Lima Love

If I had to make a list of cities that I would NEVER live in, I think Lima might be number one. I fail to see the appeal of that city. Now, I've really only been in a Lima four times....for less than 48 hours each time, so I admit that I haven't seen very much of the city. But I think I've only been to Chicago four or five times and that city would be one of my top choices on my "Cities I want to live in" list.

This trip to Lima was definitely more fun and enjoyable than past trips, but I still don't see why people come from all over the country to live in Lima when Cusco and Trujillo are much prettier and nicer.
(Here we are with Mando's sister, Estela, his Dad, and his great-aunt, Tia Chapita.)

I am grateful for Lima, however, because we were able to make our first entry in the Tirado family travel annals. (Our own little version of the Rockwood family annals...funny stories from our travel experiences). We arrived in Lima around 11:45 p.m. on the 25th, and took a taxi to the hotel that was right around the corner from Mando's aunt's house. We had been traveling since 7:oo in the morning, going on pretty much no sleep, sweaty and stinky from holding and chasing Nicholas all day long, so we were really ready to just collapse into bed and take a nice long shower in the morning.

We were going to stay in a hotel on the other side of the street, but we f0und a cheaper hotel closer to his aunt's house that looked really nice in the pictures on the website. We were saving about 50 bucks and it was only one night, probably only about eight hours total, that we would be there, so we thought, "Even if it's not that great, it's only a few hours anyway... totally worth saving 50 bucks." Cue daunting music...duh, duh, duhhhhh.

We get out of the taxi, walk into the lobby and there's no room to roll the suitcases because there are random wooden poles of different sizes holding up the ceiling. I thought that was a bad omen, but I was still hoping it was just remodeling or something, and the rooms would, of course, be fine. We climbed the stairs, sleeping toddler and four suitcases in tow, where we opened the door (which had a click-lock like the kind you'd find on a bathroom door) to a small room just big enough for the double bed and a small patio table and plastic yard chairs. Oh my goodness, I'm laughing just thinking about it. One entire wall was a window open to the street. I tried to go close the slats of the window (it was a picture window on one side, and the other half had glass slats that opened and closed like venetian blinds. Do you know what I'm talking about?), but when I touched the glass, one of the slats came crashing down and shattered on the floor....oops. So now we had a big hole with nothing....and no way to block out the city sounds or the air.

Next I looked in the bathroom where I found a toilet with no toilet seat, a big hole in the cieling where I could see the next room, and a sink that shot out rusty water. No soap, no towels, and I think there was a fourth a roll of toilet paper. So the next morning we ended up taking showers and using t-shirts to towel off with. I kept envisioning Dad in the parking lot of a motel with a roach crawling into his shirt and laughing. The whole thing just made me chuckle. From the hard, tiny bed with a cold breeze blowing in from the window all night, to watching the hole in the bathroom ceiling while I showered to make sure no heads poked through to peep on me---- it was all an expeirience that cements my feelings of "love" for Lima. :)
(We thought it would take a while for Nicholas to get used to everyone, but he LOVED the attention and immediately took to everyone we met!)

As a side note: Every where else we've been here in Peru has been very nice :) That was an exceptional example of grossness and was to be expected when you decide to only pay $20 for a hotel room in a big city. It is not in any way a statement on Peru in general.

As for Nicholas, he was GREAT in the traveling experience. What a trooper. He took some great naps during all of the flights, and he was pretty calm and easy to deal with throughout the rest of the time. We had a layover in Houston, just enough time to get a good dinner and let him run around playing soccer in the gate area.

After almost 48 hours of straight traveling, here's my happy baby playing peek-a-boo with the safety information card on our last flight to Trujillo. What a great little guy! :)

Recent Developments

It's amazing to see how a child's mind forms and grows day by day. I'm so grateful that I'm able to be at home with Nicholas all day, every day (Shout out to my wonderful husband for working all day, every day to make that possible! We--me and Nitch-- love you, Mando!). If I weren't home with him, I wouldn't catch the tiny things he does that show me he's developing and growing. I probably wouldn't notice the way he couldn't do something on Monday, but by Friday he has learned how to do it. I just wanted to document a few of the things I've noticed recently that he couldn't do just a few short days/weeks/months ago.

