The gift he opened was another stuffed monkey - or chunky monkey as I call him. For some background - about a month ago Niko and I were shopping at a kids store by our house. He snatched the monkey off the shelf and immediately started giving him hugs and kisses. Turns out that in this high-end kids boutique, this isn't acceptable behavior for something that hasn't already been purchased. The saleswoman mentioned to me "Oh, it looks like you've bought a monkey - ha ha." Yes, so $24 later we had a new monkey to our collection.
Putting chunky monkey back in his bag, Nikos shows him where his loyalties lie. Sadly, I don't think chunky monkey has received much attention since. Maybe she will be a present for Nikos' sister.
After the shunning of the monkey we headed out to Antioch. We got lucky this year and were joined by Aunt Con and Frank, who made the trip up from Palm Springs.Nikos and Kira wait patiently for breakfast and the opening of gifts. All was going well until Nikos tried to give Kira a hug.
Here is the annual picture by the tree. One more kid next year - eek!
My mom caught this picture of us pigging out on monkey cake. Nikos was a HUGE fan.
Tradition used to be that we would all take turns opening our gifts, that way you got a chance to see all the gifts and to thank the givers. This year was chaos. Mason and Maile did a great job of helping everyone open their gifts, unfortunately, by the time some of Niko's gifts made it to me the tags were long gone. I think I spent most of the morning saying "Oh wow, this is great, who is this from??"
Mason got a skateboard from Grammy and Pop-Pop and Nikos went CRAZY for it. Who knows where he developed his affection for skateboards. Luckily, Mason was busy coveting Maile's Leapster so he was okay with Nikos playing with his new toy.
The rightful owner claims the board!
Nikos takes one last spin - sans protective gear.
After breakfast we headed home and Nikos opened the rest of his gifts while we got ready to host dinner for my parents, Aunt Con and Frank and Taki's mom Linda.
This is the look I got from Niko every time I took a long time getting his new toys out of the box. Hey, those little twisties are hard to get off!
Here's a video of Nikos enjoying his first Greek language toy. Being a Delta Gamma, I of course, recognize the recitation of the Greek alphabet. Of course, by the time the song is over I feel like I should take a shot of Malibu. Shh, don't tell Liz Briggs.
2 comments:
I swear those twist ties are terrorist plots to cause all parents to lose their minds...
I hope you didn't have your letters on when you took your shot of Malibu. Tisk tisk.
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