Everything is a climbing tool

Everything is meant to climb on. Nicholas believes that statement to be true. The funny thing is, it has really picked up since we have started gymnastics. All of a sudden, everything has to be climbed on, over and through. This includes parents. One of his favorite games to play is to run behind you and "push" you over so you are lying on your tummy. Then he climbs onto your back and walks around until he falls, and then he laughs. I continue to let him play this game because of the laughter aspect. I really love hearing him laugh.



Anyways, he has a fire truck. He loves to climb onto the fire truck now. Not sit on it, or ride around on it (like it was made for) but climb onto it. Same with his horse. He climbs onto it, and then bounces up and down to make it play the music. He sometimes falls, but he never really cries when he falls from these things. He just gets up and goes back to whatever he was doing. He is so adorable! And look at him smile.



If you think he doesn't know what a camera is for, you are joking. I took the picture of him on the fire truck by asking him to go get his truck. He got it, and stood on it, when he tried to get down, I said "stay there and smile for the camera." He paused, got back on, looked at me, and gave me a huge smile until I put the camera away. He's a camera hog!

Introducing Dan

For those of you who don't know, Dan is Nicholas' lamb. His name is "Dan the Lamb." Jon named him (He also named Nicholas' duck "Puck"). Nicholas loves Dan. There are days he carries Dan around and won't let him go. There are days that Dan is a kickball. Dan has also played the part of tackler and tug of war item. Sometimes Nicholas puts Dan into his bed, and then tries to get him out again. If you try and put Nicholas down for a nap, in his crib, without Dan - well there will be a price to pay. Dan has been with Nicholas since his birth. Dan is very cuddly, and loves the washing machine because hanging out with Nicholas is dirty.

But Nicholas will hold Dan and read to Dan. And you better not be the one trying to interrupt him. It is very cute. We had a first on Tuesday - Nicholas tried to feed Dan some banana. Dan got thrown into the washing machine after Nicholas went to bed that night.

And in case you are interested, yes, the shoe shelf pictured is what Nicholas busted his nose on. It was actually about 30 minutes after I took this picture that the whole nose episode happened.

Finger painting... or is it body painting?

Nicholas loves the finger paints. He gets to play with them and make things turn colors - like the dishwasher, the floor and himself. He really likes turning himself colors. Occasionally that gets streched into turning mom colors as well, but oh well. It all cleans up with soap and water.



Yesterday was another finger painting day. It was really hot outside, and we had been on a walk already. I was looking for things to do inside, and I thought, we hadn't finger painted in a while, so why not finger paint? So I got everything set up. I put the paints onto paper plates - and he knew what we were daing right then. It was very difficult to get him stripped down so that we could paint.



He decided that he had enough putting paint on paper, and wanted to put paint on himself. I don't mind - like I said, it washes off. So he just grabbed handfuls of paint and smeared it all over himself.



Nicholas was put into the bathtub afterwards. He was unhappy with me because I just let the water run, without filling up the tub, while I tried to get most of the color off him. As it was, the water was a very interesting color. He eventually got his bath, but decided he'd rather try and help mommy clean up the finger painting mess. Which resulted in another bath.

It was a ton of fun though!

Our First Trauma

We had our first major accident with Nicholas last night. We have a shoe rack by our front door. It is made of fake wood (IKEA) and Nicholas likes to pull all the shoes out of it and stuff them in different places in the rack, or stuff them all into one place. He also likes to climb on it, and sit on it.

So last night, he was running towards the shoe rack, and away from me (I was crawling after him, pretending to be a monster - the things we do for our kids). He slipped, and fell. His nose hit the shoe rack first, then his head. He broke out in the loudest wails I have heard in a long time. His nose started bleeding, and he was so sensative - you couldn't even take a warm washcloth and clean him up. He just wanted to be held.

He calmed down in about 20 minutes, so I didn't think there was anything that wrong. We cleaned him up (just a little). As a side note, if you want to see a kid squirm and know how strong they are, just try and wipe Nicholas' nose after he has hit it, or really anytime. He likes to try and blow snot bubbles, because he saw a kid at church do it, so now it is his new task in life.

The bleeding stopped, and he went to bed a little later than normal, but not too late. At 10:30 he woke up wailing. His nose was swollen, and all purple. I thought I had misjudged matters, so I called Kaiser. Who gave a variation on the classic "Take two tylenol and call me in the morning if nothing changes." They said, "Give him Tylenol and we will see you in the morning at 9:30 at the doctor's office." So eventually he got back to bed. When he woke up again at 1:30 - which is the time the Tylenol wears off - his nose was still all gross and weird looking.

