Superman

Aidan has come home from playschool recently telling us that he is "Superman"! This weekend, while we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa Ruane in Boston (Mama and Daddy also saw a Red Sox game), Aidan repeated that he was superman. So, Mama said:
"Aidan, can you fly?"
"No!" he said, "My [I] have hands! Birds fy [fly]. Birds: wings! My no wings. Jus[t] hands."
"Wow!" I said, "that's right! Birds have wings, so they can fly. But you don't have wings."
"Yes," said Aidan. "My [I] go in airplane: my [I] fly."
Mama was blown away! Aidan's logic skills are definitely increasing by leaps and bounds.


Since he has started playschool at RenVillage, Aidan has also started to be able to tell us about his emotions more. When he gets upset about something, either at playschool or with us, he will talk about it afterward in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice: he wants to discuss it, but he is able to move past his emotional state of the time. So, when Mama picks him up after playschool and asks him how his day was, a couple of times he has gone into detail about naptime:
"My [I] go sleep, all by myself at playschool. My c[r]y. Nana [his teacher, not his grandmother, confusingly enough] hold me. My go sleep!"
Or, when he has a fit at home, and finally calms down afterwards, he says something like:
"My [I] c[r]y. Eyes wet! [But] No c[r]y anymore, Mama! My [I'm] Happy!"
I always talk to him about his experience to let him know that I understand, and I'm sorry that he gets sad, but that I am proud of him for what he is doing (going to sleep by himself, calming down, etc.). It's kind of amazing to watch him work through it afterward, once he has some distance, but still wants to figure the experience out.


Last night, when I was putting Aidan to sleep, we talked about our day. Usually, I aks him if he had a good day, and he says "Yes!", but yesterday we had a long (3.5 hour) drive back from Boston, everybody got grumpy, and we even had a hard time at the park afterwards. So, I asked him if he had a good day, or a tough day.
"Tough, day!" he said.
"Yeah, we all had a tough day today." I said. "Did we drive a lot today?"
"Yes. Wanted go OUTside!"
"Yeah, I wanted to get out of the car too. We were tired of driving!" I confirmed. "But we made it home okay."
He thought a moment:
"My [I] FUStrated!" he said (I couldn't believe that he was telling me that he was frustrated!)
"You were frustrated?"
"Yes! My fustrated [with] my sneakers [his new shoes]. Wanted pull pants down. My [I] fustrated, just like girl fustrated [with] her shoes!" [There is a girl who is frustrated with tying her shoes in his "emotions" book (The Way I Feel): those pages says that it's hard and she wants to cry, and that she doesn't know whether to give it up or give it another try]
"Awe," I said, "You were frustrated with your shoes, just like the girl in the "emotions" book, huh? You wanted to take off your pants, huh?" [He had been sitting in the carseat for almost 4 hours and his pants probably made him uncomfortable.)
"Yes."
"Did you have any good things that you liked today?"
We moved on to talking about the rest of the day: he had dealt with his negative emotions, and was okay with dealing with other things, relaxing, and drifting off to sleep. He is an amazing kid & we love him!


[Thanks to Grandpa Ruane for forwarding on picts from his camera!]