5 sprinkler! He has had so much fun running through it. He liked rotating between running through the sprinkler and playing with his sandbox. He must have been feeling beachy. He also likes picking up little bits of sand and throwing them into the sprinkler.

Nico had his last speech therapy appointment today. He turns 3 on Monday, so he no longer qualifies for the Infant/Toddler Program. He will be a month without speech therapy before he starts school in August. I am so excited for him to go to preschool. He will have so much fun with the other kids. He is quite a socialite these days!

We checked out a "kit" from the library about Music. It has a bunch of instruments in it (tambourine, sticks, other things I don't know the names of) and some books and CDs. Nico looove banging on the tambourine with the sticks. I think he'll like his birthday present from us (a drum!).

The Grandparents Russell are coming this weekend for Nico's Birthday! We have a birthday party planned for Sunday and his actual birthday is on Monday. It will be so much fun, I am looking forward to celebrating my little buddy.

Stay tuned next week for birthday pictures.

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!

Ten-tee

Nico said a sentencey phrase on Monday! I went to the dentist and when I came home, Nico said "Mommy. Ten-tee. Car. Daddy." Interpretation: Mommy went to the dentist in the car, and Daddy stayed home with me! I told the speech therapist about this on Tuesday and she was excited. Also, Nico was really cooperative on Tuesday and Marcia was able to move on to more advanced techniques, like trying to say a word with a consonant on the end, like BED. He's not able to copy the sounds just yet on those. She also worked on repeating sounds a certain number of times, or alternating sounds. Like "buh buh buh" or "buh ba buh ba". Nico caught on to the repetition, but not the alternating. On Thursday (Marcia came over twice this week!) Nico initiated his own ABC app on his iPad and took Marcia through it, repeating everything in it, just like she would have asked him to do. He seems more eager these days to repeat words.

Nico has also been doing a lot of two syllable words all on his own. He said "meatball" by saying "Ha (the Hhh sound that an H makes) bah". The "Ha" means that it was hot. So, he said hot ball! He strung two words together to describe something else! This is definitely a milestone for him. Also, cocoon, and various other random ones.

On Sunday we went to the cabin to hang with family. Nico got to see his cousin Alexis, they have a lot of fun together!

We also saw Sarah, and Allicia and Evie this week. The speech therapist also was here twice, trying to get more appointments in before Nico turns 3 in a few weeks.

Nico got a black eye this week from falling into his bed after trying to swing his leg over the last step without holding onto anything. Ouch!

Now for some pictures..

Playing with the sandbox.

 Helping me sort foam shapes for an activity we are doing at his birthday party. He was getting really fast at this near the end. He would hold two different colors, one in each hand, then scope out where they went, and then ... paused... and said GO! And then would put each color away at the same time.

 Our broccoli is almost ready to harvest!

An interesting seed pod on our walk tonight.

And one last note - on a walk earlier this week, Nico spotted a MINI on the street, and pointed to it and said "MINI!" So impressed with his car recognition!

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!

Scoots

Nico got to spend some time at the cabin with the Grandparents Salisbury. He really enjoys chopping pine needles with Papa. Check out the video at the end of the post! Nico throws away the pine needles if they are too big (he knows from experience that they are harder to chop).

One thing he did while he was at the cabin, that he repeated here at home, was line up all of his cars around the table. When he did this at home, his basket of cars was in his bedroom and he would run back there and get a few to bring back to the table. Back and forth until he had enough.

Nico received an early birthday present this week from the Grandparents Salisbury. A scooter! We took it out for a spin. He was VERY excited. Thank you both!!

On Saturday we went to both Saturday markets. In the parking garage elevator, Nico pressed the Emergency Call button, which automatically made a call to 911. The automated voice kept repeating (very loudly): THERE IS AN EMERGENCY IN THE _______ ELEVATOR. I thought it would never stop, but when it finally did, the 911 dispatcher came over the speakers and asked if there was an actual emergency. I told her that my young son had pushed the button not knowing what it did. She said thank you for letting her know. Phew!

Both of our speech therapy appointments this week were cancelled. The first one by Marcia, the second one by us. Nico woke up this morning and as soon as we got him up, he emptied his stomach contents onto Guy's shoulder. He was fine afterward, and we had a normal day, 3 meals (although a delayed and reduced breakfast) and our normal snacks, but I cancelled anyway, just in case!

Some more pictures...

At Memorial Park - static hair

Spraying bug repellant on our garden (look at those huge broccoli leaves!)

Video courtesy of Grandma Salisbury!

p.s. Ran into a neighbor on a walk this week that remembered Nico's rain walk last week. She said it was so cute to see Nico walking around in his yellow rain jacket, head totally obscured from view by his humongous umbrella. We had walked right by their front window and they just got a kick out of it.

