Diaper stories

This week Aidan has been doing a lot with language. On Tuesday while he was lying on his diaper changing pad waiting impatiently for Mommy to finish changing his diaper, he said "duh dapah!" (all done, diaper!), and later he repeated "wa dah" ([I]want that) - something he has said before. And on Saturday, he said "hee go" (here you go) as he gave Mommy a cup in the kitchen, and said "da hot" (that's hot) about the hotwater pipe in the corner of our bathroom. It's amazing!

Aidan is also getting unbelievably good at telling Mommy and Daddy what he wants. On Tuesday, when Daddy was waking up, Aidan grabbed a diaper off the night stand, walked into his bedroom, and lay down on his changing pad, indicating without a doubt that he was ready to have his diaper changed! He repeated the performance on Sunday for Mommy when his diaper wasn't even very wet! Mommy and Daddy appreciate his efforts to be so clear with his communication!

On Thursday, Daddy had morning meetings at work, so Mommy took over with Aidan, which she was happy about because it meant that she could go to playgroup with Aidan! The theme of playgroup this week was "the Five Senses." Parents brought things to feel or smell (which also worked for "see"), the kids ate lots of snacks (which worked for "taste"), and Michael played guitar (for "hear"). The "feel" stations were pretty exciting! There were two baby pools - one of dry leaves and one of balls, which the babies had fun spreading all over the recreation room floor. There was also a table of "smells" (cut limes, spices in cheese cloth), a table of non-edible "feels" (sandpaper, cotton balls, texture books), and a whole table was of food-related items, which included flour, rolled oates, rice crispies, cooked spaghetti, and whipped cream, among others. Aidan managed to leave playgroup without being covered entirely with whipped cream and rice crispies, which was pretty amazing to Mommy!

On Sunday, we all took the train down to the Natural History museum, where we had fun exploring the Asian Mammals, Indian Mammals, and Primates exhibits. Aidan was completely calm and good on the train ride down. When we got into the Asian Mammal exhibit, he was so thrilled with it that he just ran from one end of the exhibit to the other over and over again, pointing at the gigantic elephants, lions, and deers, and squeaking with delight. After running circles around a few exhibits, he finally slowed down. But it was (again) a huge success! It's so nice to have such fun and easy family excursions available.

Language and leaves

The leaves are changing and are just past peak this week, making the hills in the Catskills beautiful quilts of scarlet, orange, purpley brown, and gold. This weekend we all drove up to the Catskills for a long weekend to get some much needed rest and relaxation and to visit Grandma and Grandpa Ruane. It was wonderful! We played at local playgrounds, ate at our favorite Pizza restaurant (Brios), cooked lots of delicious food (cilantro pesto, croutons, apple bread, and apple pies), played in the ankle-deep (up to knee-deep for Aidan!) rustly dry brown leaves, and enjoyed spending time with each other. On Friday night, Mommy and Daddy watched the fourth Indiana Jones movie (which we've been wanting to see for ages), and on Saturday we all celebrated the 21st birthday of Laura Jean and Vinny's son Johnny. Aidan was friendly and interested in all of the party guests, and was incredibly good, despite the high level of stimulation. He stayed up way past his bedtime, and finally passed out after 9PM, which allowed Mommy and Daddy to enjoy dinner and visiting with the hollow-folk. It was wonderful! On Saturday and Sunday mornings, Grandma and Grandpa played with Aidan and let Mommy and Daddy sleep in, and then Grandma cooked delicious breakfasts for us (french toast on Saturday and grits and omlettes with spinache, feta cheese and tomatoes on Sunday). On Saturday afternoon, Aidan hung out with Grandma and Grandpa while Mommy and Daddy went on a date: a beautiful 5-mile hike up to Overlook Mountain for views of the fall foliage and the Hudson River. Sunday night, we had a dinner that was almost completely from Grandma and Grandpa's garden: fresh apple-sauce, carrots, potatoes and salad, with pork roast. Yum! (Grandma is not interested in getting a pig to completely "live off the land" though.) We all get so spoiled when we visit!

Aidan has been doing a lot with language these last couple of weeks. We forgot to say last week, that we think he has said his first sentence! He was hanging out with Mommy in the kitchen when he pointed urgently at the spices and said "Wa Da!" - very clearly meaning: "I want that!". Mommy was so excited! He has repeated this at least once since then as well. He has also been pairing other words together. He regularly now says "mah, mama" (more, mommy), and on Saturday while he was in the bath, Daddy asked him to call Mommy so he could get out, and he said "mama! ah dah!" (mommy, all done!)! On Sunday, Mommy told Aidan to tell Daddy that it was bathtime, and he promptly walked over and said "Bah, Dadda!" (Bath, daddy!). His vocabulary is increasing as well, including many of his favorite foods and most of the part of his face (eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, chin, ears, hair, cheeks). This weekend Daddy said he heard him saying something that sounded like "Grandpa" and "Grandma", and on Sunday he pointed to Mommy's laptop computer and said "pew-der" (computer)! It is amazing.

