NSJ

Niko took his first steps today. He thought this was just about the funniest thing ever.

[flv]http://happyinwater.com/nicholas/videos/first-steps.flv[/flv]

No other major developments here in Kauai. Although the humidity does make Niko’s curls really show off and the kid looks pretty damn good in a Hawaiian shirt.

Mandy continues to do a much better job both on the blog and with photos.

I’m not going to say it was every easy to travel with Niko, but it certainly was never as hard as as it is now. When I think about it from his point of view, I understand why it is frustrating. He is mobile and has nine months of living without mobility to make up. He also doesn’t understand English, so he can’t even come close to understanding why, in god’s name, we would force him to sit in one place for six hours. We are in what I like to call the “travel mobility-video gap,” as illustrated in the graph below.

The problem is there is a gap between Niko gaining mobility and us being able to distract him with videos. I can get him to watch a six minute Pixar short on my iPhone, but that doesn’t go very far on long flights. Especially when United adds three hours of delay to that trip. All of this is just to say, we flew to Kauai on Saturday, with our crazy, energetic, willful son. The hell if I’m going to let him dictate when or where we travel, so Niko locked in battle in a war between father and son. Sadly, it is one of those wars where nobody wins — everybody just ends up exhausted. I remember when I used to think traveling was hard. Long flights, cramped seats, inevitable delays. What a fool I was then.

Jul found us a gem of a house on the east coast of Kauai. It has a good 100 yards of beach front, giving us our own beach — we rarely see another person. There is a beautiful sunrise in the morning, and it backs up against a really fantastic mountain range.

The living room and kitchen together are a huge expanse of Berber carpet, meaning Niko has pretty much free run of the place. Much better than a 747. He isn’t walking yet, only standing, but I feel like he might take his first step while we are here.

Mark, Mand, and LC arrived a couple hours after us. Not much to report beyond a bunch of swimming, surfing, and digging in the sand. Niko loves the water (as if he had a choice) and is a huge fan of mangoes. But then again mangoes are candy dressed up as fruit, so this isn’t surprising.

Mark and Mand do a much better job with photos. More on LC’s blog and their flickr stream.

We let Niko loose in the garden in hopes he would weed for us (kid has to earn his keep). Sadly he seems fairly indiscriminate with what he destroys. Yesterday he yanked out the only surviving eggplant and he likes to squeeze the tomatoes until they explode. To be honest, I might do the same thing if Jul let me loose in the garden. Eggplant is pretty gross unless you fry it and slather it in cheese, and exploding tomatoes? How is that not fun?

More… 

Before Niko was born I started saving my yogurt tops because it seemed like they would make a cooler toy than an addition to the landfill. Plus I’m fairly confident they don’t use led paint in the manufacturing process. My original vision for how how the toy made of yogurt tops would all come together involved gears, motors, rope, and a CPU. In a rare demonstration of realism, I ended up settling for a permanent marker and some letters and numbers.

The yogurt tops turn out to be great distractions for him at meal time. He ends up throwing the tops more than the food. This is bad for Sumo, but good for our clothing and the kitchen walls. It allows him to be bad in a, “Then I’ll just throw this on the ground if you make me keep eating” kinda way, never internalizing there are 49 more where that one came from. Plus the great thing about “throwing things on the ground” it is never gets old, even after 50 yogurt tops.

For reasons not yet apparent, Niko seems to have gravitated towards the letter “Y.” The funny thing about being a new parent is you are amazed by ANYTHING they do. “Did he just burp? Quick, get the video camera and see if you can get him to do it again.” You are so amazed, that you make him do things over and over. Each time, you are prouder than the last. I imagine once you have five or six of these rug rats, it takes a Nobel Peace Prize to even get you to look up from the newspaper.

[flv]http://happyinwater.com/nicholas/videos/letter-Y.flv[/flv]

We hit the hiking trails this weekend with a really cool backpack from Antonio and Sej. Couple thoughts from the experience:

• My dog would last about four hours alone in the wilderness.
• How can I get somebody to carry me around on their back?
• The redwoods are wise

We headed to the coast last weekend to hear bagpipes, and watch the sunset.

Greg Davies bought Niko a water polo ball so he can start to get a feel for it. It is never too early to start.

• Step one: teach Niko the water polo ball is not for eating.
• Step two: teach Niko how to swim.
• Step three: profit from Niko’s professional water polo career.

I’ve always like those scrapbooks parents put together with details from the year their child was born. So I created a page I called Back Then on Niko’s blog which attempts to do the equivalent, but in digital form.

The current page only represents a small slice of everything going on in September of 2006 and is largely perspective from Jul and I. What do you remember from 2006? What were you up to? What would you like Niko to know about it? What details do you wish you had from the year you were born?

If you have thoughts, feel free to add them to the comments at the bottom of the page.

Despite the wipe out, I still think he is ready to start mowing the lawn.