Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This has been a busy couple of weeks! Last Wednesday Aidan and Mommy visited Rockefeller Center and saw the gigantic Christmas tree and had to bundle up against the cold. But this week we are in Hawaii enjoying the sun and ocean! We flew out of JFK airport on Friday at 9:45AM and arrived, 14 hours later, in Kona - just in time to enjoy a delicious dinner of ahi and coconut milk over rice (Mommy's favorite meal in the world) with the Rosses! Aidan was a trooper on the flight: he had a good nap and was great on the first 5 hour leg, but then was pretty unhappy about getting on another 6 hour flight! He didn't break down completely until we got into the car after meeting Grandma and Grandpa Ross in the Kona airport.

However, once that was over, vacation has been wonderful! Aidan has loved being cuddled and kissed and entertained by Grandma and Grandpa Ross, Aunt Frances, and Uncle Jon-Michael, and he has been a great helper as we cooked piles of delicious Christmas food. We've taken him to the beach twice so far, and so far he likes the tide pools the best, since they are the warmest. (Even Hawaii water isn't as warm as his baths!)

This morning, Grandma drove down to Magic Sands with Mommy and Daddy and they were thrilled to swim and boogie board in the ocean while he explored tidepools and sand (yummy) on the beach. It was wonderful!
We are here until Sunday night, and then are taking a red-eye back to NYC, arriving on Monday evening. So, the next blog post will probably be late as well. However, we hope you all are doing well and enjoying the holidays! Have a happy new year!!!!

Parties and first "solids"

This week we had a couple of parties and Aidan tried his first "solid" food!

On Friday, Mommy hosted her New Mom's group at our apartment, and Aidan was a wonderful host. He shared his toys with all of his friends, and decided (along with Jack, John and Yuxin) that his friend Grace was a toy - here is a picture of Aidan trying to grab her face! Grace was a great sport about it. :)

On Saturday, Mommy and Daddy gave Aidan his first "solid" food! It was actually a "rice cereal" made up of 1 part rice flakes, 5 parts breast milk, so it didn't look too solid to Mommy and Daddy. However it was a big move for Aidan! He sat in his swing, tasted a bit of the cereal on his lips, and then opened up wide for more! He even tried to grab the spoon himself and put it in his mouth (most of that spilled out), and he ate (or drenched his shirt) with a whole ounce of milk / teaspoon of rice cereal. Mommy and Daddy thought it was so much fun! We hope that Aidan will try poi in Hawaii over Christmas. However, he is going to have to wait to try anything more exciting than that untill he is bigger - but rice cereal (and poi?) must be exciting for him, since he has only ever had milk to eat!

On Sunday, Mommy, Daddy and Aidan all went to a holiday party at Dakota's house (one of Aidan's friends). The mommies and daddies had a lot of fun chatting and eating yummy food (the sweet potatoes were scrumpteous!), and the babies were on their best behavior - nobody made a peep of unhappiness until after 6PM! It was a fun night out for everybody.

Rolling over!

This week Aidan rolled over for the first time! On Tuesday he was doing tummy time with Daddy and lost his balance and fell over - all the way! He repeated the performance while reaching for a toy with Mommy on Thursday twice, and we got the second one on tape so you can see it too! He has also started to pivot on his stomach, turning up to 90 degrees in either direction to reach for his crackly ball that Daddy rolls to him. He is really at the beginning stages of being mobile!

He is also doing better with his bed: last night he slept for 4 straight hours in his bed without a peep (8:30PM-12:30AM). This was a drastic improvement from earlier in the week, when he was waking progressively (digressingly?) more and more (from 4 hours in his swing, to 2 hours in his bed, then 1 hour, then 30 minutes!!!). We hope that it means that our efforts to teach him to self-sooth without crying are starting to work!

We also have been having fun stretching out Christmas. Mommy decorated the house and has been singing Christmas carols rather than rounds of "the wheels on the bus" to put Aidan to sleep, we're opening a different present from Grandma Ross every day until we get to the bottom of the big box (he loves the singing flowers at the moment), and we opened presents with Grandma and Grandpa Ruane who drove up to visit this weekend (Aidan especially loved his stuffed Elmo). We hope you are enjoying the holiday season! If you need a Christmas boost, check out our family elf dance - silly but fun!

Post-Holiday Adventures

This week felt quiet after our busy Thanksgiving, but we continued to have our own adventures.

For the last couple of weeks, Aidan has been much quieter than usual, and on Tuesday afternoon he broke out an entire new vocabulary! He can now say things that sound like "da-da-da-da", "bleh-bleh-bleh" and "dleh-dleh-dleh" - it is an entirely new language! He hasn't started directing "dada" at Daddy yet, but we are looking forward to that!

