Easter Break

Nico and I went to Austin for Easter and Daddy's Birthday! 35 already! That's half of 70. We had lots of fun. Nico basically had the time of his life. I mean constant companionship from somebody everyday. He played everyday with Lola and Maya and couldn't have been happier. He also had a great time playing in the cul-de-sac, whether it was alone or with the neighborhood kids.

It was a nice break for me to have Vito pitch in with Nico when he could. He is still really busy with his new job, but he loves it. And that means a lot!

I managed to make it to the design center for the new house and pick most of the things out. But there is still stuff that now I am wishing I had waited on. It feels like it's never going to get here...the house being done. Or even started. We definitely have out hands full between the two of us and being in two states!

I didn't take many pictures while I was there, but here are some from Easter. Nico had a little crush on one of the neighbor girls. It was cute. Although, little Annabella at school will be sad. She is on him like white on rice. Or brown on rice if that's the kind you eat.

The train picture was the day we took the 3 cousins to Zilker Park. They have a train ride there and it was the perfect day for it! Nico loves trains so we thought he would really get a kick out of riding one. It wasn't until about half way through that he realized he was actually on the train. Then he was "choo-choo'ing" the rest of the way.

Hang Time with Daddy

Vito came into town for a last minute visit. We had a great weekend! No plans, no "To Do" list, no work. Just relaxing and spending time together. So of course what else is there to do when the weather is beautiful? Head on out to the park!





Sorry Dada, I managed to delete the slide pictures from my Flickr account. I don't understand how I can't get the hang of pictures and videos! Nico talks up a storm now. Granted you can only understand about a quarter of everything he says. But he's trying real hard to communicate with us. It's pretty easy to make him laugh too. Hopefully he'll have his Daddy's sense of humor...or maybe we don't want that?

Some late Christmas pictures

I have so many pictures to go through from Christmas and New Year's. But yet somehow, a lot of them didn't turn out. So I am going to start with these. I have been neglecting this blog and will have to start keeping up on it so Dada can get his Nico fix for the next couple of months.

I am hoping to start taking ore pictures of our ever growing toddler. He 20 months old, and going through all of those phases. He's funny, he temperamental, he laughs, he cries. Some days are never ending, and some days end too soon. The other night I was fortunate enough to be the first to get an "I love you." That was the best early Valentine's Day gift ever!

That's it for now. But I promise to come back and update more!

Our Little Turkey

I had wanted to embed a slide show of pictures of Nico, but I couldn't seem to get anything to work! Operator error...doubtful. Internet's revenge...possibly.

Instead, I will have to be happy with posting the old way, as I used to when I first figured out how to blog. (Now, I can't seem to stop!)

We went to my Dad's house for Thanksgiving. Nico had a lot of fun running around somewhere new. Grandpa had lots of places to run off to! Nico instantly noticed the remote control cars in the garage. So, my Dad was pretty excited to get to show him those. But that didn't last long because the remote operator (aka Grandpa)crashed the one car into the curb and that was the end of that.

It was fun to see (and have) Nico in a good mood! Here's a few pictures. And I have also posted the link below so you can view all of them. Hope you all ate way too much!





http://picasaweb.google.com/Janah99/Thanksgiving2008#slideshow



Other than that, Nico has really turned into a toddler. He wants to do everything on his own, then scream about it when it doesn't work out. He wants to play everywhere, especially outside and then wants to scream about it when it's time to come in.

He is into repeating a lot of things he hears. He loves music and dancing and singing. He laughs at everything and cries at even more! Ah, yes the temper tantrums are lovely and all too frequent. But then he pulls out that little toothy smile and I can't help but give in. Dada is a push-over for it too!

He loves airplanes, cars, trucks, motorcycles...anything with wheels. He likes to sit on the dog like he's a Shetland Pony. He loves to sit on the back of the couch and watch the birds out the window. If it's round and looks anything like a ball, he wants to hit it, throw it and slam it! He's also quit the hide-and-seek player!

There's a partial update. I could probably write a few more paragraphs about everything he does, but I will save that for another day.

Here's some more since I haven't posted in a few weeks.


http://picasaweb.google.com/Janah99/ExtraPics#slideshow

Halloween 2008

Halloween night has come and gone. I would say for the most part, it went off without a hitch. Even after being at school all day, Nico was in a good mood. We didn't have much of a problem getting his outfit on. But of course, he just wasn't having the hat. At least in the beginning. Without wearing it, you couldn't tell what he was. The coustime was a little bear. My little Teddy Graham. That's what he reminded me of. I told people he was a mushroom, an M&M and even a roll of carpet. The costume reminded me of the condo carpet. All shaggy and soft. We walked around with him in the stroller for quite sometime. But once he decided he wanted to walk, he walked forever! The first house he walked up to on his own...well it was priceless. I wish I had taken vidoe. The lady was sitting on her porch. He walked down the sidewalk and climbed up the step, looked around, she handed him a bag of M&M's and a lollipop. He took it and was ready to walk away as content as could be. Then when he realized what the lollipop was he wouldn't let it go for anything. My mistake I suppose! BUT, it helped me get pictures with his bear hat on! We got a lot of "Awww, he's so little and cute!" I guess I didn't realize that he is fairly young to be walking around trying to trick-or-treat. And I was very surprised at the number of kids who wanted to stop and watch him. They were all very nice and polite. They moved out of his way or waited for him to wobble by. Good job parents! Not that Nico owned the sidewalk, but he also has no concept of stopping to wait. I threw in some pictures of the rest of the gang. Dada had his own little bag filled with adult goodies. Well, they actually didn't fit so he held them. One in each hand.



Here's the link to the picture album if you want to view the pics in a bigger format:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Janah99/Halloween2008

The Pumpkin Patch

It's that time of the year! I'm surprised that I haven't come across more Mom Blogs with these seasonal pictures.

