Month: October 2011

My favorite dance routine.

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Now that Nicky knows some of his letters he has a fascination with keyboards. So much so that every time he sees us on the computer he wants us to quit what we’re doing so he can find “baby” and “nicky”. Obviously that can get a little distracting if you’re trying to read an article or type an email, so we’ve set Nicky up with his own computer to work on. It’s one of our old ones that doesn’t even have a power cord anymore and can’t start up but he’s happy enough to peck away at the letters.

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Nicky used to come home with cute little art projects. Now that he’s in the big kids class apparently there isn’t time for such frivolous lesson plans. Now he comes home with printed maps of random countries like Belgium or Canada that he’s colored on. Maybe I don’t get it and the kids think it’s really fun, but to me it doesn’t quite seem age appropriate for the barely two set…

Just a preview of Nicky’s Halloween costume from our trip to the pumpkin patch. More pictures here.

We’ve resorted to bribery…oh, I mean “rewarding good behavior”…to get Nick to stop screaming bloody murder when we try to brush his teeth.  Surprisingly for such a little guy he seems to kind of get it, as long as he’s not too sleepy.  The prospect of a train sticker is practically good enough on its own to get him to unclench his jaws for the tooth brush, but just to sweeten the pot we’re also rewarding every 5 or so stickers with a new train for his wooden train tracks.  Thank you ebay where I found a treasure trove of used trains that will be perfect for all kinds of bribery scenarios that I can imagine will be in our future. 

We went up to the city this weekend to see the Blue Angels (pictures here). Not too surprisingly, it was foggy and windy out by the bay – so much so that the Blue Angels only made a couple passes, which we couldn’t even see through the fog, and then they called it quits. As we were coming in we did get to see one fighter jet doing some fun tricks but Nick seemed more scared than excited when it flew over our heads so it was all probably for the best that the Blue Angels never really got going. We did find a fun pond at the beach at Chrissy Field. It was perfect toddler size – only a few inches deep – and Nicky and all the other kids were drawn to it like magnets. Since we didn’t have any extra clothes for him we stripped him down to his diaper and shirt and he happily played there in the cold wind until his lips turned blue.

 

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Nicky is simultaneously obsessed with and scared to death of elephants lately.  It all started when we went to the Oakland Zoo a couple weeks ago.  He had been talking about seeing the elephants all morning but as soon as we got to their enclosure he took one look and ran away screaming.  At home he begs to watch the elephants on Planet Earth, but  as soon as he sees them he panics and runs to the nearest parent.  Luckily he still thinks his elephant towel is harmless and fun. 

I may be a wee bit biased, but isn’t he the smartest? He does really well attaching a letter to people he knows and has learned the letters for Nicky, Mommy, Daddy, baby and his two best friends at school, Anna and Sam.

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