1.) He has enough hand/eye coordination and small motor skills to be able to put a small peg in a small hole. Ex. He pulled the pump top off of a bottle of Hemp lotion I had sitting in my bathroom (on top of the toilet, by the way, which USED to be out of reach for him, but apparently is not anymore). Not the whole top with the long tube and everything, just the little pump. This happened a few weeks ago, and he started yelping and banging the bottle and the pump together trying to get them back together. After a few bangs he gave up and threw the pump to the floor and went to find something else to play with. TODAY he calmly sat down, looked at the pump, looked at the empty hole where it was supposed to go, and started trying to poke the pump back in the hole. It only took a few tried before he got it back in. Then he started taking it in and out, in and out..... I realized after a few minutes that he was really quiet, and I was impressed that not only had his motor skills improved, but his attention span had lengthened...... then I realized he was putting the pump in, taking it out, licking the lotion off, and putting it back in. Oops. At least it's "natural" hemp lotion, right? :)

Another example: The wheel of our vacuum cleaner pops off all the time. It just clicks right back in, so it's not a big deal. I know, we have an amazing vacuum.... high class. But whenever it pops off, Nicholas is always the first one to get to it, and he always tries to put it back on the vacuum. A few weeks ago, he grabbed the wheel, ran over to the vacuum and started banging it against the canister, trying to get it to attach anywhere on the vacuum. TODAY he grabbed the wheel, ran over to the vacuum, put one hand on the canister to hold himself up and put the wheel exactly in place! It's a pretty small place where it attaches! He couldn't push it all the way on by himself, but he almost had it!

2.) He barely toddles any more. I'm actually little sad about this. He runs full tilt now, and when he walks he doesn't really waddle or toddle like he used to. He's pretty steady.

3.) He loves dancing, and his repetoire is expanding. He used to just stand really still and bouce a little bit, or he'd squat and then stand really fast and bounce. Then he progressed to marching in place. He would lift each foot of the ground one after another as fast as he could. Now he's learned how to turn around in circles. What's funny about it (other than how dizzy he gets) is that he always does it with his arm straight out. It almost looks like, "Heil Hitler." He salutes, spins around and around and around, then stops, puts his arm back down, and tries to walk--- usually straight into a wall or a piece of furniture.

4.) He LOVES to help. Included in this category is also the way his understanding of what we're saying has EXPLODED over night. If he's digging around in the dishwasher or the fridge and I need to close it, the only way to get him to move willingly without screaming is to ask him for help. If I try to pull him away (which is really hard because he's freakishly strong), or pick him up, or if I ask him to "Get out of the fridge, please," he won't budge. But if I say, "Nicholas, can you help me push the door shut? Push! Push! Push! Come help me." He will immediately step out of the way and help me push the door shut. If he wants to run away in a store, I just ask him to help me push the cart and he willingly holds on to the cart and helps me push.

Here he is "helping" me load the groceries in the trunk.

It reminded me of what Katie told me when I was back in Batesville in August. She said that all males have an innate desire to please and serve the females in their life. They want to be "heroes" in our eyes. I just think that Nicholas has a deep-seated desire to make me happy. It's been a really good thing for me to reflect upon on days when I'm just trying to get as much done as I can. Sometimes it's better to slow down and let him help me. It may not actually BE a big help--- like when he wants to help me transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer, but he ends up putting in all of the dirty clothes that I have sitting in the bin waiting to be washed--- and it may make the task take 20 minutes instead of 5, but I would much rather have him grow up learning to help, than to get things done quickly.

The task I'm working on right now with him is cleaning up. It would take me five minutes to pick up all of his toys and put them away, but what am I teaching him? That Mommy is the cleaner-upper. In just a few years, I'm going to get REALLY sick of being the cleaner-upper, and I can see myself getting really frustrated with him for not picking up after himself, yet that's what I've taught him to do. SO, in an effort to help him understand the concept, I tell him that it's time to clean up, I take him by the hand, help him pick up ONE toy, walk-him back to the basket (helping him stay focused and not drop the toy in order to play with another one he sees on the way to the basket), and help him put it in the basket BY HIMSELF...which takes a lot of prodding sometimes. We usually only make it to putting away two or three toys before we both lose interest/patience. It takes ten times longer to put away the toys, but I know he's learning. We had a small victory at the library the other day when I asked him to put a book back where he got it and he ran right over to the shelf and put it back! (Isolated incident...but a step in the right direction).