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!

Strider Cam

Last Saturday Guy and I went to a Christian Homeschoolers convention in Nampa, though the two classes we both wanted to go to had nothing to do with homeschooling. I went to a disaster preparedness class and Guy went to a class about reducing your grocery budget. They both occurred at the same time so we both took notes and shared them afterward. We then went to the closing ceremony, where the speaker talked about "Choosing the hard things". Parenting is hard, but it's good. People tell you all the time that your children grow up fast and you will soon be missing their littleness, and when you're in the midst of it, comments like that don't seem to mean much. But he said "believe me..", your children will grow up and you will miss them, so hold on to the hard things, because they're the best things. After the convention, we had a little time to spare so we went to Red Robin and then to get coffee. It was a great little "date". Grandma Salisbury watched Nico while we were in Nampa, and she took him to Rory's 4th birthday party. 

On Sunday after Church and nap, we all went up the cabin. We got to see the Grandparents Salisbury and Aunt Ellen. We hung out and played with essential oils. 

Pouring oils into vials

Watching Shaun the Sheep with Grandpa

Grandpa Salisbury took Nico outside and was helping him use an ax to chop some pine needles and small pieces of wood. Nico really enjoyed chopping pine needles in half with an ax!

Over the next few days, Guy gave me my birthday presents. The first one was a replacement calendar for the wall in our kitchen, since we were halfway through with 2013 and I wanted some of 2014 on the wall to look at. The second present was a bunch of GIFs of pictures taken throughout the past few years. Loved this!! Here are a few of them:

The third present was a bunch of bookmarks for my myriad of books that I am in the middle of reading. He printed pictures into strips and cut them out into bookmarks. Loved loved loved all my presents!

Today we got a box from the Grandparents Russell with a toy in it for Nico! A wooden nuts and bolts kit. Nico loves it (and so does Guy). Perhaps next week I'll post the video of him and Guy playing with it. I could post it today, but I have run out of time, because I spent most of it putting together the Strider Cam video! For now, here is a picture:

And now here it is, the official Nico Strider Cam Video.

Sprinkler

Not much happened this past week, but I'm okay with that!

For the longest time, Nico has been imitating something he saw on one of his cartoons, but we couldn't figure out which one! We would ask him if it was on Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Curious George, and he'd say "yes" to one of them randomly. But by chance, this week, we found which cartoon it came from! Guy was watching cartoons with him and it happened on a Curious George episode. The imitation is him saying "guh guh guh" and stabbing the air with his folded hand. You can see it in the video.

Today we went to see Allicia and Evie. They recently got some chicks, so we got to hold them and pet them, they were so cute.

Not much else happened this week, unless I'm not remembering very well, which is a possibility.

Pumping up his ball

Rolling himself up in the rug (as seen on Curious George)

Running through the sprinkler

So wet!

Video!

Arlingtown!

Last weekend was our trip to Arlington. It was Guy's Grandma's 90th birthday celebration, so we got to see a lot of family. I was able to meet relatives I had never met before! We also had a nice amount of downtime just hanging with Guy's parents and brother. We had an adventuresome walk/Strider ride to a local park, and we were also able to go to the River (the place Guy asked me to marry him!) Nico really enjoyed throwing rocks in the river, which he started to do after he saw Uncle Tom (Guy's brother) skipping rocks. Walking through the wooded area to get to the river was fun and damp, a little muddy, but beautifully green.

We were able to go to our old church on Sunday, which was nice. We saw old friends, and Nico actually did just fine in the nursery, and didn't want to leave!

Guy decided to switch to a day schedule on this trip so he could have more time with family (he's a night worker, so normally has a night schedule). He drank a lot of coffee, and was very tired, but he did it! He's still trying to get back into the swing of working nights after being back a few days.

We learned a lot of valuable lessons about traveling with a toddler. Keep everything simple! Don't put too much into the back seat so you don't have to go through more than one bag trying to look for something. Don't bring too many toys from home, they take up space and don't hold their attention. Bring several NEW toys for them to play with. Don't be afraid to use the iPad! And always keep the toddler fed so that low blood sugar doesn't cause breakdowns. That last one applies to everyone! :)

Without further ado - pictures!

Both boys sleeping on the drive over.

Right after arriving, Nico started playing with Grandpa's wooden toolbox

A room full of family

At the river

With Great Grandma Gohl - I love that her and Nico are exchanging looks.

Watching trains on the iPad with Grandpa

Our trip home - stopping at Miner Burger in Yakima - a ritual!

Beautiful day to eat outside

A video!