A Normal Day

This week Mommy has been thinking about how amazingly different a typical day is for us now than it was the last time she wrote about it almost ten months ago. So, here is an update!

On a usual day, Mommy nurses Aidan and then gets up at 5AM so she can grab a shower, eat some yogurt, and walk to the Starbucks on 181st street with her laptop to start work on her dissertation at 6AM. At home, Aidan wakes up about 6AM (usually just after Mommy leaves), plays in bed for a few minutes, then on the floor for a few minutes, and then runs out of the door to find his toys. Daddy sleepily plays with him in the living room for up to an hour before he wakes all the way up, and then they have a shower, and then breakfast (usually fruit, cheerios and milk). After breakfast, Aidan finds his shoes and tries to put them on to let Daddy know that it's time for an adventure!

Long adventures mean going on the subway to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, Central Park in midtown Manhattan, or Innwood Park at the northern tip of Manhattan. Right now, Daddy's favorite playground is Heckscher Playground in the south end of Central Park - it has a large playstructure which is essentially an aquaduct with 1 inch deep flowing water for babies to splash through, slides going off the edge, and tunnels to climb through, as well as an entire playground built on a giant sandbox, and wonderful swings and slides. Short adventures usually start on the blacktop behind the elementary school next to our apartment, where Aidan chases balls around and pushes his crocodile push-toy all over the place without crashing into anything. After he gets some energy out it's on to either Javits playground to play with some of Aidan's friends (Nate, Dillon, and Mousissa are regulars) or to the play group at the Collegiate Church where there are tons of kids and things to do (pools, arts and crafts, live guitar and sing-a-longs, sometimes even a water slide!). By 11am or so Aidan's getting pretty tired so it's time to go home and either pass out or have some lunch before passing out. On Monday Aidan couldn't make up his mind on this last option, so he passed out in his high chair after eating lunch (Daddy had to wash his hands while he was sleeping!)!

Mommy packs up her laptop and comes home around 11:30AM when she and Daddy usually have lunch together before Daddy heads off to work. Aidan usually wakes up from his nap around 1PM, and then he has a snack or lunch (usually of leftovers from yesterday's dinner). After lunch, Aidan helps Mommy do laundry or tidy the house for a while, but quickly tells Mommy that he is ready to play outside again by finding his shoes and trying to put them on his feet. At that point, we go outside to run around on the blacktop or in a nearby park for a little while, but make sure that we are at Dolphin Park when it opens at 3:30PM sharp. Mommy loves Dolphin Park because it is a small area reserved for babies where Aidan isn't tempted to play basketball with the high school boys, and where big kids don't run over Aidan! Aidan loves it because there is a sprinkler that comes out of a dolphin statue, a small sandpit, and a play-structure with a slide, steps to walk up and down (Aidan's favorite thing recently - he even hung from the monkey bars while Daddy closely spotted him on Thursday!), and monkey bars that Aidan loves to "tag" with Mommy's help. We play at Dolphin Park until 4:30 or 5:00PM with Aidan's friends (Jack, Bruno, Dillon, and Huck are regulars, and everyone wants to take a turn at Aidan's crocadile push-toy!). When Aidan is ready to leave, he climbs up Mommy's legs and suctions on like an opihi, at which point we take the stroller back home to make dinner. We have dinner at 5:30PM, and Aidan eats the same thing Mommy does, just cut up a bit more - he particularly likes pasta, broccolli, rice, chicken, and almost any fruit. After dinner, Aidan plays with his toys while Mommy finishes eating and does the dishes. Then it's bath time, and then bedtime! Aidan usually nurses to sleep around 7:00PM. Mommy finishes up a few things after he goes to bed, but passes out early (~9PM), and Daddy often climbs into bed after getting back from work after 10PM.

On Saturdays, Mommy and Daddy have decided to work half-days. This Saturday we were all able to sleep in in the morning (Mommy woke up with Aidan a few hours after she normally gets up, and then kept him with her for the morning routine so Daddy could get a few hours extra too). Then, Daddy took Aidan on a walk while Mommy had some work time, until Aidan's nap. After the nap, Mommy took Aidan to play outside while Daddy worked. But then we all had dinner together!

