Our sweet rocker!

Niko was such a sweet little guy tonight. We went to Loose Park and Niko played on the playground and then we went on a little walk, and he said "hi" to everyone we passed and waved. He is now bilingual, since he also says hi to all the dogs we pass now with a cute little "woof." He has gotten really good at the slide, and has been working on climbing back up once he has slid down. Today for the first time he turned around at the bottom and marched right back up to the top of a tube slide walking upright! Colin and I were pretty impressed!

The photo below isn't from today, but is an awfully cute shot of Niko rocking his Led Zepplin T. I'm also posting it because he is pretty much off the pacifier now! We just stopped giving it to him for a few days, and he was completely fine without it. Now, if he sees one still laying around the house, he will pick it up and suck on it for a bit, and then just drop it and move on with more interesting things. So, this is one of the last photos of Niko with a pacifier!

Hair, baby!

According to Colin, Niko is trying to grow out his hair like his old man's was back in the day. Here's his 'do in all its glory!

Caption Contest!

Niko has had a somewhat rough go of it lately, hitting the 'terrible twos' rather early, in our opinion. Having six teeth come in at the same time probably isn't helping matters either. I wish I had a video of this latest tantrum. He actually started crying on the other side of the dining room. I got down on the floor to cheer him up, and he screamed and rolled away from me all the way under the table and across the room, until he finished up under the china cabinet. Colin came in to see what the ruckus was about, and we laughed hysterically at poor sad Nikolai who didn't want to cheer up for anything!

So, please help us torment the poor baby some more by coming up with a caption for this photo! Use the "comment" function at the bottom of the photo, and I'll post the results. I want to know who is out there checking in on our blog :)

"Why do you hate me?"

Labor Day

Well, we celebrated Labor Day Humphrey-style, with Colin working on Saturday and Sarah putting in quite a few hours on Monday. Figures.

But, in between, we managed to have quite a bit of fun, logging about 9 hours at different parks! We saw the Bodies Revealed exhibit at Union Station on Friday night with the Donegans, which features real bodies plasticized to show off organs, muscles, bones and everything in-between. We were a bit worried that Niko might be scared by all the stiffs. We walked into the first big room of skin-less bodies posed to show how muscles work together, and Niko immediately saw the body of a man posed to throw a baseball. He saw that body and all he could say was "ball, ball, ball!" I swear the little guy would have knocked over that exhibit and robbed a corpse of a baseball in 2 minutes flat had we given him the chance. When we got there our worst fear was that he would be scared; when we left, our worst fear was that he would knock over a body and we'd get charged with some kind of misdemeanor for molesting a corpse (I'm pretty sure that is a real crime).

After the exhibit, we went back to the house for dinner with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle John, and had an impromptu party when Gabe & Robin and Eddie & Christy stopped by. We did some serious damage to the wine rack and had a great time.

On Saturday, Niko and I went to lunch at Grandma & Grandpa's to say 'bye' to John and Mr. Bojangles, who headed back to Chicago on Sunday. We'll miss them both - Niko and Mr. have become good buds over the summer, and I swear that Niko tried to say 'John' on Friday night before he went to bed. It was the first time I'd heard him do a 'J' sound.

On Sunday we had a great cook-out with Gabe, Robin, Heather, Mike & Braden. Robin showed off her engagement ring and wedding programs, which were both gorgeous! Then we hit the park to race the awesome Dale and Dale Jr. racecars that Aunt Kat sent to Nikolai in a gigantic crate from Alaska. Niko is terrified of them, insisting on being held anywhere near them. He didn't even want to walk onto the tennis court where they were. Braden, however, was fearless, chasing them around and experiencing a couple of near-misses thanks to our expert driving teams!

Monday was pretty laid back. We swung by Loose Park to get one last run through the splash park in after I was finished working. We are sad to see the summer go, and made a resolution to spend more mornings at the park next summer, and visit the pool more often. However, September was fabulous last year, with visits to North Carolina, Oklahoma and Chicago the first weekend in October, and we expect that this September will be a good one too. We're already lined up to head out to the Wichita Zoo and Robin & Gabe's wedding, and will be getting ready to have our house on the Hyde Park Homes tour. Work isn't quite as crazy now as it was this summer, so hopefully I'll manage to make regular updates!

So, here's to good summer memories and a fun fall!