Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful week, and are so grateful for friends and family, both near and far!


Tuesday, we drove up to the Catskills in the mid-afternoon, and spent the week cooking and playing with family. Uncle Gabe, Aunt Karen, and cousins Miya and Siena flew in from San Francisco for the holiday, and it was wonderful to see them and meet Siena for the first time! It was also great to see the many other family members who rotated through as well: Brooke, Gerald and Sebastian; Helen and Rudy Schmidt; Daddy's Uncle Bob and Elli; Peg, Wilma and Chris (who is now a freshman in college at American!); and, of course, Marguerite and Nadir.





Aidan had a blast playing with and being one of the "big kids": Miya and Sebastien are both 7 (Aidan is only 3), but Aidan was thrilled to hang out with them. And - unlike last year - he could really keep up with them this year! They had a ton of fun with all sorts of games: playing "time machine" in the closet in the green room upstairs, throwing balls from the second floor lanai/porch down to Alex on the ground; playing "monkey in the middle"; playing wiffle-ball(it's not a holiday for Daddy without playing wiffle ball or baseball at some point!); doing puzzles, stacking "Bill Ding" clowns; playing "boo!" games to make Siena and Kiana laugh; pretending to "save" each other from drowning in "water" (the wood floor) by dragging each other to the "land" (the stone floor); visiting the chickens, and more. They even had a real tea party! Miya wrote out invitations by hand and wrapped each with a ribbon; Aidan delivered the invitations; Grandpa helped them both cook cookies for the event; and we all (Mommy/Daddy/Gabe/Karen/Miya/Aidan) sipped tea and ate cookies together on Wednesday before dinner - a real, delicious, tea!




Kiana was amazed to be passed around so many adoring family members, but was thrilled to have another baby to star and grab at (yay, Siena!), and spent the time talking and talking and talking and talking up a storm! She is doing all sorts of new "words" right now, and is quite a chatterbox! She also managed to get regular good naps in, despite the hustle and bustle, and was remarkably cheery throughout.



Mommy and Daddy enjoyed hanging out with everyone, and made some significant contributions to the "food marathon", as Grandma described the week. Mama made two of her mom's (Nana's) fantastic apple pies and an experimental pumpkin cake (Frances's pumpkin coconut mochi, but with non-glutinous brown rice flour instead of Mochiko - it tasted like cake, not mochi, but it tasted great!) for Thanksgiving, and Daddy made *six loaves* of sausage bread on Friday, as well as sweet potato french fries on Saturday. Delicious! We also were thrilled to be spoiled by Grandma while we were there: she drove out with us to Kingston to babysit Kiana for 2.5 hours so that we could see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) in theater. It was SUCH a treat! :)




We drove home on Sunday morning, unpacked, and then got our Christmas tree! I am thrilled - I LOVE Christmas trees! Aidan helped decorate it, and kept saying "It's very exciting! It's very exciting!" all the while! We have two more weeks here, and then we fly to California for the Christmas holiday. It's going to be a whirlwind! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and are enjoying the holiday season!

Video: "Boo!"

"Mean King" / Rolly polly

This week was Aidan's last week of soccer school with Pro Soccer Kids for this semester. He has really loved it (and happily admits that, now!), and we've signed him up for more classes in the January. But we're going to miss it for the next couple of Mondays! He has learned all sorts of skills - from listening to the coach to dribbling the ball to doing giant kicks and drinking water *only* on water breaks, to kicking the ball through and past cones and a single defender - it's been a wonderful activity!


This weekend we all took it easy and relaxed, which was wonderful. We did another Family Clay Day downtown at The Downtown Community Center's Tribeca Clayworks, which Aidan asked for all week and was thrilled to go to. And Mommy and Daddy let each other catch up on some sleep. (Hooray!) We are looking forward to seeing family this week at Thanksgiving in the Catskills!



Here are some highlights from this week:

AIDAN:
- Aidan is rotating between wonderful normal Aidan and an alien form. Many times he is his usual wonderful self: tonight at dinner he said "Thank you, Mama, for making lunch!" at least three times; he spent at least 5 minutes running from the foyer to the couch and saying "boo!" because it made Kiana laugh; and he regularly joyfully includes us in his games at the playground. This side of him is wonderful!


- But then, sometimes the alien version pops out to test all limits - I guess that's true to form for an almost three-and-a-half year old: Instead of racing everywhere in high gear, he now regularly walks at about one inch per minute to get places; instead of answering when we call him, he is now often in his own little world and doesn't pay attention until the 10th (+) time we've called his name in various permutations (Aidan? 'scuse me? Aidan-Dayden? Aidan? Aidan? AI-dan?? AIDAN. AIDAN. AIDAN!); and the worst is that he now sometimes does *exactly* what I've asked him *not* to do (waking up Kiana or Daddy when they are sleeping are the worst) - just to see what will happen, as far as I can tell. This drives me crazy! It brings a couple of things to mind for me: First, it reminds me of a blog post that I saw from a mom of five in my neighborhood, where she said that "if I were God, I would've counted 1, 2... 4. Age three is one of those mysteries on a par with why babies aren't born potty trained"! (Ha!) And second, the name obliviousness reminds me of a Wonder Pets episode: In it, like in every other episode ever filmed, they use teamwork to save a baby animal. However, Ming Ming Duck tries to do it alone and has to be reminded by Linny the Guinea Pig to remember teamwork. Ming Ming, who is modeled on a 3 year old, responds: "Note to self: remember TEAMWORK!" (Ha!) I guess 3 year olds either have no attention span or just very selective hearing!! -- Right now, I'm looking for inspiration with this!