Jenn also told me a story one time that helps me stay motivated in this effort. In essence, a father of five children told Jenn that the youngest was "lazy" because the he never worked with her.... he never got down and cleaned and did chores WITH her like he did with the other kids. So she never learned how to work. It's an interesting distiction---teaching work with words and example OR teaching by doing WITH them. If we're going to ask our kids to pick up, we better pick up with them.

I think about this a lot whenever I don't want to clean the bathrooms.

Lest you think that my life is all charm and patient helping, let me illustrate a few of the other, less-endearing developmental stages Nicholas is going through.

1.) He's passed from screaming because he likes the sound of it to screaming as a mode of communication. He's entered the tantrum phase (who knows when that will end) when he cannot make himself understood. It's really frustrating for him to want to tell us something, but he cannot express himself in words. He does a lot of pointing and screaming, slapping and screaming, punching and screaming, and fist-shaking and screaming. He knows some signs, but unfortunately out of context, most of the signs look the same.

2.) We have no garbage can. We had to permanently move it out onto the porch because we kept finding important/expensive things in the trash. Who knows what we've thrown away without knowing. The last straw was when we found Mando's computer mouse at the bottom of a full garbage bag (along with two or three toys we didn't know were missing).

3.) I mentioned before that he is freakishly strong, but I didn't mention that he's also deviously ingenious as well. If he can't reach something, he will simply pile toys or boxes or anything else he can find on top of one another until the pile is big enough for him to climb onto in order to reach the desired item. He wanted to play with the light switch yesterday so he pulled his booster seat onto the floor to stand on. It wasn't high enough, so he got my computer and tried to stand on that (it's like two cm thick---he hasn't worked out that concept yet), but that still didn't reach, so he got an empty box to stand on. He couldn't get onto the box from the floor because it was too high, so he put the booster next to the box to climb from the floor to the booster to the box where he happily stood flipping the lights on and off until the box caved in underneath him (which I shouldn't have laughed at, but it was really too funny to resist).

Other funny things: He likes to wrestle and climb on top of anyone laying on the floor. His favorite move right now is to straddle my chest and sit on my face. As Jenn said, "Why do you let him do that?" It's so funny....which it probably won't be in a few years, but it makes me laugh so hard right now that I can't really scold him or tell him, "No," because I'm smiling and laughing too hard.

Just woke up from a nap. Gotta go.

Sleep

Why is it that sleep is central to how we feel as a mother? If our child sleeps well, we feel successful. If our child does NOT sleep well, we stress about everything. If we get sleep, we're happy mommas. If we DON'T get sleep "the devil takes over" (demonstrated here).

When Nicholas takes good naps during the day, I feel like a different person. I'm more confident in my own mothering skills. I mean, I must be doing something right if my baby is sleeping well, right? That's the mentality of our culture---sleeping baby= good mother. Why is that? We try to get our babies to go to sleep on their own and stay asleep all night long from such an early age. We don't try to force them or coerce them into crawling before they're ready or walking before they want to.....so why do we have such high expectations with sleep? Isn't it just another developmental thing for them to start sleeping more independently and for longer periods of time?

I have no answers.... only the questions. Just wanted to throw this out there because we're going through another spell of bad sleeping. Every time it happens I freak out and think I need to change everything I'm doing because something is not quite right and "something has to be done." But it always ends up being something out of my control like teething, fever, congestion, reflux, or just a developmental milestone (sitting up was a big one for us---every time he stirred, he would roll over and want to sit up because he could.... also standing). Yet every time his sleep habits change, I start fretting about my parenting habits and skills. Within in two days of diminished sleep for him and me we are both at the end of our ropes.

