Nico now

My sweet, sweet boy. He continues to amaze me at how fast he grows, yet he seems to always remain, my sweet, caring boy.

We had our teacher conference at Kids' Place this week (yes, there are teacher conferences at his daycare) and the two things that stood out from the last few months is how he's starting to transition from parallel play to actually playing and interacting with other kids and how he's beginning to branch out from his car-focus interest to playing more with animals now. Both are things that we've noticed at home too. He's beginning to have actual play dates with friends and looks forward to seeing his friends so that they can share some kind of toy. And even though his love for anything with wheels is not fading, he definitely loves his stuffed animals now and pays special attention to one or two of them at a time.

I feel like he has changed so much in so many ways too. Just talking so much more, expressing himself so much better - sometimes he blows me away with the things he says and how he seems to connect things so well. Of course I think he's a genius, but that's just me :)

Cute words that he's saying right now:
Melk -- "elk"
Durty -- "dirty"
Upsy-Daisies - "upside down"
Pack-Pack - "backpack"

He doesn't want me to take pictures of him, so he's laughing at me supposedly taking a selfie 

He is obsessed with rocks right now, and it's a struggle to keep them somewhat contained. He seems to always have at least a couple in his pockets, and even though I'm sure I check all the time, they seem to always end up going through the laundry. He likes to load them and unload them with his trucks and is constantly organizing them in his different containers.

He loves spending time with Grandma, and looks forward to Mondays when he gets to spend all day with her. They sometimes go to the park or on little adventures, but mostly they stay at home and play and, even though I have no clue what they're actually doing, they are developing that amazing bond that kids should have with their grandparents.

Makes me miss my parents even more, and wish that they could have more of that time with him and with Sofi. But for now we make an effort to Facetime often, and many times I'll just leave him with Aba and Abo, playing with cars or with owls - they each have their own stash and they "play" for long periods of time, so at least they have that.

And as much as he's constantly developing his independence and pushing boundaries and limits just to see how much he can get away with, at the end of the day, no matter what, he wants his cuddle time with mama at bedtime. And it's something that I very much look forward to every day.

Dogs

Nico and Sofi are doing great. The dogs... not so much...

Let's start with Tasha... Tasha, who is 9 years old now... and whenever she has a health issue all I can think about is those (horrible) people that, when we first got her as a puppy, would say things like: "Oh, what a cute Boxer puppy. You know that Boxers only live 8 to 9 years, right?" About a month ago Tasha woke up one morning with her left eye barely open and all goopy and oozy. It didn't seem to be bothering her, so I made an appointment for the next week (this was on a Friday) to have it checked. It's never a good sign when the doctor walks into the exam room, and says "Oh! We need to do something to that eye today!" She had an eye ulcer and they kept her to be able to take care of it. And since she was going to be under, they were also going to remove a tag that she had in her eyelid and two bumps that she's had on her back for a while - they have been "on watch" for a few years, but they hadn't changed much and the doctor wasn't worried.

After the surgery, they sent one of the masses out for tests (it looked suspicious), but results came back and everything was benign. So that was a big sigh of relief. After surgery they sent her home with her eye stitched shut so it would heal. When we went back a week later for check up the doctor decided she could use more time to heal, so they put her under again so that they could patch her eye again. Of course two days later, after being great for 10 days about leaving the whole thing alone, Tasha pawed at her eye and removed the patch completely. Fortunately she didn't cause any damage, and after another re-check the vet thought she'd be fine without a patch. It's been three weeks since surgery, and even though her eye still looks super creepy, it is on the mend and we expect she'll make a fine recovery.

And then there's Eco, my problem child. For those of you that don't know, Eco has had an ear issue for over a year now. He had a tag or something on the tip of his ear that just wouldn't heal - it would scab over, he would shake (very vigorously), the scab would come off, there would be blood everywhere, and the whole process would start all over again. With the vets we have tried a bunch of different things, but nothing seemed to work long enough for the ear to heal. Finally, the morning that we were supposed to take Tasha in for her first appointment we woke up again to blood drops all over the carpet downstairs. So we took him in with Tasha that morning, and after talking to the vet, decided to just trim his ear to take off the portion that wasn't healing.