He is also experimenting with sounds recently, and at the moment thinks that it is hilarious to make sounds in his throat that make it sound like he is spitting up flem - but it isn't because he is sick (although he does have a cold), because he does it over and over again, laughing each time! What a silly kid. :)

The highlight of the week this week was that Daddy was in charge of Thursday's playgroup with our friend Heidi. They decided to choose a "building" theme, and Daddy brought big cardboard blocks, small wooden blocks, and stacking blocks to share. The "2 & under" age-group rotated around different building stations and loved it so much that they skipped "story time" and didn't notice that Troy waited until the end of the morning to play his guitar. During song time, even the bigger (pre-school aged) kids wanted to play with the blocks! It was a huge success.

Co-conspirators

Aidan and his friend Mossisa have turned into major co-conspirators this week. They play together almost every day and have become great friends: for each of them, hearing that the other one will be somewhere is the only motivation needed for them to jump happily into a stroller, get picked up, or walk to find the other one. And when they are together, they inspire each other: Mossisa often follows Aidan in what looks like follow-the-leader games, but Aidan also picks things up from Mossisa, like pushing Mossisa around in his stroller, or grabbing onto his shoulder and walking arm-and-arm with him. On Thursday, we were playing on the big lawn by New Leaf Cafe, and Mommy and Solomon (Mossisa's grandfather) noticed that all of a sudden, Aidan and Mossisa looked at each other appraisingly, looked down the walkway, and then ran down the sidewalk toward another part of the park while pushing a couple of baby strollers together! It really looked like they both told each other "now's the time!" and than took their chance at being escape artists! They are extremely cute.

On Sunday, Mommy, Daddy and Aidan all took the subway over to the Children's Museum of Manhattan (off 83rd Street & Broadway). It was the first time we had visited, and it was fantastic! It is five stories of toys, play structures, activities, murals, and interactive exhibits all aimed at children. Aidan particularly liked the grocery store area where he put all sorts of plastic fruit and vegetables into baby-sized shopping basket and then took them back out again, chewed on a plastic red onion, and got "price-checked" by Daddy with the check out scanner like Maggie Simpson. He also liked pushing the gears to move the conveyor belts, sitting on the giant green dragon, pushing the button to turn the siren on in the fire truck, putting his hands on hand mark buttons to play "peek-a-boo" by turning glass from opaque to clear to opaque again, and pushing the touch-screen TV to make a artoon giraffe and birds sing in five-part a capella.

Heaven

Aidan has been very into feeding Mommy this week. Before this, Mommy would usually feed Aidan when it was dinner time, but this week, he oftentimes refuses to be fed unless he feeds her as well! So, we end up feeding each other our dinners, at least part of them! It's a little odd, but since we're both eating the same thing, it works. The change in dinner routines this week made Mommy think about a story that her mom told her about heaven and hell, which her mom had heard growing up. According to the story, heaven and hell are the same place: a giant table laden with delicious food, with lots of people gathered around it, all of whom have extremely long spoons fixed to their hands. In hell, everyone starves and is miserable because they all try, unsuccessfully, to feed themselves. But in heaven, everyone is healthy and happy because they all feed each other. So, Mommy thinks that our family must be in heaven right now!


The beginning of the week this week was fun: Uncle Chris and Aunt Lauren stayed until Tuesday night and hung out with us, which we all loved! On Monday, Mommy and Aidan brought them downtown where we met up with Mommy's cousin Heather, and we visited the "Top of the Rock" at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and got a great view of the city. Heather took us out to yummy Thai food afterward, and Aidan was a trooper despite getting a big bump on his head while running up and down the ramp at Anthropologie. On Tuesday, Uncle Chris and Aunt Lauren babysat Aidan for a couple of hours in the afternoon so Mommy and Daddy could both keep appointments which would otherwise have been impossible to keep, and they said that Aidan did great! He didn't get out of his stroller for a while, but didn't cry, and he eventually got out to play on the playgrounds - so it was a big success! Mommy and Daddy wish they could babysit more often!

On Wednesday, we were back to just being our family again. While Mommy was making dinner that night, something funny happened. Aidan was playing calmly with his toys in the foyer, and then all of a sudden, he started crying with a sharp, scared voice. Mommy stopped what she was doing and ran over to see what was wrong, and gave Aidan a big hug and kiss and said, "what happened, baby?" He pointed down on the ground, and Mommy realized that he had found one of Mommy and Daddy's artistic pop-up books - The Wizard of Oz. Aidan had opened it up to the page with the hot air baloon, and it had popped unexpectedly out of the pages and scared him! Mommy cuddled and comforted him and tried to explain that it was okay, it was just a book that played "peek-a-boo" with you, but she had to try hard to not laugh! It was pretty funny.

In other news, Aidan is getting extremely good at going up and down stairs with his teddy bear stroller: he can go down without help most of the time, and can go up with only a bit of a boost. It's still scary to Mommy, but if he's going to do it, she is glad he is doing it as safely as possible! Also exciting is that tonight (Sunday) Aidan managed for the first time ever to pick up his spoon, get food onto it, and get the food from the spoon into his mouth all by himself! He has been playing with spoons and even getting the spoon into his mouth (while loosing the food) for a while, but this is the first time he's gotten the entire sequence down. It's pretty amazing! Finally, Aidan has been getting really into playing Daddy's piano and listening to Daddy play recently. Tonight he even wanted to eat dinner while listening to Daddy play! Aidan also still loves singing and banging on drums (and slides and anything else) - so music is definitely one of his interests!