Sweet innocent little Elsie meet Nicholas (Bam Bam) Johnston.

Finally Elsie and Nicholas are at an age where they actually play together (yes mom, I know its only parallel play, but it seems as if they are interacting to me) and we were pretty excited about the vacation. I find it exciting and terrifying to be with Scott – he is aggressively fearless with nicholas, which leads to mark following in his footsteps with elsie. I prepared for the trip by starting some anti-anxiety meds so I could give Elsie a calm collected front.

When we met in the airport and houston Nicholas instantly said Baby Elsie and she was immediately under his spell. Nicholas would run and Elsie would follow, Nicholas would stop to let her almost catch up and then off again … here are some great shots of the kids in Costa Rica …

At the beach collecting shells, finding crabs and watching the waves

beach

wow

hooray

tide pools

Scott takes niko out to body surf, mark follows with elsie

waves

We all watched Scott as he did some surfing …

surfer man

Nicholas did some surfing in the pool …

surfer boy

Elsie had more success outside the pool, next step water!

surfer girl


Up and Down in the fountain (notice nicholas smiling and elsie’s shocked look)

up and down in the fountain

up and down in the fountain

Pool time: Nicholas floated a bit in the mini-raft

float

Elsie decided she wanted to do it too … (hard work)

heavy

maybe outside the pool…

hmm

ok finally a try in the water

float

In and out of the bath …

bath tub

enjoying a jacuzzi bath

bubbles

Pretending to be sleepy

lazy

During the trip nicholas showed elsie how much fun it is to throw things – elsie quickly picked it up. Here they are scheming about what they could throw off the balcony…

and then ...

When we caught on they fake a cuddle (already smarting us out!)

smooch

What a duo!

. . . .

Note: you might notice how well matched the chillin’s are in many of these photos … that is no accident. 🙂