I'm such a better mom when I get sleep. Which is why I should go to bed now instead of writing more :)

For the love of reading

Nitch's favorite thing to do right now (other than playing soccer with his dad) is reading stories. The same four stories....over...and over...and over again. I don't mind though because I'm just so excited that he likes reading as much as I do! In all honesty, I'm not sure if he likes reading or if he just knows that the best way to get my undivided attention is by bringing me a book and asking to sit in my lap (how could anyone refuse that!).
This is his favorite place to play right now---the bookshelf in his room where I keep all the children's books (well, all the books that I don't mind getting beat up. They're all the "okay, but not great" books that Missy graciously donated to me before I left Utah :) Thanks Missy!) He likes to pull them all off the shelf and sit and turn (or should I say maul) the pages. He especially likes taking the dust jackets off of the books that have them.

I've tried to read him stories since he was old enough to hold his head upright, which was pretty early on for him, but he could never sit through a whole story...except one. The Very Hungry Caterpiller by Eric Carle. A great book, but never one of my favorites. When I read him that book he sits absolutely still through the whole thing. Now that he's older, he STILL loves it, but he helps me turn the pages. I had to hide it for a while because I was so sick of reading it. The other day he carried it up to me while I was cleaning the kitchen and pulled at my pant leg. We went to the glider, cuddled up and read it together, and when I closed the cover and said "The End" he promptly turned the book around, pointed at the cover and went, "Uh, Uh, Uh."
"Again?" I asked.
"Uh, Uh, Uh...." pointing to the cover, trying to open it back up.
So I read it again. And then again. And then again....SIX TIMES! He would have had me read it five more times, but I stopped because I was getting grumpy.

He also likes to read Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon, Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy by Susan Boynton, Quick as a Cricket by Don and Audrey Wood (which we borrowed from the library and had to give back recently....that was another one that he would ask to read several times in succession), and more recently Runaway Bunny....but he can only sit through about half of that. He also does a little book jig that looks something like this....

Just kidding, he's falling as he tries to get out of this...

Cardboard house

I borrowed a book from Jenn that gives great ideas for making playthings from items around your house, specifically for 12 month olds. It's been great! We made shakers with the baby food jars, and we have several new hand-clap games and songs, but the greatest success, by far, has been the cardboard house.

I was a UPS package (and Mando was the UPS man----we stole your idea, Missy) for Halloween, and instead of breaking down the box and stuffing it back into storage, I decided to make a little house for Nicholas. Now, MY idea was to cut off the bottom flaps, make a roof, cover the whole thing in parchment paper, and then decorate it so it looked like a tiny little house---complete with flower planters and a doorbell, etc. But as soon as I turned the box sideways to start cutting off the flaps, Nicholas started crawling in and out, in and out, in and out. Like a little tunnel. He was really mad when I turn it over to cut the door in the front. But as soon as I cut the door in the front, he started crawling in and out of the door. He LOVED IT! I couldn't do anything else to it because he wouldn't let me near it.
Pretty sad looking, huh?

He has taken full custody of the box and everyday he finds a new way to play in it.
1. A tunnel
2. go in the door, stand up, peek over the top until Mommy sees, scream and duck back down, crawl out the door. Repeat ad naseaum.
3. stand outside, pull top flap down (I have them taped up to make the box taller) throw something in (usually Dr. Macharet's card, see previous post), try to climb up the side of box until it collapses in on itself, throw it to the side until retrieval of card is possible, loudly protest the flatness of the box until Mommy sets it upright again. Repeat.
4. Go inside tunnel, try to stand up, push head against top of box as hard as I can.... or, if the door is on top, poke head through the door.
And the list will continue to grow, I think. I'm not going to do any more decorating or construction on the house because I think he would lose interest.

(Here's a nice shot of my first-ever attempt at cloth diapering.....it was not as successful as I would have liked. It stayed on, but I doubt it would have prevented any pee from getting all over the carpet. Luckily, Nicholas poured an entire cup of water on himself---which I left too close to the table edge---before we had to test the sturdiness of my diapering).

The only frustrating part about all of this is that the box is totally unsteady---meaning, if I'm not sitting right there holding the side, it will fold in on itself and become totally flat and useless to him as a toy.

So.... it's really cute to watch him play, but I can only handle so much before I get antsy and want to get something done. I need to find a sturdier box.

Should I worry?

