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 Wherein Niklas Does Whatever It Is That He Does. |
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Pictures News |
2009-02-01:
So, Niklas had a pretty good weekend. On Friday, I finally felt well enough to leave the house for more than two minutes, so we headed off
to the playground for some playgroundtastic fun. He rode the swings, went down the slide and he and some two year old girl chased each other up
and down the stairs to this fort deal about a thousand times. Yesterday, he played with a bunch a toys while Andrya and I did job-related
things. Today, Andrya took him to the playground AND he was able to sleep through me yelling at the TV during the Steelers game. He would
sit on my lap for hours when he was super-tiny, relatively unaffected by my screaming at the Penguins, so I guess he's trained for this moment
pretty much since birth. He'll be excited tomorrow when I tell him how things worked out. 2009-02-03: So, I had hoped that by now Niklas would be over his hatred of getting a haircut. That didn't pan out for me so much. Today, he threw a fit when I took him into the barbershop just to make an appointment. I guess that gives me two days to talk him in to being cool for the actual haircutting which is to take place on Thursday, but I'm not terribly optimistic. On an unrelated note (really, not like when I say it's unrelated when I really mean that it is), Niklas colored his teeth purple today. 2009-02-04: Niklas and I went to the playground this morning. Niklas made up a new game, which he loves a lot more than I do. The name of the game is "Daddy run fast" and the way it's played is I have to run around the playground while Niklas chases me. I tried to pitch a game called "Daddy sits down and takes a rest while Niklas plays quietly", but that wasn't nearly as popular. 2009-02-08: So, I took Niklas for his haircut on Thursday. Did it go well? IT DID NOT. He was in fine spirits when he got there, particularly because the barber gave him not one, but two lollipops. So that was a good start. After that, though, things went downhill in a hurry. He wouldn't sit in the barber chair by himself, so I had the awesome experience of holding on to screaming, flailing Niklas while hair flew everywhere. Hurray for me. He kept saying "get down, get down", "ready to go, ready to go" and "all done, all done". Did I say "saying"? Screaming. I meant screaming. It was so bad that people walking around in the mall the barbershop is in stopped by to inquire as to why a child was being tortured in an apparently legitimate place of business. Pleasant. Once the actual haircutting was over, Niklas flipped the switch from "horrible" to "charming" and laughed with the barber, giving him a high five. I don't know what his deal is. He looks good, though, so there's that. 2009-02-10: Niklas and I went to the playground today. He enjoyed some running about, some swinging, some sliding and most of all, the sandmine. It's in his blood, I guess. Also, he made some pretend biscuits and cookies. Other than that, it was a pretty laid back day. Niklas has discovered the Disney Channel, so we watched a bunch of Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse and Winnie The Pooh. Anyway, here are some new pictures. 2009-02-13: So, Niklas and I just got back from the beach. The tide is way out right now, as is much of the sand, so there are a bunch of rocks and tidepools about. Niklas is on a serious "pick up trash" kick and, as this is vastly superior (according to me and, I would assume, society) to his "watch the Disney Channel" thing, I'm happy to indulge him. There was a big chunk of plastic in a tidepool and I was trying to figure out how to get it without getting myself soaked (which happens to me with unfortunate regularity). I told Niklas to stand still for a second while I contemplated. Here's what happened:  2009-02-17: We've been laying low here lately, primarily due to heavy rains, sustained 50 mph winds and 70 mph gusts. Pleasant! We have been able to take advantage of a few breaks in the weather, though. On Saturday, we went to the playground where Niklas worked on combining his love of the slide and his love of tumbling. The results were predictably hilarious. The highlight was Niklas managing to fill the hood of his sweatshirt up with sand when he exited the slide head first at a high rate of speed. Good times. Today, Niklas and I searched for a golf ball he threw down the hill last week. We didn't find that one ("yellow golf ball is hiding," said Niklas), but we found a different golf ball which thrilled the boy. After that, we walked up to the fort where we had a fine time until the rain made an encore appearance and drenched us. That's what we get for leaving the house for forty five minutes, I guess.  2009-02-19: Niklas was sleepy today. How sleepy? So sleepy that I had to wake him up TWICE. I'm pretty sure that this has never happened before. Lately, he's been getting up right at 7:00, but today he was still sleeping at 7:30 when I woke him up so we could drive Andrya to the ferry. Outstanding! After that, we walked to the nearby playground where Niklas rode the swings for a ridiculous amount of time, went down the slide and made some allegedly delicious oatmeal cookies out of sand. Also, we saw some pretty ugly looking ducks. Then, after we'd walked home and had some lunch, Niklas took a three hour nap. THREE HOURS! It would have been longer, but we were out of food and I was hungry, so I had to wake him up so we could hit the grocery store. If you're curious as to how cheerful Niklas is about being woken up from a nap, the answer is "not even remotely cheerful". Here are some pictures of Niklas taken in cheerier, woke-up-on-his-own type times. 2009-02-24: Well, there hasn't been a lot going on lately. The weather has continued to be generally crappy, sometimes seemingly spitefully so. For instance, this morning was pretty nice, so we headed off to the playground. We were there for about fifteen minutes of swingtastic swinging and then the sky turned black and it started to rain. We waited a few minutes, unsuccessfully hoping the rain would stop, before we gave up and got in the car so as to head to the grocery store. Once we were a tenth of a mile or so down the road, the rain stopped and the sun came back out. Spite? Possibly. On the plus side, Niklas is alright with riding in the car these days and we had a fine time singing along to some of his favorite songs ("we were the first band to vomit in the bar and find the distance to the stage to far"). This afternoon, we went to the playground again and again, the sun was shining. Also again, once we had been there for a little bit, the sky clouded up and the rain started. This time, I was convinced the weather was just being a jerk, so we stuck it out until the rain stopped like five minutes later. Sadly, the other parents there were unconvinced as to the spitefulness of the weather so all the kids Niklas had been playing with were dragged away. Niklas wasn't terribly broken up about that as it meant there was no line for the swing, so I guess that was ok. 2009-02-26: So Lent apparently started yesterday. As we did last year, Niklas and I are picking up beach trash so as to get out of having to give up stuff we like. Andrya notes that as a two year old, Niklas doesn't have to abide by the rules of Lent, but as the guy who spends all day with him, I'm not going down by myself. Anyway, beach trash, we're getting rid of it. Yesterday went ok. We went down to the local beach and picked up a bag of trash. Niklas had great fun holding the bag, then putting trash in the bag, then putting me in charge of the bag while he ran off and jumped in a puddle while wearing his shoes despite my pleas to the contrary. Speaking of shoes, my estimate is that 50% of the people in the world have somehow lost their shoes in the ocean. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Right, then. Today, we went to Church Bay where Niklas pulled his weight and then some. Here are some pictures. Screaming, laughing, it's all there.  
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