ONE.

She woke up this morning and was a year older! Why do they have to do that? :) With her upcoming birthday this weekend, we still wanted to do a little something special to celebrate her big day, so we sang happy birthday while she blew out a candle on top of a pancake stack topped with whipped cream. She was giving us looks and wondering what the heck we were all doing.

 

Natalie opened a couple presents and spent the morning pushing this doll stroller around. She is getting closer to walking on her own but still prefers to belly crawl! It's a sight to see her speed around the room with that preferred method. She does pull her self up on her little activity center but hasn't been brave enough to take but a step or two away from it!

All in all, she's doing all of the typical things that healthy 12 month olds do! She's a smiley, happy girl that we cannot imagine life without. She takes two naps like clockwork, and we do our best not to mess with those. We stopped nursing last month (she basically quit on her own long before last month, so it became a pumping only game) and has been on formula for about 4 weeks. We are transitioning to whole milk this week. She eats just about anything and everything with a high amount of enthusiasm and enjoys sharing with Miley as well. She babbles about saying mama, dada, Mi Mi (for Miley), hi, ball, and she can wave bye bye. She adores her big brother and can smile and laugh at him all day. Her favorite toys are the ones with balls. She spends a large majority of her time stuck in a stroller (half kidding/half serious) due to all of Nico's baseball games, but she seems happy as can be to be outside around people! She makes it easy for us to still get out of the house often and keep our fun, busy lifestyle.

 

Happy birthday, sweet girl. Can't wait for your party this weekend!

Father's Day

There really aren't enough days that we stop and thank our dads for all that they do. At least today is one of them. Nico and Natalie hit the jackpot with this guy.

 

Nico's gift brought David to tears this year. I actually was video recording, but David made me stop due to a few tears! He received an "All About Dad" book with pictures of the two of them throughout as well as various pages where Nico could answer questions about him. Nico was so proud to give this to him and put a lot of effort in to it.

 

We had a relaxing day today with a trip to the pool and dinner at Texas Roadhouse. It was a good day.

 

 

A Happy Father's Day to the other great dads we know, especially to mine, up in Michigan this summer! I hit the jackpot, too, with a great dad. Thank you for all that you do :)

Dodgers: Spring Tball

Another tball season has come to an end for this guy, and man, it is so fun to watch him play. His team won all of their dozen or so games...except when they played those pesky Rangers. They lost both regular season games to them and also lost again in the championship game. Nico didn't mind too much though; he was just excited to have a trophy and have fun playing baseball with his friends!

Despite being generally competitive at home, it was always cool (and a good reminder for myself) to hear him innocently ask at the end of the game if they won or not, and then, despite the answer, he would quickly divert his attention to the post game snacks. We teamed up with his buddy, Logan, with the intent of keeping him with one of his friends who was also a good player too. David was initially intending on being just a dad this season, but Mike talked him into being his assistant. (As if it really took much talking into for the guy that has devoted over half of his life to baseball, ha!)

I'm so amazed at how far Nico came this season. While he started out pretty hesitant to even play catch with a real baseball and would sometimes jump out of the way, he ended the season as a standout infielder and frequently threw out runners at 1st from pitcher, shortstop, and 3rd. He's got a great arm that generated "ooohs" and "aaaahs" from the stands. He also smacked it to the outfield a majority of the time. He gained so much confidence in just a short amount of time. I am so proud to be Nico's mom.

I don't really even ask him about it, but I know that David is having a blast coaching his own son.

 

Nico frequently had some extra fans in the stands. My parents made it to at least half of the games to cheer him on.

 

 

His Great Granny Phyll came out for a game!

 

 

Dave and Cindy caught a good one too, as mentioned in an earlier section.

 

A post game dinner @ El Rey.

His biggest fan of all, though, was this little one. She was just an angel at the games and sat there quietly for nearly every single one! As long as she had some shade and a never ending supply of snacks, she was good! At times, it almost looked like she was paying attention to the game.

Nico played a variety of positions and was excited when he got to wear the catchers gear. He is really into putting on all of his hockey gear at home and having a tough sports look.

On almost all of the teams we played, Nico got to play against a buddy or two. Here's Jake.

Logan, Nico, and Holden enjoying their post game snack.

Two tball seasons... two championship games. We'll take it!

 

We have a Preschool Graduate!

It's the last week of Nico's preschool at Mt. Olive! His Creative Movement class put on a little choreographed show for us one morning to music. He followed along pretty well!

When you graduate preschool, you get a bag full of gifts. He's stocked up on pool toys now for the summer!

Their end of year program was adorable. His class sang a couple songs and had a little graduation. Nico did awesome with both singing and signing and didn't miss a beat. He has always followed along in his programs with such enthusiasm! And he still gets that cute, slightly shy and shi**y grin the moment that he spots us.

Natalie always enjoys being around other kids, so she stayed entertained too, but she demanded to do so only on her mama's lap.

Mrs. Jess and Mrs. Carol did some great work with him this year, and we are so appreciative of them! Nico received a good report at his end of year parent-teacher conference, and he is ready for kindergarten!

Little did we know, he picked out the SAME outfit on the last day (left) as he did on the 1st day (right)! Funny kid. You can see how his face has matured some. It's like he's a little adult now, 6 going on 16.

Memorial Day

 It was a great Memorial Day weekend! When we weren't out at the ball fields watching Nico's 1st All Star tournament (update on his All Star season coming soon...), we were creating fun elsewhere! Dave and Cindy came down to join in on the action. We started our Friday afternoon out at Via 313, since it was close to the Oak Hill ballpark.

 

   
Nico had been wired for his game all day and made sure to play catch with Papa and show them how fast he can run.

  
Nico didn't have to play until later on Saturday, so we were able to get out for lunch to Ski Shores Café! Always a good time when you've got a lakeside view.

 

 

We went to dinner with the team on Saturday after the game and played again on Sunday afternoon. Nico's fans got in 3 games before the rain hit on Sunday night.

 

 

They all got their usual morning walks in though.

 

 

We had been predicting rain anyway, so Dave and Cindy stayed back to start up the crab boil for Sunday night!