Family Weekend

We have all been looking forward to having Uncle Chris and Aunt Lauren Ross visit us this weekend! They arrived on Friday morning for a wedding on Sunday, and are not leaving until Tuesday night. So, we have a lot of time to hang out! It is wonderful. On Friday, Aidan had a lot of fun playing with them on the playgrounds. And on Saturday, Grandma and Grandpa Ruane drove over to babysit so Mommy and Daddy could take Uncle Chris and Aunt Lauren to see Spamalot on Broadway to celebrate Lauren's birthday. We all had a great time! Grandma and Grandpa took Aidan to the Natural History Museum while we were at the show. (Afterwards, Grandma told us that Aidan ran for "miles" around the museum!) We thought Spamalot was hilarious, and afterwards we met up with Aidan and Grandma and Grandpa for dinner at Coogans to continue the celebrations. So, it was a wonderful afternoon!

On Sunday, Chris and Lauren had a wedding to attend on Long Island, and Mommy and Daddy and Aidan went to Fort Tryon's Medieval Festival. At the beginning of the day, it was rainy and not so fun, so we went out again after a late nap for Aidan, and the second time was great. Aidan loved the minstrels (especially the fiddler), the police horses, and the magic wand he was given at one booth. Daddy liked all the sword booths and the jousting match, and Mommy liked seeing all the people in colorful costumes. Definitely worth going to again next year!


During the rest of the week, Aidan has been doing a number of things. He is playing a new game where he points at you, and then you have point back, and then connect your pointer finger to his like Adam and God on Michaelangelo's Sistene Chapel ceiling. He loves it! Another new game is horsey-rides with Daddy: Aidan climbs on Daddy's back while Daddy is on all fours, and Daddy rides him around the house - Aidan loves it! Aidan is also regularly playing by himself for at least five minutes at a time, which is amazing! It is incredible the way his playtime is developing.


Aidan also started really using the "I hear" sign this week. Mommy started cupping her hand to her ear when she heard planes and other things, and he picked it up the same day! Now, when planes fly overhead or trucks rumble down the street, he promptly puts his own hand to his ear, looks out the window, and comments excitedly about it.


On Saturday, Aidan also switched to "real" shoes: gray/blue/white Champion size 6 1/2 baby tennis shoes with two velcro straps, instead of his "water socks" shoes which he has been wearing all summer. He had a fit when he first tried them on, but when Mommy put them on him in the park and ran around while he pushed his baby stroller saying what an amazing big boy he was, he started smiling and decided that they must be okay! On the feet front, Aidan is also "really running" according to Daddy - and he is hard to keep up with!


The other big event that happened this week was that on Wednesday, Aidan was babysat by someone other than family for the first time! Mommy is continuing to look into shared childcare options with other families, and this was the first real attempt in that direction. Aidan spent 2 1/2 hours with Mommy's new friend Erin, her husband Pete, and their son Bruno (who is the same age as Aidan but is not walking yet). They said that Aidan was a trooper, even though he wasn't thrilled at Mommy leaving him behind! They all took a walk to the river, and that made Aidan happier than being inside, even though he decided that he wouldn't get out of the stroller! When Mommy picked him up, he was doing his finger pointing game with Erin like she was his buddy, and smiled at all of them, so she thought the experience was a success. (And it helped her finish a section on her current dissertation chapter, so it was totally worth it!)

Monkey

Aidan is turning into a little monkey this week! He is starting to climb EVERYWHERE - it's not just on the stroller anymore. He especially likes climbing up onto our living room reclining chairs, sitting on them for a minute, and then trying to climb from their arm-rests onto the window sill or onto the couch! Mommy and Daddy are amazed and impressed, but it's also pretty stressful - we don't want to see him fall on his head!
He is also having a lot of fun doing new things. Early in the week, Aidan walked backwards for the first time while playing with Daddy in the living room. In the middle of the week, he learned how to turn onto his tummy and slide safely off of the couch (a hugely useful skill!). And on Friday, Aidan started going down slides *by himself*!!!! Mommy and Aidan were hanging out at Javits playground with Aidan's friend Jack, when he started doing slides by himself: he had been going down while holding Mommy or Daddy's hand for a while. But this time, he hung from the vertical metal rails next to the orange plastic slide, let go, and slid down by himself! Mommy kept her hands there in case he needed them the whole time, but he didn't look for them! And he was beyond thrilled with himself afterward: he got a gigantic smile on his little face, and proceeded to climb up the metal slide to the top of the play structure (holding onto Mommy's hands to get there), and then go down the orange plastic slide by himself again over, and over, and over again -- probably 15 times! It was amazing.

