You never cease to amaze us and surprise us. You're not even 3 years old, yet sometimes you have the patience, smarts, and skills of a kid/grown-up 10 times your age!
The other day, Mommy and you went to Aunt Sham's house. After you were done claiming you treasures from her jewelry box - a shiny ring! a necklace!- you sat down to do some puzzles that Mommy brought for you to play with on a whim.
You see, you have done puzzles many times on the iPad, but never really showed any interest in real terrestrial puzzles.
But, that day at Aunt Sham's you were patient, clever, and resilient enough to finish THREE puzzles by working diligently and calmly and crazily smartly for about an hour!
By the time I finally got to see you do this trick, you were so confident that you could do it, that you needed no help at all!
But you were super psyched!
"DADDY, I win the puzzle!!"
Ever since, you've been kinda "into" puzzles pretty hard!
Mommy sent me these pictures! You were so excited! You announced "I win the puzzle!"
Double Thumbs-up
And, later that night, we were all on the couch in the living room and I heard some scooching noises...then I realized that you were dragging the puzzle into the living room to show me that you had won this mega-big puzzle too! Amazing!
Now, it got a little dinged up in the travel and in some foot traffic. You noticed this and had to fix it immediately. It didn't matter that you noticed it was dinged up and had to fix it while you were literally on your way to the bathtub. You were not deterred by being a tad under-dressed.
And, you saw the whole thing through to completion!
As your vocabulary grows and your thought processes advance, you're becoming downright garrulous. And some of the things you say are priceless, hilarious, touching, sweet and so so smart.
Here's a few that I've managed to remember.
The other day you were holding Julia and just having a lovely time kissing on her.
You say: "Where Julia comes from?"
I say: "Julia came from Mommy's tummy, remember?"
You just crack up with laughter and laugh and laugh and laugh.
And say: "That SO WEIRD!"
That's gotta be my favorite.
Speaking of favorites, you're really into telling us your favorites lately.
You climbed up on the counter to ask for some challah bread.
"Bread please!"
"Aidan, that's called 'challah bread.'"
"Challah bread. Oh yes. Favorites! Food!"
You sat on the stairs looking at my guitar stand, which is orange.
You: "Red! Red! Red thing!"
Me: "That's orange..."
You: "Red...favorites color!"
Me: "What about yellow?"
You: "Oh yeah!!!!"
You were hanging out with your puppies and just blurted out: "Toby! Favorites dog!"
But I think you secretly love both dogs the same. They provide you with a lot of inspiration.
You know you're not supposed to feed the dogs people food. You also know you're not supposed to eat dog food. These rules get broken regularly.
While sitting at the table, you seemed to be eating your lunch. You picked up a piece of food. Maybe you knew you were tricking me, or maybe I'm just thick as a brick- but either way, you fooled me. You held the food in your hands and said, "Food for boys!"
I said, "Yes! That's food for boys! Go ahead."
And you threw it down to the dogs, who we routinely call "the boys."
But, you are learning the difference between boy and girl too. Mommy taught you well. "Mommy's girl. Julia's girl. Aidan boy."
We took you to a new bounce house called "Going Bonkers." After initial trepidation, you really got comfortable with the place and had SO much fun.
On the drive home you told us your thoughts: "Bounce house. That so fun! Good boy."
You tell us lots of things in the car, and you surprise us too. Two times last weekend on kinda-long car rides, without prompting you looked to Julia and kindly, reassuringly said "Almost there, Julia!" Good boy, indeed.
You also like to talk like a car. All of a sudden you started telling us that "car says 'beep beep honk honk'."
At home, one of your new favorite games is "hide and seek." But all of a sudden you surprised us: "Hide and Seek. You hide first!"
It's not that you're parroting our phrases and words anymore. You truly understand what the word 'first' means and have started using it everywhere. "Read this book first." Now, the rules of hide and seek and who does what when are still a little bit cloudy, but you're really understanding now, and it's really amazing.
Language is such a useful tool for imagination. You've been many different animals lately. When on top of my shoulders, you announced "I am baby elephant!" At the zoo, you climbed on a rock and said "I am lion!" And then...
Language is also such a useful tool for playing with friends and making new ones. After a weekend of play, you told us "Share Brady! Share Luke!"
While wrestling with Brady (good natured wrestling, of course) you said "That Fun!"
After playing at Luke's house you've been telling us "Luke screaming. Fun! Screaming Luke!" I wonder why!
And at the zoo, you asked to get down off my shoulders to see the warthogs. There was a much younger boy-on-a-leash next to you. Both of you stared at the warthogs. The boy started babbling excited to you, standard 17-month-old excited babbling stuff. Nonsense. To us any way.
You let him finish talking to him and replied "...oh, yes."
And that's the crux of it. Your language is showing your true self. You're growing and figuring stuff out. Sometimes it's a bit...rude. You tell us "Go away!" when you want to get into some sort of trouble that you know we'll object to.
But mostly, it's funny, informative and often sweet. For instance, yesterday you told your Mommy, "I need kisses."
Either way, it's enlightening. You found your voice a while ago, but it seems that lately it's becoming louder, clearer...and distinctly you!
They say you say the darndest things. I think that some of the material is 'darndest', but all of it is amazing..and really shines the light on the wonderment you see in the world.
