Cincinnati

The four of us drove to Cincinnati last weekend and spent a few hours at the children's museum there. I took the above photo on the way down and it got me thinking about how much Nico has grown and changed in one year. The photo below was taken on a March 2009 trip to Cincy, almost exactly one year ago.



He's still doing and saying new things every day. And with Rocco changing so much each day, too, I keep pretty busy just jotting things down in my journal!

I think one of my favorite things that Nico does right now is "introduce" Mark and me. We picked him up from school together last week and in the short amount of time it took us to get his belongings, put on his coat, etc., he had told his teacher nearly ten times, "That's my mommy and daddy." I even got a, "That's my favorite mommy," along with a great big hug. Mark spent the morning at school with him the next day, and Nico repeatedly told his friends, "That's my daddy." Later, while we all were at home in the kitchen, he tugged on Mark's pantleg, pointed across the room at me and said, "Daddy, that's my mommy."

His teachers constantly remark to us about how verbal he is--how impressive his vocabulary and sentence-building skills are. I think he makes them laugh more than anything, really. His out-of-nowhere expressions are pretty funny. "You gotta be kidding me!" had his teacher in stitches one day. I have to admit that one came from Disney's Cars-it's a line from Lightning McQueen. Yes, Lightning McQueen. Our world revovles around him. Anyhow, I can save a little face here: Nico actually first learned that line from my reading him the Cars book, not from watching the movie. (But I can't lie and tell you that he hasn't also now seen the movie about fifteen times.)

Although I'm quite proud that he's such a chatty cathy, I just adore that there are still several words that he can't quite get right. My current favorites are "hello-doctor" (helicopter), "smamich" (sandwich) and "elfenant" (elephant). I wish he would say them that way forever.