- Funny story (but with significant backstory):
* Last week while Miss Nana was gone at playschool, Aidan's babysitter Laurie filled in for her. While she was there, she told Aidan's class a story about Thanksgiving: she told them that there was a mean king in England who took people's money from them and that is why people went on big boats to get to America. (We think this sounds more like the Revolutionary War, but that's what he heard.)
* Then, this week, while we were on a train, Aidan held up his middle finger to me and told me that it needed a kiss because it had an "owie." Daddy told him to hold up *two* fingers (so we could compare them), and Aidan demanded to know why, until Daddy told him another story: he said that during a war, archers used their middle finger to pull back the string on the bow, and if they were captured they would have their finger cut off; so in battle, archers would show their middle fingers in victory to the other side to say that could still shoot. (Gory!)
* After hearing this combination of stories, Aidan told me on Thursday that there was a "mean king" who "ate people's fingers!" and that's why they went on "big boats" to America. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)


KIANA
- We have been trying to start introducing sign language to Kiana, which helped us a lot when Aidan was pre-verbal. However, it's been confusing! For the last couple of weeks, Kiana has been exploring her hands, and has been (probably accidentally) making the "milk" sign on a regular basis. We thin that it's most likely an accident, but we want to positively reinforce the association, so I've been dropping everything to nurse whenever I can when she does it.


- When Kiana wants to be entertained, she is hilarious! She slaps her thighs with her round little hands with glee (sometimes there are some "heh, heh, heh" laughs, too), and when Daddy comes home, all he has to do is look at her with a smile, and her whole body jigs with happiness!


- This week, Kiana tried pureed peas and sweet potatoes. She is *not* a fan of the green stuff, but liked the sweet potatoes a bit more (still not as wonderful as rice cereal from the first time, though.)


- On Thursday, while Aidan was taking a bath and Kiana was in the Bumbo , she stretched so far out of it while reaching for a toy that she ended up jumping right out of the seat! She fell right on the hard tile floor from about 3 inches up and was very sad about it. :( Poor baby! At least she recovered pretty quickly.


- This week we seem to have a whole new round of teething. She has started some new "words" ("Bbbbbbbbbb"), is making "biting" motions with her gums, and sings a sad "Yah, yah, yah, yah!" when it gets worse. :(

Food, glorious food! / Alone time

We had a big milestone this week: we gave Kiana food for the first time! She is over five months old, has been very interested for quite a while, and is good with pushing her tongue out. So, we decided that it was time! On Tuesday at dinner time, Mama fed her rice cereal (rice powder + breast milk) while Daddy held her and Aidan watched, and she loved it! She happily gummed it up and was very interested in the new eating adventure. So, on Thursday and Friday, we tried pureed green beans: however, she did *not* like these: she wrinkled up her face, pushed most of the green mush out with her tongue, and gave us some looks like "what are you trying to pull on me here?" We're having a lot of fun with this new adventure!








This week was also the first week where sibling rivalry began to show up. Aidan is still always wonderful with Kiana. However, after I picked him up from playschool on Tuesday, he started acting out with me, and ended up telling me that he sometimes wanted to be with Mommy and Daddy, without Kiana there. I'm really glad that he was able to articulate this, even though it's a tough issue to deal with. We had a serious conversation, and ended up agreeing that even though we don't like everyone in our family all of the time (we can all be "little punks" sometimes!), we do love them all the time. And when we get frustrated with each other, that's okay, we're allowed to feel upset, but what matters is *what we do with* that frustration. In this case, we agreed that Aidan could have time by himself if he wanted to, or we would try to do more time with Aidan and Mommy and/or Daddy. For the rest of the week, Aidan took baths without Kiana being in the tub, and on Saturday, Mama and Aidan went to the Inwood Farmer's Market together again. These were just little steps, but I hope that these kinds of things will help! It's hard to figure out how to have special alone time right now, but we're working on it.





In other news:
- Thursday was Veterans Day, and Daddy took the holiday off so I could get some work done. It was great! He took Kiana on a walk in the morning in between naps, dropped off and picked up Aidan from school, and made it possible for me to send in a revised book chapter before going out on Girl's Night Out with my friend Christa! I loved it. Aidan loved it, too! On Thursday night, after munching on M&Ms and cookies at Javits park, Aidan - for the first time in recorded history - choose Daddy's cheesy broccoli (over home made french fries and sausage patties) for dinner! Wow.
- This week, Aidan's teacher Nana was on vacation, and Aidan's babysitter, Laurie, filled in for her. Laurie called me up on Tuesday while they were at the playground to let me know that Aidan was showing a high level of marketing acumen: in the 40-50 degree weather, he was pretending to sell ice cream "in warm boxes" to his friends!
- Aidan has become fascinated with money this week: he found a wallet we got him ages ago (which he has never played with before), asked for money to fill it up with, and has started playing "banker": he sits in his blue chair next to his blue laundry basket, where he keeps his wallet and bowl of change (his "bank"), and tells us that he is giving us money "so you can buy cash"!
- Aidan continues to love using silly-talk, both at school and at home. He regularly makes up words for things and tell us seriously that "that is how you say [...]" (something normal). After playschool this week, Aidan told me laughingly that he and his friends are developing nicknames for each other: he calls his friend Rowan "Rowan Doh-dan" and he calls Aidan "Aidan Day-den".
- Kiana was a party animal this weekend: On Saturday, she was totally happy when we had Mary/Cira/Badu over for dinner, despite Aidan and Cira treating her like an over-sized doll (they were mostly gentle, but got pretty excited about putting firefighter hats on her head and kissing her!). And on Sunday, she was totally chill while we trained downtown to the Central Park Zoo, FAO Schwarz and Five Guys (despite really loud Maroon Five music). We thought it was kind of goofy that we were eating at FIVE Guys, located at FIFTH Avenue and FIFTY FIFTH Street, while listening to Maroon FIVE, and our customer number this time was 005 as well.