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 Wherein Niklas Ate The Majority Of The Cranberries In The Country. |
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Pictures News |
2008-11-02:
Niklas had a pretty good Halloween. We went to zoo for story time and as a bonus, we got to see some giant Galapagos
turtles eating a pumpkin with apple eyes and a cucumber nose. Halloweeny! Also, Niklas broke out the all-important
Halloween phrases "chocolate" and "more chocolate". A good time was had by all. The rest of the weekend was a pretty good time. Yesterday, we took Niklas for a walk on the railway trail. He was riding his tricycle and we let him do his own steering (though I continued to provide the propulsion using the tricycle's specially designed pushing rod). The first couple of minutes consisted of a terrifying display of awful, awful driving highlighted by a bunch of going in circles and a bit of driving head first into a wall. After a while, he sort of got the hang of it and only threatened to take Andrya out at the knees a couple of times. As he is wont to do, once we were about a mile from the house, he decided he was done riding and wanted to walk. That lasted for a few feet before he started in with the "carry you" which doesn't actually mean that he wants to carry you. Quite the opposite, actually. Today, we went out to Dockyard. Niklas saw the dolphins, the big clock he likes, some sheep poop, the sheep responsible for said poop and a big pile of debris, which was quite popular. Also, he had cluck-clucks for lunch and then some ice-cream for desert. Niklas really likes going to Dockyard. 2008-11-05: So on Monday, we went to the zoo. Niklas had a fine time, though he was a bit perturbed that there is no story time on Monday. "Story time?" said Niklas. "It's Monday, buddy, there's no story time today," I replied. "Closed," said Niklas sadly. Close enough. Yesterday, we went to the playground. Niklas had a good time playing with the other kids there. Don't believe me? "Good time play with other kids," said Niklas. So there. Today, we were going to the playground again, but instead Niklas got to sit in the car while I changed a tire using a jack that is complete insufficient for my car lifting needs due to the Rav4's inexplicably modified suspension. This took a while. By the way, if any of you dropped a screw on the ground somewhere in Bermuda, I hate you. As a Steelers fan from Chicago, Niklas endorses this. 2008-11-09: Niklas has really been using his imagination lately. I've been fed about twelve tons of imaginary (thankfully) zoo animal feed. I'm not sure why he feels that zoo feed is appropriate for me, though I have noticed that he doesn't eat any himself. Also, Sketchy, Cuddles and Bunny have been taking turns reading he bedtime story with him. Any one of them can point out the various landmarks in "Good Night Chicago", though Sketchy seems to be best at identifying skyscrapers. Here are a couple of new pictures. Hopefully, when you click on that link you will go to the appropriate place and not be intercepted like a Ben Roethlisberger pass. Stupid Steelers. 2008-11-12: So Niklas had a pretty good day today. We kicked things off with a rare (not really) viewing of Elmo's Potty Time. In fact, he woke me up this morning by saying "Elmo's Potty Time?" over and over again. To sum up, Niklas enjoys Elmo's Potty Time. Anyway, after that, we headed off to the zoo. It was a pretty exciting day as the octopus, otters and bats were all out and about. Also, I brought a bunch of change for him to dump in the change collection thing, so that was popular. In the afternoon, we did some stomping about up by the Manor House and then the local fort where I took a bunch of pictures. The Niklas-related results can be found here. 2008-11-18: So Niklas's big thing these days is to try to get behind the wheel of the car. This one, not this one. For a while, he would attempt to achieve this goal by waiting until I unlocked the car and then running around, opening the driver's door and getting in. While this was occasionally successful, both the time it takes a two year old to open a car door and my recent wisening (not a word) up to the fact that I could open the door to his car seat and relock the car before he could even get over to the driver's side led to a less than desirable (for Niklas) drive-the-wheel/trip-to-the-car ratio. Recognizing this, Niklas has switched his philosophy up a bit. Now, once I open the door to the back seat, he climbs up onto the floor board and then tries to launch himself between the front seats, ideally ending up behind the wheel. This actually works a third of the time or so. Another third