We have also been working on convincing Aidan to sleep in his baby crib. (He is now almost too big for the co-sleeper in our room and Mommy is getting less excited about waking up every 2 hours to nurse at night!) He now will sleep in his crib if we put him down when he is totally asleep, which is a huge improvement from last week, when he wouldn't even do that. However, we are now working on having him sleep for longer than 2 hour increments. That means Daddy is walking around with Aidan at night when he wakes up and snuggling him back to sleep, instead of Mommy nursing all the time. Aidan isn't a huge fan of the routine change (who could blame him? snuggling and snacking are wonderful!). But things are slowly getting better. Wish us luck!

On Saturday, Daddy walked with Aidan to the northern tip of Manhattan, and both returned with rosy cheeks. This morning it snowed, and we all took a walk outside and watched the little kids sledding in Fort Tryon Park. Aidan is a great sport and seems to love these adventures. We can't wait till we can go sledding with him!

More Headshots

Aidan is SO cute!!!!

Thanksgiving

Aidan's first Thanksgiving was a whirlwind of visiting family and tons of food. After meeting up with the Ruane aunts, uncles and cousins earlier in the week, we all drove up to Grandma and Grandpa Ruane's mountain house in the Catskills on Tuesday for the real party. The immediate Ruane family was all there (Uncle Gabe, Aunt Karen, and cousin Miya; Uncle Matt, Aunt Devon, and cousins Rae and Elsey; and Grandma and Grandpa Ruane), and more people poured in each day, including Uncle Jon-Michael Ross (who flew in from Purdue on Wednesday) and tons of second cousins, great-aunts and uncles and other friends and family. For Thanksgiving dinner we had 31 people in total, and we chowed down on a 41 pound turkey! Throughout the week, Daddy had fun playing wiffle-ball with his brothers, and Aidan was sprightly and flexible, despite being passed around among tons of ooohing and ahhing strangers. Here are some highlights from the week:

- On Wednesday, we chilled out and Mommy made three apple pies (a Ross favorite), while Aunt Karen made two banana-cream pies (a Ruane favorite).

- On Thursday we had the Thanksgiving feast at 6PM, after which Daddy's cousin Tim and his girlfriend Ulrike (who are professional musicians in Manhattan) spoiled us with an incredible piano and violin concert in the living room. Ulrike told Mommy that a musician must "fall in love with" their violin like they fall in love with a person - her violin was made in 1780 and her parents had to sell a house to buy it!

- On Friday we had a bonfire in the backyard, after which a Tango instructor came to the house and led the Thanksgiving crowd plus visiting neighbors in a night of dancing.

- On Saturday morning, the grandkids made bookends for Grandma Ruane by painting their hands with acrylic paint and making handprints on stones from the stream. Afterwards, we celebrated a second surprise 60th birthday party for Grandpa Ruane with more extended family, shared stories about him, and presents, including a Kubota BX24 tractor from Grandma!

- On Sunday, we packed up, took Uncle Jon-Michael out to Brio's (Mommy's favorite pizza in the whole world), and drove back to the City where we shared one last night with Uncle Gabe, Aunt Karen and Miya, before they flew back to California and we started another normal week.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We may need extra naps this week to recover, but we had a wonderful time.

Macy's & Baby Weights

This Saturday Mommy attended her first exercise session with a personal trainer (Christopher Warden, the husband of Mommy's friend Sara - from our new mom's group), and loved it! Aidan got to be a weight for part of the time, and got entertained by Christopher while Mommy did squats, push-ups, planks, lunges, and other exercises for an hour. Mommy is looking forward to going back!

Saturday night we all took the subway down to Macy's - a nine story extravaganza packed like sardines with holiday shoppers. They had an entire floor of decorated Christmas trees, and their Christmas decorations are not officially up until after Thanksgiving! Aidan loved the lights but got overwhelmed with all the stimulation and was happy to get home and sleep in a familiar place.

Although Daddy has work on Monday and Tuesday, Sunday has started our Thanksgiving week: Aunt Karen, Uncle Gabe and cousin Miya flew in from San Francisco and are staying with us until Tuesday. Grandma and Grandpa Ruane drove down from the Catskills and took us all out to brunch at the New Leaf Cafe in Fort Tryon Park this morning. Tomorrow we are meeting up with Uncle Matt, Aunt Devon and cousins Rae and Elsey at the toy superstore FAO Schwartz - the kids are going to be in kid-heaven! Then we're off to the Catskills on Tuesday and we'll spend the rest of the week visiting with 32 other friends and family. We should have some great Thanksgiving picts to post next time!