We went to the Victoria's Garden Pumpkin Patch with Uncle Ryan, Auntie Crissy and Sammi on Saturday. What a beautiful day! They had the typical things you see everywhere - petting zoo, pony rides, hay rides, tractor rides, gigantic bouncy slides. Oh and pumpkins. The kids had fun. Nico was just excited to walk non-stop up and down the rows of corn. And Sammi (thankfully) wasn't really interested in riding much of anything. Except the ponies, and Crissy quickly explained how diseased, disgusting and dirty they were. =)

So here are all of the pictures I took and that I uploaded from Crissy's camera.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Janah99/PumpkinPatch#slideshow

Here a some more that I didn't add to the gallery:


This is a special one for Auntie Lili. He is a "pickable" skin picker!


P.S. Happy 6th Anniversary Babe! I love you!

The Cute, the Bad and the Messy

Here is Nico talking on the phone to Nana & Papa. He is SO like Dada. Neither one of them can sit still and talk on the phone. The walking around is a must!
The Cute


Here is what I had to clean up three times on this day. I know it's my own fault. He just likes being in the kitchen with me a lot, and it's the only thing I don't mind him playing with...well unless I have to clean it up three or more times.
The Bad

Here is what happens when you let Nico eat franks 'n beans:
The Messy

And here's his new zappado's - which he tripped while wearing every third step!
And the Cute again!



Take care!

Es ist Oktoberfest Zeit!

Well, this entire post will be translated into German. Just kidding! This weekend was the Octoberfest in La Mesa. We didn't go to the big party Saturday night. But we managed to get a couple of hours in on Sunday. Of course, when we left we said the same thing that we did last year..."next year we are NOT going." The food at all of the mini-fair mobiles is just horrible. I don't know what we were expecting, but it's never worth the calories or the money. Although this year we did manage to have a brat and kraut. Okay, so I had a hot dog and Vito had a Cajun Polish dog. They weren't as bad as some of the other stuff we had. And unless you are into crafting, collecting nic-nacs or just over paying for something you can get at Boutique a la Target, there really is no other point in being there. Of course the beer garden, yes, there is that. But with a 16 month old it isn't quite the same as it used to be.


The pics are Vito getting us a funnel cake. Which looks just lovely, but there just wasn't enough sugared powder on it! Nico trying a bite, he thought it was okay. A fantastic picture of me and him - this picture is for sure going on my So Not Mom-a-licios blog! And right before we left Dada chased Nickers all around. Ich hoffe, dass Sie die Bilder genossen haben!

Cousin's Day

Last night we took Nico and his cousin Sammi to the Disney Playhouse Live Tour. What should I start with first? It was okay. I think it was a little under-produced for carrying the Disney name in it's title. I expected more from it. On the other hand, it was so much fun for Vito and I to take them. Sammi just had a blast! Poor Nico...I feel like that's all I say lately. He watched most of it, but he looked miserable doing it! Geez, will these teeth please just come in!!! Draining, just so draining for all of us. After the show, we went to Denny's to eat. Sammi wanted to go. And we had no energy left from dealing with Nico to take them to Chuck E Cheese's. So I made a special call, and found out that they were actually closed until next week because the pizza ovens were broke. Is there a reason I needed to create such a detailed faux phone call for a 4 year old? I think it just made me feel better not to let her down with the truth. Then we came home (finally and thank God!), where my son continued with his miserableness. At last, bath time! We were on the home stretch to putting him to bed. I feel bad that I wanted him to go to bed so badly, but he was also not letting Sammi have any fun with us. Once he was down, Sam and I decided that we were going to put curls in her hair. She's been wanting to use my Velcro rollers so bad. My plan was to put them in her wet hair, dry her hair while rolled and Voila! Well, once I had them all in she informed me that she didn't like the blow dryer because it is too loud. I tried to explain that her hair wouldn't curl if we didn't dry it. Uncle Vito to the rescue! She gave in when it was suggested that we would use the blow dryer on low AND Uncle Vito would hold her hand through out the whole ordeal. Perfect. Anyway, we did what we could, but it was still a little too damp to hold much of a curl. I did the best I could. She made it very clear with the look on her face when we were done - "Uh, where are the curls?" Busted. But with a little twisting and looping and a bobby pin we made something happen!
Then, this morning we walked to the park, went to the craft store, came home and made Nana a special surprise and then Sammi was off to soccer! An event filled day! I took a ton of pictures, so I am posting the link back to Kodak again so they can be viewed as a slide show. P.S. I have had some requests for the funny face...which is actually Dada's drunk face when playing poker. Nico's is from teething, but it still seems to run in the family. It's not that I think it's adorable - because it's not all that cute -it's just funny.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?UV=644582073390_562468740308&mode=fromsite&collid=41871001308.650229740308.1222544631600&conn_speed=1

15-month-old Update/Pictures

I uploaded some pictures of Nico on my Kodak Gallery file. Here is the link if you did not get the email - http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=j8gwvdo.4q8m14as&Uy=-63zn5f&Ux=0&UV=265022990124_215024730308

In other news, the Baby Gap Casting Call contest is here!!! I am so excited. It's a shot in the dark, but fun to still enter pictures. Of course, I missed the Photo Tour. It was today at the mall. They have a professional photographer there to take pictures. That would have been cool. You can still enter the contest. I haven't been on Gap's website lately, so I don't know if you can enter the contest via their site. If you go to my profile page here, you can email me and I can forward you the email I recieved. Or I suppose it is just as easy to Google it. Anyway, ages 0-10. I think it's up to 4 pictures you can submit. There's 4 different age catagories. Get that camera out and take some pictures! Enter all those cute kiddies!