Have you ever seen?

Nico is starting to be aware of things that rhyme.  And it is awesome.  Absolutely just awesome.

He will say things like, "Mom, have you ever seen a bear wearing underwear?"  "Have you ever seen a pig wearing a wig?"  

Even awesomer?  He is also saying things that don't rhyme.  And laughs because it is funny that it doesn't rhyme, like, "Have you ever seen a whooping crane wearing a nose?" And he is making words up.  Like, "Have you ever seen a benquin riding a striped penguin?"  Makes me laugh so much!!

Police Shirts

Not much going on around here.  With the soccer season over, I am not experiencing the annual, "Mother of God, how is it that I have so much time on my hands?"  Okay, not really.  I mean, our Christmas tree is still up.  The house is *still* a disaster area, and I have only managed 1 page in my Project Life situation.  Oh well.

When Mike and Gay were in town last week, Mike helped Dave and me get one of our couches out to the curb.  To recap: in the Summer of 2010, I bought two couches where the ends recline.  We had just moved into the house on Atapha.  The couch in the living room was gross... 2.5 years of Drake sitting on it, and Nico eating on it meant that it needed to go.  I don't remember how we got the damn things in the house.  I just remember that the day we did it, Dave and I almost had a throw down in the front yard.  So, with some muscle Mike helped us move the big one out.  Which meant that we could move the little one out of the office into the living room.  So what you see in the picture above is my new craft table.  Oh indeed.  My previous craft table has been permanently transitioned into a folding the laundry table. Yay!!

Mike and Gay have managed to feed Nico's obsession with police shirts and fire truck shirts with the shirt that Nico is wearing up above.  What is cool about it, is that the City of Louisville Police don't exist anymore- they were merged with the county (back in the 1990s?).  But its really cool, because now we are getting to the place where when Nico has worn a shirt till its disgusting, I can take it off and say, "Hey, let's take this police shirt off and put a fire truck shirt on?"

Also, the money I spend on cute clothes at Target and online is clearly wasted... all he prefers to wear is police shirts and fire truck shirts.  So, I guess I can start redirecting on that.  :)

Hadgemei Hakuho

Here is a picture of Nico as a sumo guy.  Your argument is invalid.

They have no idea...

Last week, I was on an roller coaster of emotion.  I can't talk about some of it... yet.  But I will.

The completely amazing and wonderful thing that happened?  We won districts.  AGAIN.  Seriously.

The game was awesome.  We went up 1-0, but then Florida High equalized just before the half.  And we battled for another 40 minutes before going to overtime.  I was prepared for ANOTHER PK shootout when Madi Harris said, "Nah, Imma end it now."  See:



It was so awesome.  I can hardly believe that it happened.  Especially since the first time we played Florida High, we lost to them in the second half when they took the momentum and we couldn't get it back.

It was kinda sad too, for Florida High, because this was supposed to be a down year for us.  We went from beating them bad two years ago and last year.  They snuck a win this year at their place.  And a tie at our place.  But they had to definitely feel like this was their year.  Just before the end of regulation their keeper made a huge save against us.  It was crazy.  Its the kind of save, that as a goalkeeper, you know you got because you live right.  But they just couldnt keep Madi out of the net.  It was kinda sad for them, I think.  They have to know that this was the closest that they would ever get to us- because we are only losing three players. And we are gonna be damn good next year.

Dave's parents came up this weekend.  We did some belated Christmas festivities and they got to hang out with Nico.  Nico got a couple of new firefighter and police shirts.  Which is fantastic, because that is all he would wear if possible.  You know its bad when your kid wears the same shirt all weekend because you can't get it off him.  Seriously.

He is big and sassy.  He's loving the math- especially when counting down how many slides down the pole he gets.  Also, there is this:

Nico: Mama, do you know why I am letting you cut my finger nails?
Me: No, why are you letting me?
Nico: Because I like to do fun stuff with you and Dad.  And I know that I have to let you do this so that we can do fun stuff.

FINALLY!!  He gets it!  We go to Europe now! Kthnxbai!

Bribery.

Not much going on around here.  The soccer season is starting the downhill slide to the end.  We go to Taylor tomorrow to play in the semi-final game.  Against Taylor County.  Not a real big fan of playing them at their house.  I don't like the potential to not be in control of the game.

Nico has been pretty great lately.  We are (still) potty training.  Yeah, can you believe that?  He is really great about peeing in the potty, but not so much with #2.  I could understand it, if the kid weren't obviously brilliant.  But I have actually had conversations with him about how he needs to tell me if he has to go.  He nods and says, "I just went."  Fail.

