Nikolas and mommy's visit to deko in CA

I took Nikolas for a special treat--to visit deko in Banning! The moment we left the house he turned into a 'big boy'. Without Sonja and Mikica around, he had no one to entertain with silliness and started asking a lot of questions about everything in sight. We talked about condensation of water in the clouds, how planes fly, why the flaps on the wings move upon take-off and landing), what planes are made of, he wanted me to sing every song I knew on the way to Tampa airport, etc.
He is such a great companion for travel! He chatted with his neighbors on the plane, showed them his binoculars and commented on everything he could see through the window (the best attraction, besides other planes, was snow!). We saw fresh snow fall in Denver while we were waiting for our connecting flight, and Nikolas decided he wanted to come back to Colorado for some skiing!
At deko's, he listened when he was told to eat, to change into pajamas, to wash his hands, without those long delays that normally follow each instruction in our house. I showed him how to play Othello, and we did a new floor puzzle. Every day he wrote a full sentence on paper, and he was so meticulous to do it correctly that he used his eraser a bit too much! His old patience that I remember from a year or two ago was back, and it was refreshing to see.

Nikolas was excited to see deko, and vice versa! Every day we were in Banning the three of us took a walk together to the playground in the area. Tunnels in the play structure were planes for Nikolas, and on the ground he was collecting whatever looked interesting, from buttons to marbles and beads. Little explorer and observer. He also loved spinning on the merry-go-round!

We took a couple of days to visit Santa Barbara. While we stayed at Lela's house, we got to see Marko briefly, and Mina with Kiki came up for a day too so Nikolas and Kiki got to play together. They got along wonderfully. We took them to a playground along the downtown beach that we haven't been to before and the boys had a blast. After Mina left that afternoon, Nikolas and I returned to State St. where I promised his some ice cream, so we had some lone time in perfect weather in beautiful downtown of SB (on the way there we first stopped at the beach to run around barefoot on the sand.)
We also met James Douma for lunch one day and walked around together. Nikolas found him cool. He also liked great-uncle Ivica and great-great-uncle Peter (whom he particularly liked and called funny after deda Pera pretended to mess up Nikolas's name a few times in a row).

My advice for anyone who wanted to do something quick to get on Nikolas's good side (if that wasn't easy enough to begin with) would be to take him to Starbucks and buy him a hot chocolate and a CAKE POP! Needless to say, I bought a cake pop pan for home since we came back from CA and tried it already. Sonja and Michael can kind of say cake pop too (pop cake, cake pop...)

State Street beach, downtown Santa Barbara:

 Banning: