I'm not able to post photos right now...

It's been a year since I've posted. Part of the issue is that I cannot get my iPhone photos to transfer to my computer. I'll work on it again soon, but for now I just wanted to do a quick post about two-year-old Neko.

We are absolutely in love with our little guy. He is so adventurous and active. He loves being outside, he loves playing with his friends, he wants to learn to do everything. He is talking more and more everyday. He strings together words and sentences and seems to be able to say almost anything. I stayed home from work today to go to the dentist. When Neko and Aaron pulled up, I opened the door to greet him, and he said, "Oh, what are you doin' here, Mamma?"

The other day, while he was taking a bath, I noticed that he was trying to catch something floating around, so I asked him, "What's that? Is it a booger?" Sorry, I know that's a little gross. He replied, "That's not a booger! It's soap. And don't eat it, Mamma. It'll make ya sick!"

Sometimes we can't figure out what he's saying. The other night, for example, he kept yelling, "I want some oltmilk!" What? You want some old milk? What? Whole milk? You have whole milk...
I finally figured it out. Oatmeal! So he got to eat oatmeal for dinner.

knocked out by a bug and more talking

As is always the case, our weeks are made up of highs and lows. Neko got a horrible stomach flu on Tuesday, as we were driving home from school. The good news: we needed a new car seat anyway. The bad news: it was terrible to watch our poor little guy get sick all over the place. I got sick soon after, and then Aaron. Whole family was incapacitated one by one, for about six days total. Yuck.

On a brighter note, Neko has been talking more and more each day. I love his age right now. He is so silly and sweet. He has so much personality. I sometimes feel torn between work and parenthood. It makes me exhausted and run down, but want to remember these days- my sweet little boy at this age.

As much as I dislike waking up at 5AM on the weekends to get him some milk, I love pulling him into bed with me for an hour and snuggling with him (even if he does hit me in the face with his bottle, and kick me in the stomach). It won't be long before he won't want to climb into bed with me every morning. I also love how he hugs my legs at night while I wash the dishes. I love that he's still small enough to sit in the bath with me. He likes me to walk beside him on his bike and hold his hand when we all go to the park. He loves to have dance parties with us in the living room.

His new words are "fly," "bubbles" (bubba), "choo choo" (his train), "bunny" (buh), "side" (outside), "thank you," and "open" (for me to open his toy chest, only said once).

Every Sunday night I still get a little sad that our weekend together is over, and it's back to the grind. Then again, I really do love teaching. I love my job 95% of the time. Neko also loves going to his own "school." He, Cameron, and Christopher are called the "three amigos." They got in trouble recently for being silly and keeping everyone awake during nap time. He also has a special little friend, named Amelia. She always pulls a chair over for him to sit next to her at the table. When he gets to school, they yell "Neko!" "Neko!" (some call him "Coco"). His teachers say he is always happy and friendly. So anyway, here we go, another week.

Talking

Neko has started adding a lot of new words to his vocabulary, so I wanted to document what he's been saying at 14 months. His first word was "dog." That one came a long time ago, but he's since added several more. He now says, "more" (muh), "ball," "bye," "hi," "hello" (leh-lo), "book" (boo), "done" (and he does the sign for all done), and the other day he said, "shoes" when I put on his shoes. We were both excited. The next morning, he brought several shoes to me while I was still in bed and excitedly exclaimed, "shoe!" each time. He says "da" (daddy) and occasionally, "mamma." He can also say "bah" (bottle) and "wa" for water. He says "uh-oh" and today "cup." He is very obsessed with water these days. He likes playing with the water faucet on the side of the house, filling a cup with water, drinking some, and excitedly dumping the rest all over himself. He giggles and shrieks, and has a lot of fun with it.  He wants to drink out of a big cup (no sippy). He's getting better at it, but he still spills quite a bit.

Aaron was out of town last weekend, so it was just the two of us. We had some good time to bond, but it was also a little exhausting, and we both missed Aaron a lot. On Friday night, Neko and I walked to Ester's for pizza. When we got home, we played with the ball in the backyard, and he caught it several times when I threw it to him. I was seriously impressed! On Sunday morning we had a quick visit from Michael, Elena and their twins, George and Helen. They were in town for a wedding. Aaron got home while they were still here, so he got to meet the twins too. We are crossing our fingers that they'll move back to Colorado at some point. It was so nice to see them.

