NiklasSmith.com

Niklas Doesn't Recognize The Trump Building

March 2010

2010-01-04: A belated Happy New Year to everyone from Niklas! I'm currently in the midst of writing up Niklas's holiday exploits. Well, I'm more in the middle of thinking about writing them up, but still, any day now. Niklas and I kicked off the post holiday season by playing with some holiday loot, going to the Best Buy and taking a nap. Good times!

2010-01-06: Looking for a Christmas recap? Just think of me as the guy who keeps his Christmas lights up until February, then. Sorry about that. Anyway, today Niklas made his triumphant return to the gym, much to the delight of the ladies who work at the gym. He played with toys, watched some videos and went down the big slide. (There is, for some reason, a two story slide at the gym.) Niklas also watched Wall-E for the third day in a row. Coincidentally, we bought him a copy of "robot picks up the trash" two days ago. My review, so far, is that it's a pretty cool kids' movie, but ask me again in a couple of weeks.

2010-01-07: So a couple of weeks ago, I told Niklas that if he had to go pee-pee at night, he should get out of bed and tell me. My thought process was that it would be cool if he didn't have to wear an overnight diaper anymore. While I still believe it would be good for him to not wet himself at night, the results so far have yielded the following: Me = Dumb. It turns out that if you give Niklas a green light to leave his bed for the potty, he will claim to have to potty every fifteen minutes until 10:00 or so. Then, it's every thirty minutes. It's kind of impressive the way he's able to force urine out of his body so often. Still, in the interest of not allowing Niklas to become a sleep deprived zombie, we've revoked his license to pee after 8:00.

In other sleep related news, Niklas usually goes down for his nap at 1:30. Before the nap, we watch Sesame Street at noon and then Caillou at one. Today, we watched the 10:00 Sesame Street and an episode of Caillou off of the TiVo and Niklas was in bed by noon. I did a little dance after that.

2010-01-17: Right, then. So, I guess I should get to the Christmas recap before it's Christmas 2010. Well, we started our trip off on December 23, which was a Wednesday. Riveting so far, yes? Anyway, we headed down to Bloomington to see Grandma and Papa Meeker. Our plan was to leave in the morning and get to Bloomington before Niklas's nap time so we could get him to take at least one nap over the Christmas tour. This actually worked out, which was awesome, but not terribly interesting, story wise. Sorry about that. Anyway, Niklas played with a bunch of his uncle Eric's old Matchbox cars before his nap, which he thought was pretty fabulous. Also, Andrya's mom made a turkey for lunch, so Niklas got to gorge himself on cranberries, which is his thing. After his nap, there was some present opening. You know who loves presents? Niklas. Grandma and Papa got him some awesome stuff, but his favorite thing was this camera. He ran around for the rest of the evening taking pictures of just about everything, but mostly there were extreme close-ups of random objects and a ton of shots of his feet. He got a Richard Scarry book and game from his Uncle Eric, both of which are crazily popular.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we headed downstate to see Niklas's Great-Grandma and Grandpa Forcade and Andrya's aunts, uncles and cousins. Niklas had a fabulous time running about like a crazy man and distributing all of the gifts from the "you pulled a name out of the hat several months ago" gift exchange that Andrya's extended family does. Being, three, Niklas ends up with a lot more than the one gift most people get, so he delivered to himself some Tonka trucks from his Great Uncle Dan and Great Aunt Marsha, some building block/construction type things from his Great Uncle Mark, Great Aunt Kim and Andrya's cousins Kendra and Shannon and some Matchbox cars and accessories from his Great Grandparents. Also, did I mention he ran around like a crazy man? I did, but let's reinforce that.

That evening, we went to Niklas's Great Uncle Malcolm and Great Aunt Margaret's house. Niklas had a fine time eating pizza, candy and ice cream and he also enjoyed the Matchbox cars and book they gave him. What he really liked about their house, though, was the huge set of Lincoln logs that Malcolm had made when Eric was little. Niklas constructed (or foreman-ed the construction of) various garages and roads for his cars and then Godzilla-ed everything with shocking efficiency.

We spent the night back at Andrya's Grandparents farm, where Dr. No-Nap passed out fairly quickly. He woke up soon after that, though, and threw up a bit on account of how it being Christmas and all, I did little to regulate his chocolate intake. It turns out that if Niklas eats twenty-five pounds or so of candy and ice cream, he gets ill. Noted.

Christmas morning, we drove across the state to Grandma and Grandpap Vennard's house. Niklas listened to the Grinch a couple of times in the car, bringing his seasonal total (of audio plays, not video) to seventeen. He's a bit of a fan. We got to my mom's house around noon and Niklas showed a remarkable amount of patience by waiting until after lunch to open presents. Then, he tore into some presents. He got a bunch of cool stuff (tinker toys, a Nerf hoop, some more Matchbox cars), the most popular of which were a car wash/gas station for his myriad Matchbox cars and golf club, which you can see in action here. Niklas spent the rest of the day helping his Grandpap in the garage ("you stay inside, Daddy") and playing with his loot. A good time was had by all.

We spent the next day in St. Francisville, too, except for a trip to Vincennes (the historical capital of the Midwest) for lunch. Niklas enjoyed more Matchbox garaging and tried the new driver out. It turns out he's about as good with the golf as I am, so that could use some work.

And so eventually, we drove home threw a snowstorm and Niklas got to open the presents Santa Claus left for him under his Christmas Tree. It's safe to say that with the impressive gift haul and the having a good idea as to what was going on, this was Niklas's best Christmas ever. He also had a good New Year's Eve, as he got to spend it with Grandma and Papa Meeker while Andrya and I went out with Jared and Dana. He and Papa did some painting and Niklas even made himself useful.

2010-01-20: So, we're currently between coffee tables. Our new one was supposed to arrive on Monday, so we shipped the old one off with Niklas's uncle Eric on Saturday. Interesting (yes it is) aside; Niklas wailed like his sending his dog off to live at some farm downstate when we told him we were getting rid of the old table. Anyway, our new coffee table arrived in a lovely shade of green as opposed to the brown we were hoping for, so we had to send it back. This is how we came to have a 24 inch tray setting on top of an 18 inch ottoman in front of the couch. Today, Niklas gained some first hand knowledge of leverage by leaning on the overhanging edge of the tray launching some raisins, coasters, soda and Matchbox cars about the living room. He found this to be pretty upsetting and he started crying. I put him on the couch with his blankey and said to him "I'll clean it up, buddy; don't worry." "Oh, I won't worry about cleaning it up," he replied. That sounds about right.

2010-01-31: So, Niklas has been up to quite a bit of late. His skating and drumming classes are both going pretty well, and he's been swimming at one of the Park District's indoor pools. I would like to think that I shouldn't have to add "indoor" there on account of how everyone knows that I'm responsible enough not to take the boy to an outdoor pool in January, but here we are. Anyway, I apologize for the lack of updates lately, but I've had a ton of work to do. (Also, I've been rewatching the first five seasons of Lost, but the work thing sounds like a much better excuse.)

Did I mention that Niklas is going to be a big brother? I think I meant to and then didn't. Anyway, Niklas is going to be a big brother. His sibling is due to arrive on July 2. Niklas is convinced that the baby will be a boy, but science won't rule on the matter for a couple of weeks. So there's that.