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.

Grillin' Fever

After several terrible attempts at charcoal grilling that ended with Sean catching the grill on fire (see photo), we finally gave in and bought a gas grill. We were going to buy a cheap-o one at Walmart, but after reading reviews on the one we were looking at we decided against it and invested a bit more money so we could get a quality grill. The one we finally chose was a Char-broil designer series with a side burner. HOLY MOLY what a difference! It was so much easier to use and because we bought one pre-assembled we were good to go as soon as we got home. We ended up making chili cheese turkey burgers and they were - in the words of Rachael Ray - YUM-O. While the burgers were cooking Sean played with Tay and pushed him in the swing we bought him for his birthday. The weather was perfect and it was a great night to dine alfresco. The best part about it was that we got a hot meal without the house getting hot too. We'll definitely be doing a lot of grilling this summer.

The infamous cheesy smile

Taylor is such a ham sometimes, and lately his favorite thing to do is give us this silly cheesy grin because he knows it makes us laugh. Well yesterday my mom came over and was working outside when Tay started grinning at her over and over again. It was so hilarious and I ran inside to grab the camera to capture the sheer goofiness of my child. This baby cracks me up...

Thanksgiving Point

Sean and I took Taylor to Thanksgiving Point this last Saturday for his birthday. It was so much fun to see his reaction to all the different farm animals they have there. Our first stop was the cows, and one of them was a bit too friendly with Tay and almost bit the poor boy's toes off. Taylor had absolutely no idea what to think of these giant animals sniffing him. He also wasn't too sure about the loud noises they made. After the cows we went and peeked at the goats before going on a pony ride. I'm really surprised that Taylor was okay the entire time, although he kept making nervous little whimpers the first half of the ride. He was really excited to pet the pony afterward though. Next we moved on to the chickens and peacocks. Taylor wasn't sure what to think about the loud roosters, but was pretty excited with the giant turkeys and peacocks. The horses were pretty amazing too, and I think I was more excited to pet and feed them than Tay was. We also saw llamas (which Sean kept referring to as Kuzko from Emperor's New Groove), goats, and sheep. Taylor really seemed to like the sheep until a few of them started "baa-ing" a bit too loud. Honestly I think his favorite part of the whole trip was washing his hands when we were done.

All in all it was a fun trip, and I look forward to him getting a bit older and not being so scared of everything. Maybe next year we'll take him to the dinosaur museum too!

A boy and his cat

My dad bought Taylor a stuffed cat from Deseret Book a little while back and Taylor adores it almost as much as our real cat. He snuggles it and drags it around all over the house. I call it "ugly cat" because it's... well... ugly. Tay loves it though, and every time he sees it he crawls over, picks it up, and meows at it. It's the cutest thing ever, and I'm glad that he'll have it even after we get rid of our real cat. Unfortunately we recently found out that Taylor is allergic to cats, so we'll have to say goodbye to our kitty soon. It'll just kill Sean and I to do it, but obviously Tay comes first. Hopefully he won't miss her quite as much since he still has his cuddly cat from Grandpa.