But this morning, he seemed fine. He would touch his nose and then whine a little, but other than that, and a little swelling, he seemed fine. We went to the doctor anyways. Besides the doctor telling me that a size 8 was too big a shoe for him (and changing her mind after she had check him out - this wasn't our normal pediatrician), she tried to touch his nose. Wow!!! The fit that occured was horrid. They had to give him a little sedative so he would calm down and let her touch him.

The verdict is that he has "moved" some of the cartilidge in his nose. It turns out that toddlers - well this young at least - don't have a bone in their nose to break. It is just cartilidge. So he "moved" some, but when she looked inside, it didn't appear that there was any structural problems. Although she had a hard time finding where the bump was on his nose because he was still swollen. I have been told to keep an eye on it and that if it looks crooked, to go back. But otherwise, there doesn't appear to have been serious structural damage.

However, he has these black circles under his eyes, like he hasn't slept in 4 days. I was told those might get worse before they get better.

But Nicholas is healing, and I think he has forgotten all about the problem, because he slammed his nose into the couch. He cried a little, but it didn't seem to phase him that much. So - hopefully - this is the only trauma we have with him. At least until he starts playing sports.

So Monday started our hiking days in Tahoe. We discovered that Nicholas liked hiking better than rocky beaches, although not as much as the sandy beach we found on the last day (Sand Harbor, in the Northeast corner, is the best beach ever - for families).

We went to the US Forest Service Visitor's Center. They have stream profile chamber, which is a piece of glass that forms one side of a stream bank. We saw lots of fish in the stream. Nicholas kept pointing to the fish and getting really excited. He actually did some hiking on the trails there too - but he also got a lot of rides in his stroller.



The Smokey the Bear picture is from a short trail they have at the visitor's center. They give the kids a little badge when the complete the trail and answer the questions correctly at the end - but Nicholas is too small to take a quiz, so we didn't get the badge :( But we did get the picture with Smokey the Bear.

Only you can prevent forest fires :)



The Rainbow Trail is a mile long loop that has the stream profile chamber towards the end. It turns out there was a group of preschoolers at the center the same day. Nicholas wanted to follow them around - especially once he saw the girls. It was pretty funny. We had to keep pulling him out of their groups. They were all holding hands. So my son, who is not shy at all, walks right up to them and starts holding one of the girl's hands. It was fairly cute. Everyone thought it was cute. Too bad there was kind of a fit when we had to leave the girls.



This last picture is from our hike that afternoon. Nicholas was hungry because he didn't eat lunch. So he had a chocolate granola bar, an orange, and some water. Hence the mess on his face. But he really loved hiking. he did a good job going up the hill. He simply crawled over rocks, and roots, and wandered around the trail - and off the trail. He thought the whole forest was his kingdom. He really enjoyed himself.

Jon and I enjoyed hiking too (when we weren't carrying Nicholas). It was a fun family activity. We did it together, everyone enjoyed it, and we got to point out things to Nicholas. Nicholas has a love of trees, he loves to point at them and say "tree." Or sometimes feel them. And grab their leaves. So he had a lot of fun hiking around in the trees.

Our breakfast cruise

Jon and I had a great Sunday morning in Tahoe. We got to go on a breakfast cruise. We ate breakfast on the first floor (level?) of the ship. They had waffles, eggs and some other stuff. We got a private table, just the two of us. Then we went cruising on Lake Tahoe for a while, before coming back to the realities of being parents :)

Our first day in Tahoe

Ok. So we have been distracted with other things, rather than posting our adventures in Tahoe.

So this is the first post (of a few) that tells all about our Tahoe trip. First of all, if you are driving anywhere with a young child, you should probably plan to go when they will sleep. Luckily for us, Nicholas slept most of the way into Tahoe. Then we stopped at Regan Beach in Tahoe.

Nicholas was hungry, so he had an Oreo. If you have never seen a 1 year old stuff a whole Oreo in his face at once, take a look at these pictures. He did quite a good job.

Nicholas has never been on a beach, so this was something new. He liked playing in the sand. And he got into the water because we showed him that he could throw rocks in the water. This was pretty much as wet as he got. But he had such fun throwing rocks and watching them make splashes.

Then we went and had lunch with my mom and grandma. Nicholas did a good job eating his pizza - once we managed to get him to settle down and eat. He was so excited and thrilled by all the new things. Jon and I had a good lunch too. My mom and grandma came back on Saturday night to watch Nicholas so that we could go out to our anniversary dinner.



All the Tahoe pictures are available at www.nicholaswunderlich.shutterfly.com