NiklasAndZoe.com

Cuddles supports all of the major candy holidays. Also, the minor ones.

Niklas will tell Zoe the names of all of these buildings, even if he has to make them up.

May 2012

2012-04-01: So, Niklas has his spring break this week.

His list of requests for his vacation includes mini-golf, t-ball, the zoo, the children's museum and possibly some sort of interplanetary expedition. We'll see how that goes, but I know Zoe would be down for all of it. Spring break kicked off in good enough fashion this past weekend with a trip to the DMK Burger Bar where the kids had macaroni and cheese because why wouldn't they. There was also a bunch of game playing and no end of Matchbox car racing which is extremely popular with Zoe due to its popularity with Niklas.

2012-04-02:
SPRING BREAK!
So we spring breaked (broke?) it up all over the place today. This morning we watched The Empire Strikes Back and then went to play some mini-golf. Niklas shot pretty well; he had a two on one hole and threes on several others (and also some eights and tens, probably). The game was complicated somewhat by Zoe's insistence on chasing down any ball that anyone hit, but that didn't cause much disruption. Zoe's favorite part was how she got to pick her own purple golf ball. After smacking it around for a couple of holes, she decided it was too precious to risk on the links and she carried it around for the rest of our time there.

Because Niklas is my son, he decided that he wanted to have lunch at Michael Diversey's; a request I will rarely deny. I rolled the dice and didn't put Zoe in a high chair. That worked out about as well as I could have hoped save for the time she jumped off the chair and ran out the (open) front door. "Daddy! I saw you catch Zoe on the sidewalk!" said Niklas. That's right, I can still run a two year old down when I have to.

After Niklas watched The Return of The Jedi while Zoe took her nap, we went to the playground. The kids were still pretty much run down after our morning's adventures, so they spent most of their time there on swings. Also, Zoe went down the slide like fifty times, as is her wont. We closed things out by having brown chicken (in the parlance of Niklas) for dinner and watching that one good episode from the nineteenth season of the Simpsons.

2012-04-03:
SPRING BREAK!!
So, Spring Breakage '12 continued unabated today. We ventured outside much earlier than I am usually cool with so as to acquire some doughnuts from the Dunkin' Something-or-Others down the street. Please to remember that one of the first phrases Niklas ever spoke was "runs on Dunkin!" Once everyone was sufficiently sugared up, we walked to the park where the kids played a bit of t-ball. Niklas had a good time hitting the balls off the tee while Zoe preferred to try to use her ninja skills to knock the balls off of the tee before Niklas could hit them.

Then: Shoe shopping! (cue shoe shopping montage)
Well, I don't actually have any video of the shopping, so there's no montage. Here are the new shoes, though:

We also had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe as you may remember as The Place That Niklas Hated When We Took Him There For His Third Birthday (feel free to use that in your advertising, Rainforest Cafe). Zoe thought the animatronic gorillas and elephants and whatnot were pretty much the best things ever. Niklas will likely not chose to celebrate birthday number six at that particular establishment.

2012-04-04:
SPRING BREAK!!!
So today, we kicked things off with a trip to the playground that's right across the street from zoo. We took the bus to get there which is always popular with the children who, as I have mentioned, love public transit. I think maybe it has to do with the fact that they're in a conveyance but they're not strapped down. Anyway, the playground by the zoo was pretty fun. It didn't have any toddler swings, so Zoe got to use the big girl ones, which she is a fan of. I would be happier if she had even a basic concept of weight distribution, but we managed to avoid any debacles. It also has one of those shaky bridge things (it's a bridge? that shakes when you walk on it?) that Niklas loves, so a good time was had by all.

We followed that up, as one might expect, with a trip to the zoo. Zoe loved, loved, loved the monkey house. Actual Zoe dialog:

"A monkey! Another monkey! There's another monkey! There's another monkey! There's another monkey!"

And so on. Niklas was more excited to get his picture taken in a photo booth, which I will scan as soon as I remember which pocket of the backpack I put it in. (Look at me, ending two sentences in a row with prepositions. Take that, English!) We also saw the gorillas, the big cats ("hello, kitty!" - Zoe) and rode the carousel. On a one to ten scale, Niklas gave the carousel a twelve while Zoe gave it about a six.

The kids also got some Easter gifts from Grandma and Grandpap Vennard today. Niklas got a Star Wars sticker book that is, without exaggeration, one of his favorite things ever. Of the one thousand stickers it came with, I'd estimate that a couple hundred have found their appropriate spots. If putting stickers in a sticker book was a job, Niklas would be a partner at a major sticker book conglomerate. Zoe got a set of two piece puzzles that have also proved popular, though more in a flinging about way than a puzzle assembly way thus far.