Easter and David's birthday weekend

This weekend was a fully packed one! My parents got into town on Friday and we started off our weekend with a few drinks at Delaney's...

 

We then came home for some sliders and Michigan State March Madness out on the patio...

 

We did some pre-birthday celebrating for David on Saturday at Top Golf. He arranged for a handful of his friends to come celebrate with him too. I know he appreciated seeing a few of his best friends that he doesn't get to see too often. Overall, it was a fun afternoon!

Sunday was both David's birthday AND Easter, so we went over to Dave and Cindy's to celebrate! We had a crab boil, an Easter egg hunt, and just hung out watching some basketball.

Nico enjoyed all of his Easter gifts...

 

And the Easter egg hunt begins...

 

 

 

 

He did really good with collecting eggs for the first few minutes, and then was distracted and lost interest quickly! He wasn't as excited about the toys and snacks in the eggs as I thought he would have been. It was still cute to watch.

 

Quality time with all 4 of his grandparents...

 

Outdoorsy afternoons with the big guy

I think if it was up to Nico, he would spend the entire day, every day, outside. He likes to play on his little playground/slide, throw and hit balls (trying to hit the birds), mow the grass, and cook on his grill.   

 

 

Bathtime!

Nico had been taking showers with David for many months, but after getting reintroduced to baths while we were in Jamaica, it is one of his favorite things to do now! I have used bathtime as motivation for getting him to do certain things as the evening is winding down like picking up his toys, eating the rest of his vegetables, etc!

 

For some reason, he thinks it is hilarious to switch the water back and forth between showermode and bathmode.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the water is coming out of the faucet, he loves to fill up different cups and dump them on himself. He laughs just about every time.

 

 

 

Bathtime has now become one of the things that we both really look forward to.

 

No, no, no

Nico is seriously a funny guy.

He started this new thing this week. If you tell him no in a stern voice, he simply covers his face. Not sure where he picked this one up, but it makes it hard for me to keep a serious face!

Also, when he is about to get into something he shouldn't (i.e. something he shouldn't touch like the tv equipment, bath faucet, etc) he gets a stern face, puckers his lips out, shakes his head, and points his finger, while saying "no no no." Ofcourse, he still does it. But hey, atleast he acknowledges the "no" part.

We're goin to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

Today, we took Nico to the Ft. Worth Zoo! We have been talking for many months about wanting to take him there when he was old enough to enjoy it and the weather got nicer. Today was the day! He loooooves animals and was so excited the entire time. He knew most of the animals by name and their noises as well. It was such a fun experience.

He was a little mama's boy today. I would try to pass him off to David and he would reach for me and say mama. Awww. :)

I think the elephants were one of his favorite...

 

 

I love the way his kissable, chunky cheeks stand out when he is sleeping. It's not too often that I get to watch him sleep...

 

Here are some of the animals we saw. Nico came face to face with the tiger in the center. It came up against the glass when we got there. It's as if Nico was touching its face. Pretty cool.

Jamaica, 'mon!

David and I went on an amazing, 5 night vacation to the Iberostar in Montego Bay!

 

But... I still haven't transferred pics from a cd we got there since we have no technology that you can even put a cd into! Just gonna skip this one for now and will come back to it hopefully soon. 

 

 

How can you not wake up with a smile on your face every single day when you get to hang out with this guy?!...

 

 

 

 

This guy loooooves to be outside. We all spent the afternoon running around the cul-de-sac and pushing him around in his little car.

A great day for baseball!

David's 13 and under team started up their season this weekend, and fortunately for us, it was just down the road! Nico and I had an outing to McDonald's for lunch and then to the game.

 

I was especially proud of him today during our lunch together. He was more well behaved than normal, sitting there chatting away and neatly eating his lunch. An older couple was sitting next to us, and they commented on how cute and how much of a talker he is. 

 

 

 

 

We went on to daddy's baseball game, and Nico ran around the field for a minute during a warmup break. He was ready to play ball too!

For most of the game, he ran around like a crazy person. There were only a few moments when he sat and actually watched some of the game.

 

After about 3 innings, the duty of chasing him around in a half paranoid state with anticipation of overthrown or foul balls was enough for this mama. He had a really fun time out there though! You can see it by the look in his face, even after we left.

 

The coolest part of the day was what followed when we returned home. He wouldn't let go of the baseball. He wanted to take it with him to bed, and screamed at me if I tried to take it away. I felt like a baseball was relatively harmless for him to keep, and I had the video monitor with me, so I figured what the heck. (Nico 1, Mom 0). After a few minutes, when I thought he was asleep, with baseball still in hand ofcourse, he sat up and began throwing the ball against his crib. He repeatedly kept doing it with his little giggle each time it rolled back. It melted my heart. When he finally overthrew the ball outside of his crib, he freaked out, saying "baseBALL! baseBALL!" about 20 times and stood up to look for it.  I took this pic of my video monitor screen. Wanted to remember this moment! :)  And as predicted, I gave him a few minutes to calm down, and he was out like a light.

 

 

Dallas World Aquarium

We took Nico down to the Dallas World Aquarium today, and as we expected, he LOVED it! He was fascinated by the many monkeys that climbed around in the nets up by the ceiling and was frequently pointing them out. I enjoyed seeing his eyes light up when he saw something new. He was so cute and demanded that I hold him the entire time. It was nice to have a whole afternoon of quality family time!

 

 

 

 

Of all the words he says, TUR-TLE is still our favorite...