This week he has also developed a new smile. It's an expectant smile, like the emoticon: [ :D . Mommy thinks that he's developed it for a couple of reasons. First, because he loves the part of Goodnight Gorilla where the zoo-keeper's wife's eyes go wide because she just heard all of the zoo animals in her room say goodnight to her -- Mommy does a sharp intake of breath on that page, and he flips back to it over and over again; and Aidan has been copying the wide-eyed, expectant smile and the gasp. And second, because Mommy and Daddy have been letting him watch Nickelodeon's Wonder Pets show (a cartoon where school pets work together to save animals in trouble while speaking in operatic libretto); and at the beginning of the show, there is always a phone ringing, which Aidan LOVES: he always gasps and smiles like he is about to eat a barrel of ice cream when the phone rings! These are the closest instigators of the new smile. It's very cute!

We had a lot of fun as a family this weekend. Saturday, we all walked down to the Little Red Lighthouse festival, where we saw horses drawing a wagon, a bunch of activity booths, and some children's street performers / hip-hop dancers. Aidan loved watching the show, eating cotton candy, and watching the trains go by. He wasn't sure about the horses (they were a lot bigger than the pictures of horses he usually sees in his books!). But we all had a great time!

Sunday, we all trained down to the Natural History Museum, where Aidan loved the Gallery of Ocean Life. We also stopped by a street festival and had pizza, chicken kabobs, and Nutella & Banana crepes. Yum!

Belly Button

Aidan discovered his belly button this week, and the discovery process was incredibly cute! On Tuesday afternoon, Mommy and Aidan walked over to check out the public library on 187th and St. Nicholas, where we met up with Aidan's friends Jack and Mossisa. The babies had a great time in the children's room, looking at the giant (3-4 ft in diameter) lamps on the ceiling, climbing and sitting on the semi-circular baby-sized couches, chasing each other around the bookshelves, and reading new board books. They were all moving in different directions for the first hour or so, but after a while, they all ended up playing on the baby couches.

Then, all of a sudden, Mossisa lifted up his T-shirt, looked at his stomach, and got a dawning look of realization on his cherubic face: he realized that he had a belly button! He pointed at it and told all of us what a wonderful discovery it was, and then he reached over to Aidan, lifted Aidan's T-shirt, and exclaimed with a second discovery: Aidan had a belly button too! Aidan's eyes opened wide, and he lifted his own shirt to double check: yes! he had a belly button too! He said "da! da! da!" and shared the good news with everyone. Finally, Jack, who was on sitting on the floor next to the couch and who had been watching this all with great wonder, lifted his own T-shirt, and exclaimed that he too had a belly button! All three of them did! They were all thrilled with the discovery, and it was ridiculously cute to see them all coming to the realization about it at the same time together!

Other points of interest this week:

- On Wednesday, Mommy asked Aidan (as a matter of routine, while playing with Aidan's barnyard puzzle set), "what do horses say, Aidan?" - and out of the blue, he responded: "Neigh!". :) Up until now, he has been responding that doggies breathe loudly ("what do doggies say?" "heh, heh, heh!"; this makes sense to Mommy, since dogs in Manhattan are pretty quiet, and they really do breathe loudly more often than they bark). However, he hadn't started responding with other animal sounds. So, Mommy was amazed that Aidan answered the question at all! By the end of the week, Aidan also at least once said that sheep say "ba". So, Aidan now knows how to make the noises at least for dogs, horses, and sheep!

-Aidan is starting to communicate very well. He says "ma" or "mom" for Mommy, "da" or "da da" for Daddy, says "hah" and "bah" and waves for "hi" and "bye", he both says "moh" and claps as a sign for more, says "ah dah" and makes the "all done" sign (Mommy thinks this is a GREAT sign; he can use it to mean all done or stop; and we can use it to tell him that we are not going to play with something any more, or that we are not eating any more cookies, or whatever; and he understands it and doesn't get upset about stopping something, like he does without the sign!). Aidan also says "mih" and makes the milk sign, makes signs for food, pick-me-up-please (hands up in the air), says "daw" and breathes loudly (the dog sound) for doggies, makes the siren sound (ooh eeyou ooh eeyou) for sirens / firetrucks / ambulences, makes a little sing-songy sound imitating far-off plane engines for airplanes and helicopters, and has other signs and word approximations which he uses which Mommy can't remember at the moment. But he is getting very good at communicating!

