Happy birthday, kiddo! This year has flown by! You’re so different from this time last year – talking, learning your letters and colors – but still the same in a lot of ways. Hope you have a great birthday, Nicholas, and I think this year is going to be even more exciting than the last – you’ve got something big coming up in the fall…
Love,
Dad
We had a small birthday party for Nicholas with our families today. Oma and Uncle Greg came down for the day and all of his grandparents and Uncle Matt were still here so we had a party to celebrate our little man’s upcoming 2nd birthday. I still cannot believe he will be 2 this week!
When given a choice, Nicholas picked out a train cake and train decorations. Big surprise there! Since he doesn’t eat cake but likes ice cream, I was planning to do an ice cream train cake but the logistics of that were stressing me out. So we decided to make a cookie train since he will eat the occasional cookie. That worked much better and came out super cute if I do say so myself! Nicholas still didn’t eat it but he seemed excited about it which was the main goal anyways. He did pick each and every decorative MnM off of it though. Guess we’ll just give him a bowl of MnM’s next year. He opened some more fun presents and we chowed down on his favorite pizza for lunch. It was a really good morning and as always, Nicholas seemed to have a blast!
We had another fabulous Christmas this year! The weekend was filled with lots of yummy food, laughter and family. Couldn’t ask for much more than that!
Christmas Eve was spent checking in on Santa’s progress on Norad.com, cooking, drinking wine, eating cookies and playing. Nicholas put out the reindeer food he had made earlier in the front yard and put out carrots and cookies for Santa on our special plate that we made last year. He gave Santa an awful lot of carrots. Perhaps he thought if he gave them all to Santa, he wouldn’t have to eat them anymore! After the Santa-prep chores were done, he put on his Santa pajamas, we read The Night Before Christmas and Nicholas went to sleep listening to real jingle bells outside of his window.
Christmas morning was a lot of fun! He was super excited to go downstairs and see all of his grandparents waiting with cameras to catch his reaction! He seemed a bit overwhelmed at first and the gift opening came in spurts. It actually took a few minutes for him to notice the bulldozer in the room! I think an easy favorite is the talking train station that Uncle Matt got for him. He adores all things train so when he opened that and the 2 new engines to go with it, he played with that for a long time. He also got a firetruck from Santa, a real bulldozer from Nana and Papa, an awesome playhouse from Grandma, Grandpa and Oma and a remote control bus from Aunt Jen. He definitely should not be bored for a long time to come!
Overall we all had a lovely holiday and really enjoyed being able to share the day with our parents and family! Thank you, everyone. Love you guys!
Watching the intro to Thomas and Friends, one of Nicholas’ favorite shows.
Mommy says she is one lucky girl because she doesn’t have to bake one Christmas cookie! Daddy does it all and I get to help. I am an expert at pouring flour into the mixer and turning it on. I love helping Daddy!
We have had to break out the nebulizer again in the Maravillas household. Nicholas has had a stuffy/runny nose since Sunday but it turned into a cough with a fever yesterday and we ended up at the pediatrician this morning for wheezing. Just like at Halloween. This time the doc prescribed an oral steroid to help with the inflammation that is causing the wheezing, in addition to regular nebulizer treatments. Which Nicholas is taking like a champ! He saw the machine this afternoon and hopped onto the couch and sat through it like we do it every day. He is so brave! Hopefully with a few days of the medicine and treatments he’ll be good as new again. I sure hope so anyways, we have a lot to do to prepare for Santa’s arrival next week!!
Who needs a gingerbread house when you can have a gingerbread choo choo train! Nicholas got super excited when I bought the kit and when he saw the box but not so much in the actual assembly. But he did help some- mostly by throwing the candies into the caboose. Precious cargo, I suppose. He also tried to eat the pieces and luckily did not break his teeth. After being told not to do that, he went to play with his trains and popped over to see what we were doing every now and then. Matthew and I had fun decorating it at least!
With us occupied, Nicholas took the opportunity to be silly and walk around with his blankie on his head. Yes, he walked smack into the island! Despite the thud, he was fine. Then he decided that the empty gift boxes under the tree were good places to sit. Crazy kid!
Nicholas is learning so much, so fast these days that it is hard to keep up. Some new things he can do now include blinking/squeezing his eyes shut. He can do this on command or just does it to be funny. Usually its just to be funny.
He will also say “bless you” when he sneezes or if someone else does. Not all the time, but most times. And of course he won’t do it for a fake sneeze when we try to catch it on video. Smarty pants.
He is learning so many more letters and just last night was drawing in the tub and drew an “O” and said “O!!”. Sure enough, it was an “O”. I’ll admit that is the easiest letter to write but still pretty darn impressive for an almost 2 year old. I forgot to take a picture last night and he drew a yellow “bus” over it tonight but you can still see it for the most part.
Finally here are some neat pictures of him admiring the Christmas tree. Please excuse his Halloween skeleton shirt! He was being so cute and sweet, I didn’t want to ruin the moment by changing his shirt.