Nicholas found Dr. Macheret's business card in my wallet, and it's now his favorite thing to carry around the house. He carries the card, and strokes it lovingly, and looks longingly at Macheret's picture.

I wanted him to have a lovey of some sort, but I don't know how I feel about this.... just kidding, I'm exaggerating, of course. But he really does carry the card around and look at the picture and laugh and smile. It's just weird to me that out of all the business cards that he found in my wallet, this is the only one that he carries around the house.
(Picture has nothing to do with anything...I just thought it was cute.)

Making the switch

I'm officially going to switch from disposable diapers to cloth diapers. I have been doing research all week, and I think I'm ready to go out and buy my first few diapers. There's a great website that does weekly giveaways for cloth diapers and accessories, and I'm doing all I can to win some stuff! Check it out: The cloth diaper whisperer

I hope I win something because making the switch is going to be a big initial investment.

I'm so excited about all of this! I wanted to try cloth diapers with Nicholas from the very beginning, but I was persuaded out of it by the "convenience" of disposables. (I personally think it would be a lot more convenient to never run out of diapers, and if I do, just run a load of laundry and be done with it....instead of having to run to the store, but most people don't share my opinion). And I was afraid of "trying too much too fast." With all the adjustments of having a new baby in the house, I opted for what I was comfortable with. But now, I'm ready. I'm ready to give it a try and be a little greener.

Did you know all the gross and harmful stuff that they put into disposable diapers? I had no idea. Here's a good blog if you are interested in reading more.

Grandma Rockwood

I'm trying to get the name "Grandma Jo" started... Like Grandma Al, but it's not really catching on.

I went back to visit my mom and dad in August while Katie and Jenn were also visiting. It was really fun to hang out with all of them :) I never got to post these great pictures of Nitch and Grandma though! So here they are, better late than never.

The park

There's a fun playground just across the street from the public library, and it's so fun to watch him play around now that he's interested in climbing and exploring. He still loves the swings.

But he also loves all the things he couldn't get to before (when he wasn't walking). There is a little seahorse on a spring that he hangs out by---he's going to get knocked in the head one of these days because he likes to stand RIGHT in front of it watching whatever kid is on it at the time. He likes seeing them laugh and smile and he'll just stand there clapping and laughing with them. He can't get up there by himself, but he sure tries. I'm amazed at how far he can lift his leg (He lifts his left leg up like a dog peeing whenever he's trying to climb something---the bathtub, his crib, the piano bench, the kitchen chairs, the couch.... he can lift it so high that if he's IN the bathtub he can almost lift his knee onto the edge of the tub to hoist himself up. He's about 1/2 inch away.)

Then he climbs all the way up to the top level of the playhouse to the entrance to the slide. Up there he likes to hover between the big step down from the top level and the entrance of the slide...running back and forth back and forth, stopping just short of crashing down either side, just to watch me run wildly back and forth trying to catch him. There are also windchimes, little windows, a rainstick, etc. to play with (that's just the "small side" of the play set. Yup, it's a pretty cool playground.).

How many limes can you spot in this picture?

There are eight.

I have a bag of limes in the bottom-shelf of the refrigerator door, and every time I open the fridge, tiny little hands snatch the bag and spread them around the house before I can even blink. I thought this day was especially funny because of where he decided to put the limes--- there are 2 in the space between the oven door and the handle, there is 1 in the top rack of the dishwasher, there are 2 underneath the clothes hamper (our laundry room is right next to the kitchen and it was laundry day...we don't normally keep our dirty clothes in the kitchen, FYI), there is 1 in his hand (which he's poking with a fork that he's stolen from the dishwasher), and another under the fridge (which you can't actually see, but it still counts).

Strong Man

We went to Sam's to stock up on some food storage stuff this weekend. It was a very productive trip, and we left feeling happy and more prepared :) (for what, we don't really know). The cart was full of huge bulk items-- you've all been to Sam's, you know--- 25 lbs. of flour, cases of canned goods, big boxes of stuff....and Nicholas gets down on the ground, puts his little hands on the bottom bar of the cart, squats down and starts pushing with all his might! We chuckled a little bit until, lo and behold! The cart starts moving! And he pushed that shopping cart all the way down an entire aisle! We couldn't believe it.