**And here are a ton of photos from the past month.

*The night before Emag moved, we went over to his house to say goodbye.

**I also forgot to mention another funny thing he likes to say/do. He often pinches us and yells, "Ouch!" I've told him that I am the one who is supposed to say "ouch" when he pinches me, but he just keeps doing it and seems to think it's the funniest thing ever.

A Visit from the Dubravacs

We've been so busy since school started back up, that I realized I never wrote about the Dubravacs' visit. This will be a short post with lots of photos. Stayc, Christina, Luctece, and Phoenix made drove out to Colorado on their way to a family reunion in Utah (in their new car!). We were very lucky that they were able to stop here on their way back home.

Neko loved following the big kids around, but he really took to Lutece. He enjoyed sitting on her lap and playing with her. She has a natural way with little kids. One evening while I was cleaning up the kitchen, I listened while she watched him in the living room. She was so gentle and sweet with him.

We ate a lot of ice cream, visited the neighborhood parks, and ate dinner in the backyard. It was great. I wish they lived closer so that we could do this more often.

Lutece was very patient with my constant picture-taking.

We drove to the Garden of the Gods for a little hike and dinner out.

Neko climbed the little rocks.

Phoenix and Lutece climbed the bigger rocks.

*The little girl in this photo is not Luctece... I just wanted to include this photo so that you could see how big the rock was. 

We were so sad when they left. We need more cousin time.

end of summer

Summer is officially over. We are so sad. It was a good one. One-year-old Neko is a pretty fun little guy, and we've truly enjoyed being at home with him all summer. This summer, Neko took his first plane trip, he learned to really walk, he went to the swimming pool for the first time, he learned to moon-walk, he learned to spin around in little circles, he ate his first corn on the cob, got his first bike, took his first trip to Boulder, and started napping in his crib (no more car naps!). We got into a pretty good routine. Now everything has been disrupted, and we've all gone back to school. Boo hoo.

I'm going to miss drinking our morning coffee on our back deck while Neko plays in the yard, dinners outside with Emag (he's moving back to California), and lots of park trips. We had Emag over for dinner last night to celebrate his birthday. Neko's become very fond of his uncle Eric. He held hands with him and walked him to his bike when he let last night. He thinks Emag is really funny (he is) and they have all sorts of silly games they play together. It's nice when the people you care about form special bonds with your child.

I'm going to post some photos of Neko climbing. He climbs on everything. He climbs up the stairs (fast as lightening), he climbs onto the patio chairs and stands on them. He can climb onto the Kettler, the bike Aaron found on Craiglist after Neko climbed onto one that belonged to some other kid at the park. We've enjoyed pushing him around in it. And it grows with him so that eventually he'll be able to ride it on his own.

He climbed onto this all on his own. We were chatting with each other, looked over, and saw him riding this car and laughing wildly. He is such a little thrill-seeker. He loves going down the slide, and taught himself how climb up, turn himself around, and go down on his belly. His fearlessness scares me sometimes.

We took Neko up to Boulder one day to walk around. We ate at the farmer's market and spent some time walking around the Pearl Street Mall.

The good news is that we'll get to be home together every summer. We are definitely lucky in that respect. Aaron had to be back in the building on Wednesday. Neko and I spent the day together. His school opened on Thursday, and although I didn't have to be back at work until Friday, I decided to take him in for a few hours Thursday so that he could get used to it without having to spend an entire day there. It was nice to have him ease into it a bit. He came him pretty exhausted on Thursday but seemed much better on Friday. They said that he was the only one who didn't cry and seemed to be happy all day. He also napped well in his cot. They've got tiny little toddler beds for each of them on the floor. We bring bedding for him. I think I might get a special pillow for him and a tiny backpack. So here we go, another year. Hoping it's a good one.

**I just added a video to the last post too. Up next: our visit from the Dubravacs.