Nicholas at Two Years and Seven Months

Weight: 37 lbs
Height: approximately 37 inches

 Pirate Nicholas

 We visit the "footprints" at the school next door on Sundays.  We often blow bubbles and play pirates.

 Big Fan + Balloons = One Happy Entertained Boy

 Pirate Nicholas in his Lexi Boat.

 This drinking fountain is Nicholas' favorite thing about the park. 

Nicholas spotted some ants.

Funny Things About Nicholas:

• He will have conversations with himself and talk like Dora and Diego.  In other words, he talks to a pretend audience.  His conversations go something like this: "What am I holding?"  Then a long pause like he is waiting for someone to answer. "A (insert object here).  That's right."
• Favorite Question: "Where are we going?"  He only asks this when he knows where we are going.  I tell him and then he will say, "That right Mom."   A few seconds later, this same conversation begins again.  This keeps on going until I tell him we are going some place different.  Then he giggles and tells me, "No, we are going to (the first place)."
• He is starting to hate going to bed.
• He loves his Wall-e and Spiderman shirt.
• He still doesn't play well with or around others.  He always plays on the opposite side of the park from everyone else.  We are working really hard to have him learn the joys of sharing and not to yell, "MINE" in his mean voice.  We had a chocolate chip lesson.  I showed him all my chocolate chips and we counted them.  When he went to eat some, I grabbed them away and yelled, "MINE."  He was so surprised.  I asked him if he thought that was nice/a good choice.  He didn't think me keeping all the chocolate chips was nice at all.  He then asked nicely for some chocolate chips and we shared them.  He talks about this little lesson a lot.
• I attempted a new good behavior incentive program with Nicholas this month.  (I got the idea from Pinterest.)  He had six "stickers"/large cutouts pictures of his favorite cartoon characters.  He lost a sticker when he made bad choices.  He got them back when he made good choices.  If he lost all six stickers, he lost electronics for the day.  If he had all six stickers when he went to bed, he got a dollar store prize.  We tried this for about two weeks, but he started doing bad things just to lose a sticker and he had a breakdown a couple times because he wanted his prize "RIGHT NOW."  We are back to time outs.  
• We played a lot of pirate this month!!  Mama got to play Captain Hook and Nicholas played Jake.  Mom also played a lot of crocodile.
• We attempted 24 hours of potty training.  It was not successful.  He didn't recognize when he was going potty.  We will wait another month or so until we are both ready.  It was not a fun 24 hours.  There was a total of 8 accidents  We are back to giving him chocolate chips if he will tell us if he has a dirty diaper.  Even that is pretty unsuccessful.
• Nicholas is VERY afraid of bugs.  He hates them and is fascinated by them at the same time.  I don't blame him because mosquitoes LOVE to eat him.