After that, he was so proud of himself, he decided he needed to help other people too. We had to keep pulling him away from the big palettes of food being unloaded by workers.

Oh, and if Mando tried to stand over him and push the cart with the normal handles, Nicholas would stop and start swatting Mando's legs until he moved away from the cart. Little stinker. I have a feeling this incident does not bode well for the future....hmmmm.

Once again, I only caught the tail end of it. And the cart was going much faster than it appears to.

One more video

Mando wants me to post this video of Nicholas walking so his family in Peru can see it because it's really cute. And I agree :)

Teaser

I don't know if it's a gene that only gets passed to the first child or what, but Nicholas is a natural-born teaser....like Justin. Why is that? Today he grabbed the spoon while Mando was feeding him, and held it with both hands way above his head and just laughed hysterically! Then he would wave it toward Mando until Mando tried to grab for it, and he'd move it away as fast as he could, laughing and laughing and laughing. It was pretty funny. I only captured the end of it :)

Walking

As a new mom, it's my right to brag a little about my son :) Nicholas is WALKING. I'm not just talking about taking a few measly steps...he's fully toddling around, getting faster and faster every day. And he's not even ten months old yet! What a guy :)

Here he is at Crane beach--- he's actually a lot steadier than this now, but I thought the little crash was pretty cute.

Batesville

Nicholas and I took a trip to visit my parents back in Batesville. We've been here for two weeks now, and we're staying for just one more. Poor Mando all alone back in Bedford :( We miss him.

But here's a little update as to what we've been up to. This is mainly for Mando's benefit, so he can see pictures.

Nicholas LOVES playing with his cousins. Well, "playing with" is a relative term...



It's more like he gets played WITH, but he likes it (for the most part), so I'm not complaining.

It's pretty cute to see how excited Jenn's kids get about Nicholas (despite the repeated entreaties of "Oh, be soft!" "Oh, be gentle!" "Oh, be nice!" "Oh, hands off!" "Oh, Nicholas is not a toy..." "Oh, we don't kick!") Madi loves to "babysit" him, and Max runs around saying, "Nikus, Nikus, Nikus!" Then he heard me and Mando call him Nicholasito, so he started saying, "Nikusito, Nikusito!" :) And Becca likes to give him toys and then take them away again to see his reaction.

One time when we were at Jenn's house, Madi started making this funny sound while moving her tongue around in her mouth, and it made Nicholas laugh SO HARD! He loved it! So all the other kids picked up on it too-- and it became a sort of competition between all three to see who could make Nicholas laugh harder. The only problem is that they think that the CLOSER they get to Nicholas' face, the more likely it is that he will laugh. So whenever we walk into a room, all three kids instantly stop what they're doing and go ALALALALALALA with their tongues wagging, run up to Nicholas when I put him on the floor and crowd around him vying for the coveted "full-frontal" position. It makes me instantly cringe inside becuase of the personal space boundaries being violated, but it doesn't seem to bother Nicholas. At what age to kids start wanting personal space?

So, tonight--- I has just put Nicholas down for the night, and I walked past Becca's doorway, which was only open a crack, as she sat in her crib and she instantly started going "LALALALALALA" with her tongue! :) hahaha it made me laugh pretty hard.

We went to the Cincinnati Children's museum this week. It was really fun for me becuase I've never been there. It's actually called the Museum Center because there are three museums in the same building (an old train station); I've been to the other two, but I had never been to the children's section. It was pretty neat. There was so much to see! Nicholas' favorite part was getting to crawl and explore pretty much everything.

There was an exhibit with children from all over the world telling what they like to do and what their life is like. The girl from Russia was a ballet dancer so they had tutus you could try on and a mirror with a ballet bar. Madi found different ways to use the tutus...


There was a room FULL of balls and little contraptions that moved the balls around the room in different ways. Pulleys, and levers, and tubes, and slingshots, and many, many more! There was this big container that hung from the ceiling and it was the dumping ground for a lot of the contraptions, so it would fill up with balls and then a buzzer would ring, a blue light would start flashing, and it would dump all the collected balls on the floor/kids below. Nicholas LOVED this room. It was his version of heaven---balls raining from above! I think he would have stayed in there all day long if he could have.A couple of other cool exhibits:
They had all of these foam rubber pieces that looked like rocks, and you could shovel them up and put them in a dump truck or on a conveyor belt. They had a little crane that moved too.

