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!