- On Friday, Mommy and Aidan had a playdate with Aidan's friends Dillon and Nate (the twins) and Lily (their neighbor) at the twins' house. The kids had fun playing with each other and with the twins' toys, and the mommies had fun hanging out and letting the kids do most of the entertaining of each other!

- In Mommy's opinion, Aidan is now officially running! He can charge along at a great rate, fast enough for Mommy and Daddy to walk normally while he keeps up (at least for a little while). He usually holds out his right hand straight to keep his balance, and swings his left arm in a running motion. His knees only bend a little bit, so it's kind of like jogging or speed-walking, but he is definitely moving fast!

- Favorite books this week: Goodnight Gorilla, Freight Train, Go Dogs, Go!; other contenders: Goodnight Moon, Runaway Bunny, Baby Beluga.

14 months old

Aidan is officially 14 months old today! Despite the cliche, it is somehow still amazing that "babies grow up so fast"!

Aidan created his first artistic masterpiece this week. Mommy bought some large chalks a couple of weeks ago, and has been trying to get Aidan to draw sidewalk art with her at the parks or on the blacktop near our house. But until this week, he was having a hard time holding the chalk in a way that made any color show up on the pavement. But this week, Mommy pulled out the crayon bath toys from Grandma Ross, and after a day of not making much color, Aidan really started to get the hang of it! By the end of the week, he was drawing lots of wavery lines on the corner of the bathtub - one day, he only wanted to use blue, and the next day, he only wanted to use red - so the final work is rather patriotic! Mommy hasn't wiped them off, yet, because seeing her baby's first artwork is so exciting. Here is a picture of Aidan's first masterpiece!
When he has been outside this week, Aidan has been particularly excited by airplanes and helicopters (which fly over our Manhattan apartment at least a few times an hour). When he hears the roar of their engines, he will stop running around, cran his neck back, point, and watch the plane or helicopter move from one side to the other side of the sky, as he says "da! da! da!". It's pretty incredible how dramatically improved his vision is now from when he was little! As his vision has gotten better, he's been excited about buses, then dogs, then squirrels, and now airplanes! It's amazing.

Here are some cute (and not so cute) idiosyncracies about Aidan right now:
- He talks in his sleep: sometimes he says "da!" and he even makes "milk" signs. Sadly, he also cries in his sleep sometimes. He must be having vivid dreams!
- He's getting more cuddly: he'll cuddle up with Mommy and play while nursing, rather than just gulping down the milk and moving on (he plays eye-blinking games and laughs at being blown at in the face; unfortunately, he also shoves his fingers in her mouth and hits sometimes - Mommy usually turns this into a "high five" game, which is much better)
- He cracks himself up! He'll just start going "ha!" for no apparent reason, which makes Mommy and Daddy laugh, which makes him laugh, and the cycle goes on
- He has temper tantrums where he gets into the "downward dog" yoga position, and then bangs his head against the ground: the head-banging and temper tantrums are frustrating, but the posture is pretty funny!
- He now really likes just sitting. He will sit in a corner of the couch and just chill for sometimes five minutes, and he sometimes goes around the cement circle at dolphin park just sitting on the side (taking a break from playing in the water). It's funny to see such an active kid having so much fun just sitting!

This weekend we went to our last "first birthday party" of the summer. Aidan's friend Gus, who was the youngest baby of the New Mom's Group, is finally one, and all of the parents have officially survived the first year. Looking back, it is pretty amazing how different things were a year ago. For us, we had just moved across the country to New York, we had a new apartment, a blow-up bed, a 2-month old baby, and no air-conditioner while waiting in a huge heat-wave for our stuff to arrive by truck across the country; we didn't know anyone and Alex hadn't started his job yet. But now, we are in an apartment that feels like home, with a baby who is his own little person with his own cute personality, air conditioners so we don't go crazy from the heat, a community which we feel fully a part of, friends who we are close to, and jobs which we are getting work done at and enjoy. It's a pretty amazing difference!