So, I have resorted to bribery.  This goes against everything that the hippie school has suggested.  BTW- you know your kid goes to a hippie school when their best idea is, "Don't put any pressure on him, he'll go when he is ready."  To which I call B.S: 1.  Because he says he will start going when he is 4.  And that is a really long time away.  And 2: At Aunt Ennie's house in Jeffersonville, homeboy was all about going on the potty.  And he has a fantastic memory.  I used to be able to tell him something and he might forget it.  But now, if I tell him something and dont follow through, all holy hell breaks out.

So, I bought him an awesome water pack that you wear and spray out fires (it actually sprays water).  I have told him that if he goes in the potty three times, he can have it.  The really great thing is that he seems to be "getting" it, intellectually. In that, he is trying.  He actually practices sitting on the toilet.  Which is awesome, because I could never get him to do that.  Ever.  So, hopefully this works out for us.  Either that or he is going to expect a car when he turns 12 and gets good grades.  So there is that.

Nico's friend Graham

We had a pretty fun weekend around here.  It was the first in a while that didn't feature travel or soccer or such.  Saturday morning we met Nico's friend Graham at the park so they could play firefighters.  It was pretty cool.   Graham is one of Nico's friends from his new school.  He is two months younger than Nico and his parents are pretty cool.  Both are lawyers and followers of the Prem (albeit they are Arsenal fans... I guess there is no accounting for taste...)

Sunday we went to this massive park down in Wakulla county with Ovid.  Its huge.  And awesome.  It has a fire pole.

Otherwise, we spent the weekend getting the house clean.  Its been an unmitigated disaster since the soccer season started.  But with Dave's parents coming to town this week, we have extra incentive to get it under control.

Nico is doing fun things these days.  After dinner we were doing some math by adding up reese's pieces.  Nico understands what "equals" means, which kind of blows my mind.  Its very awesome.

Belated Christmas

I know, a blog post?  What?  What is this nonsense?  Crazy, I know.  It's just been completely out of control.  Between the soccer season, traveling for the holidays, applying for jobs, digging out from all I didnt do while traveling over the holidays.  There is no excuse for it.  I know.  I know.  I hope that when Nico reads this he will understand how much I really wanted to post, but couldnt.  What does he want from me?  To be Nicole?

The holidays were awesome.  In order to attempt to check something off my life list (having a white christmas), I urged the family to go to Michigan for Christmas.  Plus that meant that Mom could see Uncle Scott.  And it avoided the fight about Dallas v. Tallahassee for the holidays.  Well, we didnt get snow on Christmas, but we got it a couple of days after.  Nico loved it.  But I think his favorite part was running around with the cousins.  They were quite the little band.  It was pretty cute.  

The lake house was really close to Lake Michigan, so we went over to check it out.  It's weird to be in a place where you can hear waves and see snow.  Its disorienting for this Florida girl.  Christmas day was a pretty big hit.  Santa brought Nico a police officer costume, a fire truck, and various firefighter gear.  Once again, we ended up leaving with more stuff than we brought.  

We took the kids to Chicago to go to Shedd Aquariaum (also so I could do a job interview at DePaul).  Nico's favorite part was the submarine that he played in.  But in all, he was pretty much done after about two hours.  We are definitely not the kind of family that should ever go to those things, mostly because I dont really think we ever get our money's worth.

It took us a couple of days to get home.  We stopped in Louisville on the way back so we could have dinner at The Bristol.  Soooo good.  The next day, we hopped in the car and started on our way.  Nico had been complaining that his stomach hurt- I thought he was just hungry because its hard to get him to sit and eat sometimes (we were at Cracker Barrell).  An hour outside of Nashville and he ralphed all over his seat. We stopped and unpacked the back of the car and stripped him down and cleaned him up.  He then went to sleep in the car, which was weird.  Later, we stopped at a Sweet Tomatoes outside of Atlanta for dinner and he ralphed there.  We ended up grabbing a room for the night and driving back on NYE day.  No more puking incidents, thankfully.  

When we got back, we headed to the park to see Ovid and then went to Joe and Kari Follick's house for a NYE party, which was pretty fun.  We took it pretty easy for the rest of the week... I had to start back to work before Nico went back to school, so it was kind of a nightmare, trying to balance getting work done, Nico being at home (and us not wanting to stick him in front of the TV) and soccer practice.  

Sunday, I took Nico and met Ovid at the EMS station down in Woodville.  Ovid's Dad is an EMT, so he showed us the ambulance and had a friend show us the fire trucks.  He was definitely the high light of Winter Break.  

Now we are back on the grind.  The soccer season is almost over.  Dave's parents are coming up next week.  Nico is back in school (and not too pleased about it).  Looking forward to Daylight Savings Time, so that we can start going to the park again after school.