of the time (usually when I'm not carrying anything and am reasonably well rested), I catch him before he can try his jump and strap him into his car seat. The rest of the time, he tries to jump between the seats and fails either by hitting one of the seats instead of the gap between them or, preferably from a comedic standpoint, getting stuck between the seats. When that happens, he lets out a little sigh and says "stuck" matter of factly. Good times  2008-11-23: Niklas woke up pretty early yesterday (6:15 instead of his usual 7:00 to 7:30 range). He does this every once in a while and it's usually not a big deal. However, he compounded his lackofsleepitude by only taking an hour long nap in the afternoon (down from his usual two). This all probably would have been OK, but I deemed last night to be an opportune time for Niklas to try out his sleep tent in lieu of his crib, seeing has how he'll be spending quite a bit of time in it next month. It turns out that Niklas loved his sleep tent. Loved playing in it, that is. He didn't end up dropping off to sleep until about 9:00. That's why when he woke up this morning at 6:15 again, I knew we were in for an unfortunate morning. And unfortunate it was! He didn't do anything really terrible, but everything he did was kind of terrible. For instance, he insisted that we watch Elmo's Potty Time (this is not a surprise), but about five minutes into it, he acted like I was making him watch my History Of Britain dvds (which are awesome, if you're not two). "No Elmo's Potty Time!" screamed Niklas. This happened with other stuff too, like having some milk ("no milk! juice!"), eating some cereal ("other cereal! other cereal!") and, most cruelly of all, when he said he wanted to lay down on the bed in the guest room but instead tried to tear the closet doors off. Thankfully, before too long Andrya got up and took him off of my hands so I could take a nap. I don't have the details of how they spent the rest of the morning, but when I asked Andrya if he acted any better for her, she said "eh". Anyway, Niklas took a good nap after lunch and we did some tricycling and playground going in the afternoon, so that was cool. The weather has finally turned somewhat fallish. It even got down into the low sixties the other day. Here are some new pictures of Niklas braving the cold. 2008-11-25: Niklas has been busy enjoying the fact that tourist season is over. Yesterday, we went out to Dockyard where Niklas saw the dolphins, the big clock, sheep poop and associated sheep, all without having to avoid people who forgot to pack their common sense along with their inappropriate for body type clothing. That afternoon, we went to Horseshoe Bay, where there were only four other people on the beach. Niklas had a fine time playing in the sand. We built a bunch of sandcastles (each one of which Niklas Godzillaed almost as soon as it was finished), some sand turtles and a ramp for Matchbox car that led to some Evel Knieval Snake River Canyon-esque disasters for whoever was unfortunate enough to be driving said Matchbox car. Good times. 2008-11-26: So yesterday, Niklas and I went to the zoo. A fine time was had by all, especially when Niklas and a couple of other kids entertained themselves for fifteen minutes or so by chasing each other around a full size model of this thing. Niklas loves "where'd he go/there he is" type games. Anyway, when we got home, I asked Niklas if he had a good time at the zoo. "Yep," said Niklas. Then he said "Oscar the Grouch had good time at zoo. Saw dinosaurs." I'm still trying to confirm that, but if it's true, I'm going to see the dinosaurs post-haste. 2008-11-27: Niklas wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. Niklas celebrated by eating about half a can of cranberry sauce, some turkey and some pumpkin pie. Also, he went to the playground with Andrya, which I hear was quite enjoyable. In non-Niklas news, I apparently do not know the difference between sweet potatoes and cassava. Fun fact about cassava, if you do not cook it correctly, it contains possibly lethal amounts of cyanide. Unfortunately, it did not become obvious to me that I was dealing with cassava and not sweet potatoes until Andrya and Niklas got back from the playground and Andrya informed me that yes, my initial thought that sweet potatoes were orange and not white was correct. This is how I ended up with a poison casserole in the oven. On the plus side, I did make plenty of regular, non-poison mashed potatoes, so there was that. Here are some new pictures. Thankfully, they're not made of cranberry, so there's not much chance of Niklas eating them.  
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