This week, Mommy and Daddy are also celebrating an informal anniversary: we have known each other now for 10 years! We can't believe that it was 10 years ago when we met as freshmen at Cornell. There have been a lot of changes during that time (Aidan has definitely been the biggest, most cataclysmic, and wonderful one!), but the one thing that has not changed is that we are so happy that we found each other and are pursuing our journeys together.

Beantown

This week was not a normal week. Mommy had a conference in Boston at the end of the week, so instead of switching off half-days with Aidan, Mommy and Daddy switched off full days: Daddy worked overtime on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday while Mommy took care of Aidan; then, after driving to Boston on Wednesday night,

Mommy attended her conference all day Thursday and Friday while Daddy took care of Aidan. It worked out well: Mommy had a good time at the conference meeting with friends and colleagues and going to panels, and Daddy had fun showing Aidan all of the parks where he went when he was a kid! On both Thursday and Friday, Daddy and Aidan visited Mommy in the afternoon so Mommy and Aidan could have a nursing break, and afterward we played in some wonderful fountains outside the Prudential Center.

On Saturday morning, we all drove to Connecticut for a family barbeque with Mommy's Aunt Helen, Uncle Bill, and cousins Heather and Clarke. Grandma and Grandpa Ruane drove down too, and Aidan was the center of attention for a lot of people. He ate lots of watermellon and strawberries, and ran around the house either following or being followed by Heather's dog Kea, who was just his size and who kept trying to lick his ears and nuzzle his fingers!

We drove home Saturday afternoon, and were happy to be done with long drives for at least a little while.

On Sunday, Daddy let Mommy sleep in (which was wonderful!) and then we all walked up to the big lawn by the Cloisters to celebrate Aidan's friend Grace's first birthday party! Grace is one of the last of Aidan's cohort to turn one, and it is amazing that the babies are all turning so quickly into little kids! Aidan played "catch" with a football with Daddy, climbed the lawn chairs with his friends (Grace, Jack, Johnny & Gus), ate strawberries, chicken skewers and cupcakes, and had fun being outside in the beautiful clear 78 degree weather.

On

Monday, Mommy let Daddy sleep in (we have to make this exchange a tradition!), and Aidan was generally a fuss. After a nice long nap with Mommy, we all went out to enjoy another beautiful day, and Aidan perked up. We ate white chocolate raspberry Haagen Dazs ice cream in Bennett Park, ran around the play structures, and enjoyed being outside. After we got home, Daddy discovered the source of some of Aidan's fussiness: not only is his 9th tooth cutting in in the front (second bottom right), but a top-left molar is starting to cut through as well! Poor baby. No wonder he is feeling out of sorts!

Here are some of the things that Aidan has been doing recently:

1) Last week Aidan said "trash" (he had a very abbreviated "a" in the word, so it sounded almost like "Trsh", but the "T", "Rrr" and "Sh" were all very clearly annunciated!).
2) Aidan now knows and refers to his friend Jack: he calls him "Ack" or "Dack", gets very excited to see him and his mom Jeanie, and has stopped what he is doing to walk toward him if he is asked if he wants to visit him.
3) This week Aidan has developed a maniacal laugh; it sounds like he is saying "ha ha ha! I am king of the world, and you cannot stop me - look at what I can do!" - he did this a lot while we played at the fountains in Boston and he was stepping on the water vent, and again when he was dropping a coke bottle down a slide near our New York apartment.
4) Aidan has started to imitate chipmunks: when eating, he now frequently stuffs as much food as he can into his mouth (rather than chewing and swallowing each bite), which often results in rivers of watermellon juice or schools of goldfish crackers escaping his fully pursed little lips! (We try to stop him, but he is really fast and can grab and run in an amazingly short period of time!)
5) Right now, Aidan LOVES walking up and down and up and down and up and down steps.
6) He LOVES doing "chin-ups" on the monkeybars with Daddy.
7) He also has been loving opening and shutting heavy gates - Mommy spent at least half an hour by Cabrini high school early in the week, saying "open! closed! open! closed!" as Aidan pushed and pulled a 10-ft tall heavy iron gate open about a foot (an arm-length) and closed over and over again; today, Aidan appointed himself gate-keeper to the swings, and Mommy and Daddy had to move Aidan out of the way so that they could get past him!
8) Today, Aidan started playing real melodies on his piano toy, and repeated them multiple times to applause from Mommy and Daddy.