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! We are so thankful for each other and all of you. :)

Shots and Snow

So, to continue:
Last week Aidan had his first shots (on his four month "birthday" - what a terrible gift!), poor baby! Because of problems with office staff communication, we've switched pediatricians to Dr. Yolanda Eng, who all the local moms love. Mommy and Daddy like her so far too, but Aidan screamed and turned bright red when another doctor in her office did his shots on Wednesday, so he might disagree - at least as long as he remembers that experience! After the shots, Aidan sobbed for a couple of minutes but Mommy nursed and comforted him, and he pulled through and was okay to leave in his stroller - what a brave baby boy! The next couple of days he was fussier than normal, and was making his "uncomfortable" sounds (which usually refer to being too hot or cold), so we think he didn't feel too well. However, a weekend with Grandparents who were dying to play with him helped!
On Friday night we drove up to the Catskills, which Aidan is now wonderful about (only a five minute gas stop on the way up -hooray!). And on Satuday morning we awoke to a winter wonderland! Every remaining leaf was covered in a glistening blanket of snow, just like out of storybooks! It was just cold enough to "stick", so we ran outside and got some pictures, and Daddy made Aidan his first snowball! We had a wonderful weekend. :)

Preview

This weekend we visited Grandma and Grandpa Ruane in the Catskills for the long Veteran's Day weekend. Here's a shot of Aidan napping happily in the living room. Mommy got some more work done with the free babysitting and Daddy helped Grandma cook lots of meat pasta sauce and meatballs (a Ruane family recipe which is out of this world!) in preparation for Thanksgiving. Aidan had his first bath in Grandma Ruane's wonderful bubble-bath-tub with a forest view and saw his first snow! We'll post some more picts soon.

A Day in the Life of an Almost-Four Month Old

Instead of doing a "this week..." entry, today instead is "a day in the life...."

On a regular day, Mommy and Aidan get out of bed after our last nursing of the night to change a big baby diaper. This wakes Aidan up out of his night sleep, and he turns into a sunshiney baby alarm clock for Daddy when we go back to bed, all clean and dry. While Mommy and Daddy yawn, Aidan watches us with bright eyes and gives us tons of gigantic smiles and tells us in cooing happy baby talk all about his dreams and how wonderful he thinks the light is in the window. Then Mommy gives Aidan to Daddy and takes a blissful shower while Daddy plays with Aidan in bed, singing songs, crackling and throwing his ball up and down, dancing his Teddy with him, and talking to him. Once Mommy is out of the shower, Mommy plays with Aidan and Teddy while brushing her teeth and getting dressed, and Daddy showers and gets ready for work. Then Daddy goes to work on the subway and Mommy and Aidan begin our day.

In the morning, Aidan plays in his play gym while Mommy eats her cheerios, next we read a couple of books, and then Aidan has his breakfast and takes a nap in his swing. Mommy tries to work on her dissertation while he is napping. When Aidan wakes up, we go through our baby play stops, one by one - always, of course interspersed with nursing snacks! On the floor, we play in the baby gym, where Aidan currently loves grabbing and trying to eat his sun-rattle; we do "tummy time," and Mommy shows Aidan interesting things (like patterned balls and moving fingers) to practice eye tracking and develop neck muscle; and we practice rolling, back-to-tummy and tummy-to-back. In the bed, Mommy puts Aidan on her tummy and slowly rolls him from there to one side and back again, while he stares, amazed, at how the world flips over and back; Mommy flies Aidan like a little airplane around in figure eights; and our newest trick is for Mommy to do sit-ups while Aidan does tummy time on her shins (check out the cool picture! - Aidan laughs and laughs when we do this - he loves it, and it's a great workout!). In the glider, we read books, and Aidan turns the pages. On the changing table, Mommy has kissing attacks on Aidan's tummy, toes, and face (he's kissable from head to toe). On the couch, we play "this little piggy" and play tickling games ("heads, shoulders, knees and toes..") And around the house, we dance and dance.

When we get bored of the house, we go outside: We get all bundled up and strap on the Ergo or pull out the stroller and walk around the neighborhood. We watch the kids playing on the playgrounds (Aidan can't wait to play on the jungle gyms), and hike around the trails in the parks. Sometimes we meet up with other new moms from our New Mommy Group, and Aidan talks to the other babies while Mommy talks to their mommies.

When Daddy comes home, Aidan gives him huge smiles and starts getting ready for the real party. Daddy usually takes Aidan out on another walk to the park, where they watch the kids playing basketball, and Daddy gives Aidan a bottle. (In the meantime, Mommy does some more work on her dissertation at home.) When they return, Aidan has another snack and a big warm bath, and then climbs into snuggly pajamas to get ready for bed. Daddy makes dinner and then sings and dances with Aidan until he's had enough partying, and then Mommy gives him another snack and he sleeps for a while in his swing. Mommy and Daddy have their dinner and work or putter around and then go to bed. Mommy picks up Aidan when he needs another snack later, and they all sleep (or sleep and snack) until the morning.

On weekends, Mommy passes Aidan off to Daddy when Aidan is not nursing so she can work on her dissertation, and Daddy plays with him all day long and goes on long walks and makes delicious food for everyone. Daddy does a lot of the same thing Mommy does, but he is very creative and comes up with all sorts of exciting new games to play with Aidan. This week, he started playing "car wash", where he walks over Aidan with a towel, swishing it back and forth, while Aidan lies on the ground. Aidan smiles and smiles up at him - he loves all the amazing new things that Daddy comes up with to keep him entertained!

This is what we do on a usual day. Wish we could share it with you in person more often!