There were two wooden buildings that looked like skyscrapers with holes all over them. Then there were buckets of little pegs that looked like nails, gears, rods, hammers and other building equipment so you could nail things in all over the buildings.

There was a little tree house with slides and stuff to climb all over.

They had huge legos that you could use to build towers and stuff. I had more fun with this than Nicholas because I quickly used the legos to build a little house around him :) He looked so cute staring out the window laughing at me, but then he got tired of me trying to get him to smile at the camera....
Anyway, that's what we've been up to here in B-ville! It's been great. The best part for Nicholas is being doted on by his Grandma, Grandpa, Aunts, and cousins...and anyone else who stops by the house and sees him :)

Shoes

We took these pictures a few weeks ago, but I forgot to post them.

Mando's aunt, Tia Lala (as we call her), gave Nicholas a pair of sandals before we left Utah. They were too big for him at the time, but he's growing into them now, and we thought we should try them on him--especially since he's on his way to walking!

Anyway, we kept laughing because we wanted to take a picture of him walking in his new sandals, but he was so interested in looking at them and touching them that he didn't want to put his feet down!

He was so entranced by the fact that they were attached to his feet and followed him wherever he went.

We finally decided to stand him up on his own, because then he'd have to put his feet down to stand up...and this is what we got:

After some coaxing we got a couple of good ones.

Thanks for the shoes, Tia!

Little Stinker

He's not even nine months old yet, but he already knows how to push my buttons!

Nicholas NEEDS to get out of the house every day or else he goes stir-crazy. Days when I push the outing back a few hours, he will start whining and pawing at my legs like a little puppy that needs to go out OR.... he will tease me.

Today he was in a teasing mood. There are only two things that I tell him continuously not to do. 1. touch the floor lamp (he's knocked it over so many times it's all dented and will only turn on with enormous force)
2. put things in his mouth--- especially paper.

He's come to recognize the pattern: touch the lamp, see Mom's funny reaction, continue to touch the lamp, get picked up and carried away. Or: eat paper, mom will take it away and put her fingers in my mouth.

So what does he do? I was on the couch returning an important e-mail when he crawled off down the hallway. He does NOT usually do this--- he doesn't like to crawl out of sight--- so I expected him to come crawling back around the corner any minute. But he didn't....uh-oh...and it was silent...UH-OH. I quickly got off the couch and scurried around the corner to see him sitting in the doorway of Mando's office (a place he knows he's not really supposed to go...that and the bathroom) WAITING for me! I kid you not! He saw me, gave a little squeal, turned his back to me and bolted straight for the lamp. Then he sat right next to the lamp with his hand hovering next to it, but not touching it--- like Nemo when he's about to touch the boat. He just looked at me and waited for me to say something with this huge grin on his face! Little stinker. When I didn't say anything, he grabbed the lamp and then looked right at me and paused again.... I was a little curious to see what he would do, so I didn't say anything right away. So he took the other hand and grabbed the lamp, paused, and looked at me again! Finally I gave him what he wanted and said, "Nicholaaaaas...." and looked at him with me stern expression. He laughed and immediately started clapping his hands.

Later that afternoon I was in my bathroom brushing my teeth while Nicholas played in our bedroom with a puzzle. From the bathroom you can see the foot of our bed and the rug where his puzzle was, but you cannot see the head of the bed or the nightstands. While I spit, I saw Nicholas disappear behind the bed from the corner of my eye. He crawled over to my nightstand, grabbed a piece of paper which I foolishly left in reach, crawled ALL the way BACK to the foot of the bed, sat down facing me, and held the paper up for me to see. Then he sloooooowly put the paper toward his mouth, eyes on me the whole time. I said, "Nicholaaaaaas...." and he smiled and took a huge bite out of the paper. I said, "What do you haaaaaave?" And he laughed and stuck out his tongue with the paper sitting on it and waited for me to come and fish it out of his mouth!

I was shocked at how he was taunting me! It was pretty hilarious :)