Nikolai Won't Stop Growing!

 

We are all smiles as Nikolai turned 11 months old this week

Thankfully he is finally out of developmental leap 7, which lasted a grueling 6 weeks.  It was a busy six weeks, with Nikolai finally learning how to sleep through the night, then getting sick for the first time of his life (just a summer cold passed through the household) which disrupted his sleep for a while, but he is back on track.  Last night he slept for ten straight hours without a peep!!

Despite the needy, crying, fussiness of leap 7, this leap has resulted in some great developments.  Nikolai has recently shown incredible independent play skills (as long as I do not move from his line of sight).  He loves putting things into buckets and shaking the bucket, he loves books, especially his farm books and Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  The other day I was folding laundry and he was quiet in his room.  When I went into check on him, he was sitting with his Peek-a-Boo farm book.  He continued to sit and look through the pages while I got him on camera for another few minutes!  He also loves to play with us.  He likes to roll a ball back and forth, and loves imitating Alexander with silly sounds.  He likes Alexander's tool truck and cupcake sorter, and he loves hide and seek.

He loves his sister so much.  He is constantly trying to hug her, loves petting her 'gently' and looking around the room for praise, playing tug of war with her toys, and of course splashing in her water bowl.  She is extremely patient with him, but of course I try to always be one step ahead of him to ensure he is not making her uncomfortable.

Full of personality!  While his hair looks completely red in the sun, if you lift up the layers, you can tell his newest hair is growing in blonde.

Niko is a total mama's boy!  He loves most people, but he is totally smitten with his mama.

This boy EATS...all day, almost anything, he can pack away an amazing amount of food.  He is so tall, we had the parents of a 14 month old do a triple take last night...asking us repeatedly just how old he was.  He is tall enough to reach the oven knobs even without climbing, which he now does.  He can go up and down the stairs, the step stool, and even the ladder.  We can't take our eyes off of this kid!

He loves water and will put himself into the pool, feet first, and try to kick off from me.  He really wants to swim!  I am trying to find a balance between my comfort level and his readiness for swimming!

We love having pool dates with our neighborhood friends.  We are so blessed in our friendships!

Big brother spotlight!

Andy's family has us over for dinner and Mr Mike helped Alexander make s'mores for his very first time!

He loved it!

Alexander is doing so well in his advanced pre-k class.  His teacher pulled me aside to tell me she has never seen a four year old with such neat handwriting and coloring and that he truly enjoys doing his work.  My heart grew two sizes!

Daniel was a bit worried when it appeared Alexander may be the only boy in his new class.  We decided to not draw attention to it, and our big guy made the best of it.  Though he doesn't know her name yet, there is a 'beautiful' girl in his class, whom he has professed to love.  He asked her what they should do together when they grow up, and apparently she exclaimed that they should have tickle fights....watch out world!  He let me know (in whisper) that he would like to kiss her.  I immediately put a stop to this train of though, and let him know that sitting together, and the occasional hand holding would be the perfect way to express his love.

He continues to amaze us with his mental math, asking things like, what are 5 tens, and then answering himself...oh it's 50, three fours?  That's 12!  !  He knows how to add two digit numbers, as long as there is no regrouping, and which numbers are square numbers.  If you haven't checked out Number Blocks on Netflix, you really must!  He has learned so much from the short 5 minute episodes!

Yesterday I kept him home for a Mom and Me day.  We spent nearly two hours creating our own sight word board game.  We had slacked off from sight words for a bit, but I was happy to see he had retained much of what we were working on before.

Alexander adores Nikolai seemingly more and more as Nikolai is more able to play and interact.  He is a very patient big brother.  I so hoped he would play the big brother role much like Ryan did with me, and am thrilled that he really does. 

Here's to the little time I have to enjoy my baby and my four year old.  Birthdays are coming up way too fast.