California and Idiosyncracies

This weekend, Mommy, Daddy, and Aidan all flew to Los Angeles for a long weekend so Mommy could go to her friend Julia's bridal shower. Aidan was a trooper on both sets of flights, and had a blast playing with Julia's dogs (Guinness and Leroy) and exploring local malls. Mommy was thrilled that she could be there, and had fun going to pilates class, helping with wedding invitations, and hanging out with the girls at Julia's shower. We all got a rare chance to dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, and that was wonderful! Aidan was thrilled to chase the whitewash on the beach, although when he finally got splashed by a slightly bigger wave, he walked determinedly but calmly in a bee-line back toward the car! Mommy is really glad that we were able to go.

In other highlights: here are some things that are really cute about Aidan right now:

1) After dinner time, Aidan now regularly points to framed pictures of Daddy, and when Mommy gets them down for him, he kisses them! It's sad that he misses Daddy at night, but it's also very cute!

2) Mommy thinks Aidan is developing empathy. A couple of weeks ago, she was reading Aidan The Very Hungry Caterpillar, when something amazing happened. We got to the page where the caterpiller ate too much junk food (including sausages and ice cream), and Mommy read the line: "that night, the very hungry caterpiller had a stomach-ache"; and she pointed at her tummy and said, "he had an owie in his tummy - too much yucky food!" In response, Aidan started pointing feverishly at the picture of the caterpiller in the book and looking at Mommy in concern and crying! He was upset that the caterpillar had a tummy-ache! Mommy tried to turn the page and point out that the next day, the caterpiller was fine because he ate a nice green leaf, but Aidan just turned the page backwards to the "sick" page, and kept pointing and crying! Eventually, Mommy had to hide the book ("bye-bye, hungry caterpillar") and distract Aidan with an episode of the Wonder Pets to get him to stop thinking about that sad, sick, poor, hungry caterpillar! It was pretty amazing.

3) Aidan is making really silly faces right now. One of them is an exaggerated guffaw of relief that he does when he is really happy to see someone: when Mommy or Daddy come home or when we are playing a game of hide-and-seek and then show up, sometimes he will tilt his head back, open his mouth wide, close his eyes, with a giant smile of relief and exhiliaration that we are back! Another one is a scrunched up face that he does when he is being silly: he'll close his eyes, scrunch up his face, and toddle forward, cracking his eyes open every once in a while if he bumps into something or thinks he might bump into something. It is so silly! Mommy and Daddy aren't sure where the closed-eye silly faces come from, but we are amazed at how silly and funny Aidan can be.