Mommy and Daddy have decided to take Sundays totally and completely off, which is a wonderful experience! Today, we all slept in a bit, ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs and strawberries, and then took the subway to Coney Island! None of us had ever been to Coney Island before, and it was fun: we went swimming in the ocean, played in the sand (Aidan loved having his toes buried), walked through the carnival rides (Aidan isn't quite tall enough to ride yet!), and ate fish & chips, chicken-fingers, and hot dogs at Nathan's Original hot dog stand. It was so wonderful to have fun and relax there together! Aidan took a short nap on Mommy on the subway back, but then woke up. So, we stopped by Heckscher Playground where Daddy introduced Mommy to the amazing park that he had been telling her about for a while. (It was amazing!) After soaking ourselves in the sprinklers, playing in the sand, and going on Aidan's second carousel ride, we finished our subway ride home, made dinner, and put Aidan to bed.

Mommy and Daddy love our new routines, and we think Aidan does too. Mommy is getting light-years more work done on her dissertation than ever before, Daddy can use his flex time to get his work done while seeing Aidan more, and we all get to relax with each other on weekends (unlike when weekends were Mommy's only work time). It is really wonderful!

Eight hours!

We had a historic event happen this week: on Wednesday night, Aidan slept for 8 hours straight (8:30PM-4:30AM) for the first time ever! He usually wakes up, nurses half-asleep, and then falls back asleep multiple times during the night. But this time he didn't even make a peep until 4:30AM!! (Mommy was amazed!) Grandma and Grandpa Ruane had driven in to see a play and visit with us, and they brought Daddy's cousin Kevin and his wife Sarah. We all went out to dinner at Coogans restaurant, and Aidan ended up falling asleep after dinner and then waking up on the ride home - so his normal night was definitely off! But apparently something went right, because then he passed out and stayed asleep for the longest time ever! :) Aidan did not duplicate the performance the next night, but Mommy and Daddy are thrilled that it happened at all.

In other exciting news this week: on Tuesday, Aidan climbed *up* an orange twisty slide *all by himself*, with Daddy only spotting him! He stood in the middle, held onto the edge, and scooted up sideways bit by bit till he made it all the way! He also has been kicking his green ball around, is starting to get scarily interested in running, and has become determined to play basketball with the high-school boys in the court next to the playground! Once he gets focused on the basketball court, Mommy has had to resort to leaving the playground to avoid the distraction, because Aidan refuses to consider playing with any of the baby toys once he gets his eye on the big boy toys!

In terms of language, this week Aidan used the sign for "cold" for the first time, said "up up" to have Mommy pick him up, and is definitely starting to do more and more with words! Aidan also finds his shoes and tries to put them on all by himself to let us know when he wants to go outside (which is just as good as a sign)!

This weekend, we all drove up to the Catskills to visit Grandma and Grandpa Ruane, and we had a great time. Aidan now recognizes and is excited to see them when we arrive, which is much more fun than his stranger anxiety phase, and he loved playing in the stream, with the chickens, and around the house with both of them. He also got to bang on the piano, pick wild blackberries, and even got a tricycle ride with Daddy! On Sunday, we drove to Belleayre Mountain Beach and Aidan had fun wading in the cool water, pounding on the grounded kayaks, getting his feet buried in the sand, playing on the nearby playground, and watching, transfixed, as Daddy and Mommy did jack-knifes off the floating dock into the water. It was a wonderful way to spend a beautiful afternoon!

First Haircut!

Mommy has been resisting Daddy's suggestions to cut Aidan's hair for a while now, as the idea of a haircut felt to her to signal the end of his babyhood. But on Wednesday, Mommy noticed that Aidan was huffing and puffing to blow his hair out of his eyes, and decided that Aidan would ALWAYS be her baby, but that really, he did need a haircut! So we sat Aidan down on Daddy's lap and gave him the unusual treat of watching SpongeBob SquarePants on our bigscreen TV, and Mommy snipped away enough of his golden locks to let him see, unobstructed, give his ears some room to breath, and shorten his natural layer in the back. Mommy has never cut hair before, and she was happy that Aidan was still a cutie pie afterward, and that nobody was injured in the process!

