Happy Half Birthday Nicholas!

My Half Birthday present was a pretend doctor's kit......I have been to so many lately that I know exactly what to do.........

Moose was kind enough to be my guinea pig for practice, and then I moved on to my patient.

Notice the car, I make house calls (really, he drove his car over to Pat...so funny) and then pulled up his doctor's chair (aka, sand bucket) and went to work.

Nick is 3 1/2 today.....so I guess it is more fitting to do his funny stuff today as a celebration of the essence of Nick. So be patient as I journal for posterity's sake.....

1. Winnie the Pooh on TV........"Mama, Mama (pointing at TV) Poop!"

2. Delicious......."licious"

3. Kiss...."Keees!" and usually followed by "BIG ug!"

4. Kazakhstan......Ah-Zah-Kan...He says "Nick barn(born) ah-zah-kan"

5. Aunt Erin gave Nick a stuffed rhino and when he met her he would always use his Rhino hand sign to talk about her and then he started calling her Auntie Rhino (with a little encouragement from her brothers!)

6. He is doing well with his manners but has gotten a little confused with what comes first and after so he just says "thawnk on welcome". He also says excuse me most times after any bodily noise but a sneeze, requires an "achoo" and if you say excuse me, he says "no, Achoo!"

7. wheely, Seeyee - this is our favorite thing that Nick does right now. He will be sitting with both of us and look at me and say Mama, Papa wheely, seeyee (really silly) and have his hand cupped over his mouth like he is telling me a secret and when I agree with him then he will look over at Pat and cup his hand and do the same thing with him, Papa, Mama wheely, seeyee. The way he does his face is the funniest like he is really telling us something funny and important but the funniest thing is how he plays both sides of the fence....do you think he will be a polititian, I hope not.....honesty is way too important to me.

8. want ta want.....he is learning about choices so he will pick up two books and say want ta want (which one do you want). very cute

9. I have been around enough kids in my lifetime to see a difference in how he is acquiring language versus just learning to talk. It is very funny to me when he puts sentences together. He uses all the right words just no middle stuff.

For example:

Mama, car, hold u hand, big road, car, bonk, Nick, hurt, mamapapa, cryin

Mama, Savanna, papa, big jake, up, up, up, singing, watch different jay, jay, K ?(OK)

The first one is self explanatory but the second one is about one of his favorite videos. He calls the sleek Jet whos name is Savanna (Mama) and the big lumbering work horse plane, big jake, (papa) and he likes to watch the planes go up and loves it when savanna sings and tells us which one he like to watch by saying jay, jay or different jay, jay and then he will see if you know what he is saying by saying K? which is OK do you get all this.....sometimes we do, sometimes we don't! ;)

10. Any piece of paper he sees with what looks like a listing of something, he will say hamburger, fries like it is a menu.

11. His first english sentence in Kaz and still an all time favorite is "I low way" His version of I love you has become a staple in our house. Now Pat and I even say it. I tried to get him to say "you" by saying I love you hoo.....so he said that for a while but still says I low way most of the time.

12. The word for Later is Pohzhah in russian. We always said the english and the russian as we were helping him learn the language but now even though he knows to use later, he just says "le-le-pohsha" It is so cute.

13. When he is going somewhere, he will look at you and raise his eyebrows and his little index finger and say "wootback" for "be right back"

14. I thought of another sentence that cracks me up....Nick, li-li (little)church, Mama Papa, big church, micaphone, singin, mamapapa, nick, gwosswi-store, ride-a-car, seatbelt, round in ciwcles

He actually said this one last week while going to church. His treat for staying in sunday school is to ride in the little car carts at the grocery store. It is obnoxiously big but a cheap treat!

---There is so much about Nick that can't be written in words. His facial expressions, his love that he gives, his laugh and giggles, his singing, and his all out extreme fits...nobody believes us! :) I think that is indeed the gift and the challenge of parenting. Only a parent gets the best stuff and only the parent gets the worst stuff. I think that is why God chooses Abba Father (Daddy) for one of the names He uses for himself in the Word. I can almost hear Him up in Heaven saying to the angels...oh, I wish you could have seen him or her do this, or I wish you could have heard what they said when....He is the one that gets to see our triumph over temptation, our choice to let go of self at any certain moment, He beams when we honor Him with our actions, and He gets to receive our praise and worship when we are in relationship with Him.......but just as this brings Him immense joy, think of what it means when we disobey, lash out, mock, and curse Him. The pain it must bring to Him when His children are having "issues".

So much in the bible makes sense when you become a parent. The ability to love even when you don't feel like it, the ability to forgive even when you have been hurt badly, the ability to cry and hurt more deeply than I have ever hurt but to feel joy and love at that same extreme also. Starting out parenthood with a 3 year old has given us this enormous range of emotions in triplicate but all of the sudden I can now more understand Christ's willingness to go to the cross for us even though we have misbehaved so badly and often just turn our head away. He is our Father (dad) and wouldn't any parent sacrifice all for the joy and intimacy of that relationship that is above all else despite the pain. I hope someday that we will be able to explain the depth of what we have learned about God, the adoptive parent, for we are all adopted into the family of God, and God, the Papa, the loving parent. There are many days I don't "enjoy" this journey especially the bad days, the rebellion, the disobedience, the inability to explain that I am just protecting him and showing him how to live in this world but I would do it all again, just to also get the laughs, the hugs, the looks, the joy when he"gets it" or learns something new, the feeling of being called Mama.

I am going to try and remember daily that GOD is Father, Daddy most of all, because somehow, that helps me just"get it" and understand more of His character and love for me.....and somewhere up in Heaven, God is nudging an angel saying ...oh, I wish you would have just heard what one of my daughters just said, It was so special and somehow all that groanin and moanin I did today is as far as the east is from the west and a Loving Father is enjoying relationship with one of His children......... just like all the battles of our day are soon forgotten and at end of the day at VAH-NA! (bath in Russian) time, Nick has a "appy face" and I am enjoying it.

We love you Nick, Happy half Birthday! Mama and Papa (the Wheely Seeyee ones)