Well at least I don't have issues with sharing (just with being concise)

What a week! Sorry for disappearing on you there, but I had a big presentation for one of my classes Monday and then an even bigger 2 hour workshop on copyright for my job today. It was one of those "if I can just survive till xpm on xday then I'll be ok" kinds of weeks.

But I lived, and both presentations seem to have gone really well. I guess I'll know for sure when my grade and survey results come in later, but they felt like they went well.

Now I can go back to just my normal levels of stress. :)

In the meantime we've made a LOT of progress in the Battle of the Binky. There were a few days when Nicky took his "new" elephant, Binky, to school with him. He would pretty much just get to cuddle with him during naptime, but that seemed to be fine. He slept with him at night and would make Binky talk to us. Took about a week and now he seems ok. He isn't even taking Binky to school anymore. And after last weekend, when we went on a HUGE party-extravaganza for my godson Colin, Nicky seems to have moved on. (To dinosaurs and cars to be specific.)

You know I just have to tell you about last weekend. We took a nice little trip down to the Tampa area where Tom's mom lives and our friends live not too far from her with our godson. Well they were having Colin's 6th birthday (I still can't believe he's actually SIX already!) at a party place. There were over 20 kids there along with a whole bunch of parents. I don't even know how many total! This place was like a big warehouse split into a few rooms and it was full of inflatable slides, mazes and bounce houses.

It turned out that just Nicky and I went (thank goodness for GPS and the printed map I had with me) as Tom stayed at his mom's to help her with some spring cleaning. When we arrived, Nicky put on his shy act for about two seconds before wiggling out of my arms and taking off! He immediately went to the big slide, climbed up about 25 feet or so and slid down. Absolutely no room for fear here!

Most of the kids were probably about 5-7 range, and they were really good with Nicky. He still has no concept of the whole "waiting in line" thing, so he was breaking in front of kids left and right. But they seemed to understand he was only 3 and just didn't know better.

I took plenty of photos and Gayle (Colin's mom) took some too. I can't wait to see how her's turned out.

After two rooms of bounce houses, a pizza party, cake and awesome goodie bags, a smaller contingent headed to Colin's house where we could watch him open presents, because apparently that's not done at the actual party anymore. (I know nothing about these new rules.) Colin opened his gifts and in the end it was Nicky, Colin and a neighbor's child playing for at least an hour or two. Their respective ages were 3, 6 and 9 and they'd all just had a birthday. But in spite of the age difference they played together so nicely.

Nicky particularly liked this Hot Wheels track thing and an electronic dinosaur. He liked them so much that we ended up buying them both for him later this week. And now he seems totally contented with his new toys and hasn't asked for a binky since we've returned.

We can definitely tell though that we need to work on taking turns, sharing and asking for something rather than grabbing it from someone. Aside from seeing him in action at Colin's, where Colin was actually pretty darn patient with Nicky's behavior, Tom was told yesterday that Nicky is struggling with these things at school. It's not really surprising since he's an only child and hasn't really been in too many situations that called for sharing, but we need to work on it. Tonight I worked on him a little in sharing his new dinosaur with me. It didn't really go all that well, but he'll get it I'm sure. If you know of any good "sharing/taking turns" kinds of books please let me know!

Ok, photo time!

Today Nicky made these bunny ears in school. Here he's showing off his bunny teeth. Speaking of teeth, he finally has gotten in his bottom back molars (yeah the 2 year molars). They just came in at the same time in the last month, along with having a cold and ear infection. Poor kid. Still waiting on the top ones though.



Heading down the big slide at the party:


Oh, and two more things. Nicky now says "Oh Whatever!" which I'm sure he learned at school, probably from his teacher. And all the sudden, yesterday, he started counting to ten in Spanish! The funny thing is he now counts to 10 in Spanish and then backwards from 10 down to "blastoff" in English. Still, that seems pretty cool! I'll have to catch it on camera soon.