In other news, Aidan is doing amazing things this week! He has learned how to do the sign for "hot" and say "hot" because Mommy uses that sign a lot while she is in the kitchen, explaining why he can't touch everything that he wants to. However, this week, he has transferred this sign both to the bathroom and to the playground! One hot afternoon while we were at the playground, Aidan ran up to a slide and banged on it, and than turned around from the glaring orange plastic with a concerned look on his face, tapping his mouth with his abbreviated "hot" sign saying "ot! ot!" - and he was right: the plastic slide was hot from the sun! He also told Mommy that the bath water that trickled into the tub was "ot ot" with the "hot" sign when somebody flushed their toilet upstairs and it got warmer than it should have been. Mommy is very excited about Aidan's exstention of associations!

Aidan is also starting to be very interested in doing whatever Mommy and Daddy do. In the bathtub this week, he has started taking Mommy's loofah or his baby washcloth and industriously rubbing circles on his tummy with it to get nice and clean. (He is so cute!) He has also started to want to help Mommy sweep the floors! He grabs the broom and dustpan and pushes the broom back and forth, and taps the dustpan on the floor, and gets very upset if Mommy tries to do it without him! (Check out the video.)

Linguistically, Aidan is working on "sk" and "sh" sounds. His favorite Sesame Street character in his Sesame Street piano book is "Oscar the Grouch" because he can say "Osc, osc, osc", and he loves playing with the wash cloth and saying "sh, sh, sh". You can tell that he is very focused on mastering these sounds! He is also expanding his signing repertoire: this week he has been using "hot" frequently, and even has done an abbreviated version of "air conditioning"!

Aidan is also working on new physical skills. Yesterday (Saturday), Daddy asked Aidan if he wanted to build a tower, rather than just knocking it down, and Aidan actually built one! At first, he picked up blocks and Daddy told him where to put them to make a tower. But by the end, he was stacking towers three to four blocks high, all by himself! Mommy and Daddy are totally impressed. :)

Front-facing from Glimmerglass

Aidan had his 1-year old doctor's check up on Monday (we were a couple of weeks late), and we found out that he is 30 1/2 inches (2ft 6in!) tall, weighs 23.6 lbs, and has a 49 1/2 cm head circumference - still growing like a weed! (He's a very cute weed!)
Mommy went "back to work" this week: she is trying to be at Starbucks with her laptop from 6AM to 12PM, Monday through Saturday, while Daddy hangs out with Aidan, so that she can have a ~35hour work week. Daddy is using his flex time to stay at home in the mornings, and is staying late at work at night. This is the latest incarnation of our efforts to juggle jobs, dissertations, and Aidan, and we're hoping that it brings good things. So far, it's brought Mommy hope of finishing her dissertation, and Aidan has had fun hanging out with Daddy and Mommy, even if it is at different times of the day.

This weekend, we took a 4-hour drive up to Cooperstown, NY, to attend the Glimmerglass theater with Grandma and Grandpa Ruane. Aidan was a trooper on the ride in both directions (it is amazing how much better he has gotten at car trips!), and it was nice to see Grandma and Grandpa and have an event to get dressed up for. Aidan hung out with Grandma and Grandpa while Mommy and Daddy saw Cole Porter's "Kiss Me, Kate", and was completely happy with them - Mommy and Daddy are so happy that this arrangement works so well now! Of course, we had to check out the baseball Hall of Fame and shops while we were there...

On the car ride back, we had a big event: Daddy changed Aidan's carseat around, from back to foward-facing! Now that Aidan is both over 1 year and over 20 pounds (and his legs were getting more and more squished against the back of the passenger seats), he is officially moving into the forward-facing experience. He enjoyed being able to see more cars and things out the front windows, and Mommy and Daddy are excited about the milestone and our better abilities to keep him entertained. We also stopped at a classic wooden carousel and gave Aidan a fun ride.

After weeks of Aidan trying to steal other kids' doll strollers, we finally found Aidan a teddy bear stroller that he loves pushing around. Until now the only things we could find were pink-princess strollers, but before we could even pay for this one he was pushing it out the door of the Build-A-Bear Workshop and all around the mall.

Before and After: February to August 2008

This weekend we went to a mall that we hadn't been to since February, and put Aidan into the same race-car toy. Then we found an old picture on the blog of him in the race-car. Wow, has that race-car shrunk!!!