Nikos Has Friends in Tall Places

A few weeks ago when I was out in the Far East Bay we stopped by the Knight house to visit with Gail and Brayden.

Brayden was born in February of 2008, so he is about eight months younger than Nikos - and I think Nikos is FINALLY catching up to Brayden in height!

Thank goodness this second pic shows that he has a little bit of me in him, since I don't think he looks like me at all. On a side note (and more proof that he is my kid), I am happy to report that at daycare they have to put Nikos to bed after the rest of the kids because he won't stop talking and keeps the kids up. Ha! Totally my kid.

Olive is amused by the crazy antics of the boys.

Flash forward a few weeks when we stopped in LA (on our way to Scottsdale) for a visit with Suzanne and Hunter (at Jayme and Beck's house.)

Hunter is about five months younger than Nikos and the boys had a great time playing together. Since we had just finished an eight hour car ride, Nikos definitely needed to burn off some energy and Jayme's living room became an obstacle course of sorts for the boys.

We were messing around with the camera settings and didn't get what we intended, but I wanted to post these because they do some justice as to the frantic pace the kids were keeping. Jayme is due with a boy in June and I am sure after the night she was thankful it wasn't twin boys!

After tiring themselves out they relaxed and enjoyed the puppet show that we performed for them. And by puppet show I mean a Tivo of Yo Gabba Gabba while we drank wine.

Happy 1st Birthday Baby O!

Cousins' Weekend

This past weekend I packed up the kids and headed out to my parents house. I wanted to give Taki a break for the weekend (I owed him one since he watched the kids for the entire weekend when I went away with Mel in January) and it also gave us a chance to hang with the Roberts family.

On Saturday morning (after our Starbucks run) we went to Mason's t-ball practice and then hit up the adjoining park.

Kira and Olive on the swings - they must've been checking out a cute boy on the sliding board.

Mason showing off his monkey bar skillz.

Trying to decide if they look alike at all...

...and for the record, I had Olive dressed in a really cute outfit but on the drive out she puked all over herself. I found out because Nikos said "Excuse me, mama, Olive just spit up." I thought it was adorable until he repeated it about 48 more times. Me explaining that I couldn't stop on the freeway wouldn't cut it with him.

Mason and Nikos on the swings. I gave them a stick to hold so they could pull each other and they thought it was the most fun ever.

Fresh off the sweet slide at the other park the Roberts kids showed us three really cool ones at this park. The middle slide had a bunch of bumps built into it so the kids FLEW down it. So fun to watch!

Before leaving the park I plopped Olive in Nikos' carseat so I could clean off hers. Mid-scrub I look over and catch Olive sneaking a drink of Niko's hot coco.

Sunday we threw the kids together for the cousins shot.

Here's Niko begging to hold Olive - "please Mama let me hold Olive."

Niko wins and the kids go into funny faces. Of course, I think Mason's face is bordering on scary, hopefully he'll try out a new one.

Wooosh

After the house-wide strep test this weekend (luckily I was the only one who "failed" with a positive result) and a healthy dose of antibiotics (again for yours truly) we took a long walk to Codornices Park. This is a great park that Taki and I stumbled on a few years ago when we were on one of our long, meandering walks through Berkeley (obviously this was pre-kids, since post-kids there isn't so much meandering going on.) Since the park is around 2.5 miles away it isn't on our regular park agenda, but they do have an awesome slide that is a hit with Nikos.

In fact, Taki took the kids to the same park last weekend when I was in bed sick and miserable - so we'll start out with some shots of the first visit.

Here's Nikos on the stairs to the giant slide.

The slide is made out of cement and kids usually go down on cardboard, but sometimes just in their clothes. I'll just state for the record that I am a teeny bit glad I wasn't there for his first time down the slide because last time we were there a kid came down so fast he ended up breaking his wrist or arm (I was too freaked out to look closely.) I guess when the kids use the waxed cardboard it gets all crazy fast. Luckily from these videos it looks like the recent rain had stripped the cement of the wax so it wasn't like the Olympic luge track.

Nikos inchwormes down the slide.



Next up face first to improve the speed (with Olive cameo at the end.)



Okay, back to this past weekend and our walk up to the park. On our way up we passed this elephant in someone's front yard - yes, you read that correctly. Remember, we DO live in Berkeley.


Nikos wasn't so sure about it at first, I think he was having flashbacks to the elephants that horrified him at the Rainforest Cafe in Florida last July. I finally convinced him that the elephant was in fact fake and made out of tires. We both touched his trunk (for proof of non-life) and then Nikos was convinced.

The house also had one of those black hard plastic drainage pipe things - Nikos quickly went over to touch that exclaiming "look Mama, I'm touching a snake!" I did not take a picture of this. Drainage snakes are obviously not as cool as tire elephants, at least in my book.

When we got to the park Nikos was super excited to get back on the slide. Olive and I waited at the bottom to watch him come down while Taki went up with him so he could slide down as well.

I am trying to get her used to her sunglasses before we head to Arizona in a few weeks. I think these lasted about two minutes on her face...

Nikos started out on his belly, without cardboard.








Too little to ride the slide solo, Olive enjoys the swings.

Romios Boot Camp

Nikos practices pushups.



Olive avoids learning to crawl.



Olive claps!

Love Me Some Washington and Lincoln

We enjoyed a leisurely Presidents' Day. We started out making breakfast - Nikos has turned in to quite a little helper in the kitchen.




Next up we headed up to Two Thomas park to play in the sunshine.

We love long weekends!

Best Seat in the House

I found these little gems on Taki's cell phone. The shots are from when we went to Monterey a month or so ago to go to the aquarium. We were at Bubba Gump's for lunch and in order to avoid the hour or so wait we agreed to eat in the bar. Of course all the short tables were occupied so we had to make do with a tall table. This arrangement was fine until lunch arrived and we realized we couldn't juggle Olive with one arm and peel shrimp with the other. Like any good parents we gave her some bread and plopped her in a highchair while we enjoyed the meal.