Always a cuddle bug.

Unfortunately his recovery hasn't been as easy as Tasha's. At the one-week check up we finally got to see the "new"ear - it basically looks like a bat ear that half stands up :) However, because of how much he had been rubbing on the bandage, the stitches were healing very well, so the vet recommended we keep the ear bandaged for another week. About three days later, he was scratching at the bandage so hard that he was starting to hurt his other ear that hadn't been taped down. I immediately wrapped up his whole head (see above) and we made it to the next check up, after which they sent him home all bandaged up again.

Last Friday morning I was getting ready for work and notice he was scratching a lot. When I glanced again I saw blood on him again. Sigh... Because he has his dewclaws he had scratched so much that he had given himself a cut right by his eye. At that point I gave up on trying to keep him from scratching and he got the cone of shame.

With the cone of shame

He is miserable and has lost a bunch of weight since this whole ordeal started, but hopefully when it's all over we'll be able to forget about the drama and it'll be a story that we occasionally remember. We'll see. I have to check-in with the vet tomorrow to find out when he gets another check up.

Yay, life with (our) dogs!

Growth spurt

This little sleeper has to be going through a growth spurt. She took a "nap" yesterday from 4pm until 9:30pm. I was terrified about what was going to happen through the night, wondering if I was going to get any sleep. But after being awake for about an hour (and eating a bunch), she went to bed around 10:30pm and slept until 6:45am. And then, after nursing with mama and chatting for a little bit with dada, she took another nap until I woke her up a little after 9am because we had to get ready to go.

Just sleeping

Manzanita

Three weeks ago we took a couple of day off from work and went to the Oregon coast. We rented two houses with our friends Tim & Lynn & three other couples and spent the weekend walking on the beach, playing soccer, having good food and drinking great wine.

Happy to relax in the carrier.

The weather was fantastic, and it was just nice to get away from the routine and enjoy the little break.

Hanging out with the girls

This is the second year that we do this weekend trip with Tim & Lynn & their girls and I find it nice to keep finding little treats like this that we add to our repertoire of family traditions. This year there were two other boys in the group, but they were older (twelve, maybe?) and they kept to themselves, so - just like last year - Nico got to spend the weekend playing with and being pampered by a group of girls (five of them, ages 6 through 10) that loved having him around.

Enjoying the delicious sun.

During the trip I had one of those vivid realizations of the difference between the first and second child (one of many!). We took a similar trip to the coast with friends when Nico was about the same age as Sofi (2ish months), and we brought so much stuff: his sleeping tent, and multiple outfits, and playing mat, and a bunch of toys... Not only did I not bring any toys for Sofi on this trip, but we actually forgot her sleeper "box"... Oh well, obviously she survived.

Boys enjoying the beach.

The one low of the weekend was me breaking one, maybe two, toes in the most ridiculous way. I was running barefoot on the beach, and at the very end of my loop I went by the area where some of the kids and guys were playing soccer. Matt thought it would be funny to "race me" so he started running behind me and when I started to get away he grabbed me and I tripped on his shoe-clad foot. It hurt like hell, but I didn't think much of it, until an hour later when I had two swollen and very bruised toes. I haven't gone to see a doctor and get x-rays because from everything I've read there's not much they can do, so I've been hobbling around for three of the four to six weeks it's supposed to take to heal.

Despite the injury it was a great weekend and another highlight was Nico getting to enjoy his "balance bike" - this is a big boy bike that he got last Christmas and we took out the pedals and cranks so he could use it as a balance bike. Unfortunately because it is meant for bigger kids it was to heavy for him to actually use until recently, but now that it fits him right he absolutely loves it and getting to use it on the beach was a real treat.

Manzanita weekend 2014!

Maybe we'll do it again next year!