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!!!!