The Elmo Chair

Taylor absolutely loves Elmo, and on a recent trip to Babies 'R Us my mom couldn't pass up this cute upholstered Elmo chair. Although it doesn't exactly go with the rest of my living room decor (mid-century neoclassical Sesame Street just isn't my style), I have to admit it's dang cute. Taylor absolutely adores it, and first thing every morning he has to sit in his "Mo" chair with his blanky. He looks so proud of himself sitting like a big boy in a chair that's just his size. He loves how soft it is and frequently crawls over to it to give it a hug. Apparently the chair also talks, but conveniently we forgot how to turn it on.

Monkey boy

Taylor has been getting better at cruising around furniture and pulling himself up on things. He's also been trying to climb on to the sofa and recliner, but is just a bit too short still. Well today I was in the kitchen for a minute and came back into the living room to this:


My son is a monkey.

Three sickies

Life at the Nichols' household the past 24 hours has been less than pleasant to say the least. Last night I caught a bad stomach flu and Taylor was quick to follow. Then at about 3am Sean caught it as well. I'll spare you the gory details and just say that we've been very weak, very sick, and we've had mountains of laundry to do. I'm finally starting to feel a bit better and both Tay and I have stopped throwing up, but Sean is still really bad and hasn't been able to keep anything down.

I want to say a HUGE thank you to my mommy, who came over several times last night and spent the majority of the day today helping Sean and I with Taylor so that we could rest. She is the most selfless person I know and I don't think I can ever repay her for all she's done for us. I love you, mom!

Hopefully we'll be completely over this bug by tomorrow and we can get back to normal life again.

Our Little Picasso

I gave Taylor some crayons and paper to see what he'd do with them, and my noble attempt at getting him to draw ended with him smacking the crayons on his highchair tray and then throwing them on the floor. I figured he just wasn't ready yet, but a couple days later he got his hands on a pen (don't worry, the lid was on) and he was pretending to draw on the carpet. It made sense that he would know what pens are for since he sees me writing with one all the time, so I decided to give him paper and see what he'd do. As soon as I pulled the lid off the pen he went crazy! He drew and drew for several minutes, trying as hard as he could to control the pen movements across the paper. The funniest part was when he finished, sat back to admire his work, and said what sounded like "all done." I love that Taylor is old enough now to draw and color, and I love being a proud momma with baby chicken-scratch drawings adorning my fridge. Who knows, maybe he'll be a famous artist one day and those drawings will be worth millions.