Flags and more

A few weeks ago, Mommy and Daddy bought a world map shower curtain that also has world flags at the bottom of it, and it has made bath time so much fun! The flags are right at eye-level for Aidan, and he can now identify a bunch of them: He points out the U.S. flag if you ask him where "Aidan's flag" (or "Mama's flag" or "Dada's flag") is, he also can pick out Greece, China, Canada, and Kiribati (which has a cool picture of an ocean with a sun and a bird above it), as well as his favorite flags: Kenya and Swaziland. He loves these last two because he thinks their shield images are guitars -he always finds them and says his word for guitar, "boo-wah! boo-wah!"! Daddy has fond memories of finding errors on the world map shower curtain that was in his bathroom growing up (his parents would pay him 10 cents for every error that he found), and so it is fun for Mommy and Daddy to continue in this tradition.

Here are some photos of our babysitter Laurie with Aidan. The last time she left, she asked for a kiss, and he pecked her on the check totally happily. She then informed Mommy that that was it: we were stuck with each other!

Aidan has been learning new animal sounds recently. This week, he learned that horses say "neigh", and now he usually will say that any animal that you ask him about says "neigh" as well. The default animal sound used to be a dog sound ("heh heh heh" heavy breathing or "oh ar ar ar" barking sounds), but it has definitely switched. He says it in a cute, sing-songy voice with his eyebrows up ("NAY-ee!"), which is even more cute when it is an incorrect response to a question (like, "what does a bear say?"). He sometimes will also tell you that monkeys say "oooh! ooh! ooh!" and he also knows that elepants make trumpeting noises (he purses his lips together and blows in a very realistic fashion). But the default right now is "NAY-ee!"

Aidan has also been working really hard on language. If you ask him to say a word, he will try to say it, and it turns into a fun game for us! He is getting really good at "s" sounds, and has been saying "BuS! BuS!" all week (he loves his toy bus). He also can say "ice", "us", "zoo" and "bahbow" (sometimes baseball and sometimes bubbles).

He has been particularly into "up/down" games recently too. He stands by the steps and stands up tall ("uh!") and then crouches down ("dow!") and repeats this, over and over and over again.

Here are some highlights from this week:

On Tuesday, Aidan continued to be Troy's (the playgroup director's) biggest fan: he now regularly stands millimeters away from Troy when he plays his guitar, and bopps his head, claps, and dances to the music. Troy is very patient, even though it must be difficult to play guitar without bumping into Aidan with him so close!

On Thursday, we had a playdate with Aidan's friend Sebastian, his sister Jasmyne, and their mom Vanessa. Aidan followed Jasmyne everywhere, wanted every toy that she picked up, and eventually decided that he wanted to hold her hand and walk everywhere with her. Jasmyne played very nicely with him, even though she didn't want to hold his hand, and they ended up both happily cuddling while watching The Wonderpets together.


On Sunday, we took another trip to the Bronx Zoo. It was a gorgeous, warm winter day (it got up to 52 degrees! so much better than 25!), and we had a wonderful time visiting the tigers, sea lions, penguins, and frogs.