You are a constant source of amazement, my beautiful boy! Yesterday evening for me, you had pulled yourself to standing on the book shelf in your room and proceeded to toss all of the books and DVDs over your shoulder like usual. But then, something amazing happened...you held on to one of the DVDs with both hands...which means you weren't holding on to anything. You stood there for what seemed like a really long time, although it was probably under a second. But, you've done as much in your crib...in fact you love to play the "let go fall down" game every night. But, last night, standing at your bookshelf, you started to lose your balance and play the "fall down" part of the game. But you corrected your balance. You shifted your torso weight forward, and balanced out, giving you like at least a half a second (or was it a mili-second) more of standing-up-all-by-yourself time.
This little amazing feat, albeit brief, was the longest you've stood up on your own two feet! And that little balancing move was even more incredible.
I had to call your mother immediately!
Then today, your Mom called me with an equally amazing tale of your pre-toddler triumphs!
One of your favorite books that you love to read, or have read to you, or play with is this funy pop-up activity book based on the old tune "The Wheels on the Bus"...you know..."round and round, up and down, swish swish swish." Well, you seem to know where that book is always placed in your shelves. You go and climb up to standing and grab the book at least once a day for your Mom to read to you.
Today, though, you were playing with a soft toy truck. You were playing with the wheels. And your Mommy said "wheels! Those are Wheels, like the wheels on the bus!" And she started singing the tune.
Then, guess what you did? You dropped the soft toy truck, did an about-face and high tailed it over to the book shelf where you immediately pulled up to standing and grabbed your "Wheels on the Bus" book!
I know you can kind of understand some things we say, and I know you understand things we do (like laugh or smile), but I didn't know that you could understand us THAT well and make major connections like that! Or maybe it was just a coincidence...who knows?
But, I know that you, sir, will continue amazing us all around town!
And speaking of amazing....remind me to tell you the story of how you amazingly pretty much saved your own life the other day!
Early on when we brought you home waaaay back in the first week of your life I said the following odd and frighteningly curious thing in my sleep, as reported by your Mom: "And now for the Top Ten things about being a parent: Number 1: The Dingos!"
Okay, for the record, I don't want to feed you to the dingos, and I actually can quite easily list the top ten things about being your parent for each and every day!
But, for symmetry's sake, I will list the top ten things about week 10 of your life, as seen by me. And there won't be a dingo in sight. But there will be a puppy or two.
# 10. Mother's Day!
Sunday was your mother's FIRST mother's day! How cool is that?
You and I printed out a this picture of you and her and put it in a very nice frame that a little birdy told me that she really liked. And it was true! She really liked it!We also got her something pretty cool: Remember that sand dollar necklace I was telling you about? Well, we took the necklace back to our jeweler friends Gabriel and Becky and had an amethyst, your birth stone placed in the sand dollar pendant!
(The cool thing is that, as with a natural sand dollar, there are 5 holes in it...spaces for five stones maybe? or three stones plus a garnet and an opal? Who knows!)
But, the necklace was finally ready yesterday, so we picked it up, and it looks very pretty!
Mother's Day was a lot of fun: we celebrated with your Mommy, your Mimi, your Nanneh and your Great Grandma! Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that we didn't think to take very many pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination. But, it was a lot of fun for you, I think: all the mommies and grandmommies and great grandmommies, plus Aunt Sham and Great Aunt Nessa, were fawning over you all day long!
#9. S-M-R-T!
You are getting to quite a little clever little boy. This week we've seen some major accomplishments in the world of grasping, as seen below! And you're kicking your little legs like crazy too! Your mommy was telling me that it's a sign of development that you're not just kicking both your legs at the same time anymore...you're starting to do the bicycle: kicking your legs alternatively.
This makes it quite difficult to be one of your socks, as evidenced below:
#8. Your smiling face!
Your smiles and laughs just keep getting better and better. #7. Mimicking!
To date you are getting very reliably good at sticking your tongue out at your mother and me when we stick our tongues out at you! This is called mimicking, and also a sign of a very smart 10 week old! (either that or you are part lizard!)
Good news too: by the pointiness and length of your tongue, I think you inherited my tongue! 7. Adorable yawns that lead to... 6. Adorable naps with Toby! 5. or Adorable Naps with Daddy!
4. or LONG night's sleep in your crib!
I know there are no pictures of it, but that's because we're not crazy enough to try to take pictures of you while you're sleeping in your crib! But, let's just say that week 10 was a very successful week for you sleeping in your big boy crib for extended periods of time.
For most of the week you actually slept upwards of 8 hours and only woke up once in the night for milk. Usually we'd feed you around 10 and you'd sleep til 5, or 5:30.
This is incredible! Please, please, please keep it up!
2. Long walks around the neighborhood
Part of being a big boy for you has been your acclimation to the car seat. At first, you hated that thing. But over the last couple of weeks, we've noted that you really have take a liking to it. You can sleep in that thing for long after we've gotten out of the car. And we don't need a bilbo to make it happen either!
(picture taken by your Godmother!)
But, the best part about you being able to sleep in the car seat besides no panic-ridden car rides and ability to eat a meal in a restaurant without having to take you out too often is this:
We can take long walks around the neighborhood again! We just plop you down in your car seat, plop your car seat in the stroller, saddle up the dogs and take long walks. We've done this twice now and you've seemed to enjoy them both! You smile at the sky and look at all the trees and eventually, normally by the time we take the right off our street, you zonk out and sleep the rest of the way.
We love walks, and so do Toby and Preston and, believe me, they need them...they were both getting a little soft around the middle! #1. Facing Outward!
We've really noticed one huge big mega change this week: you no longer prefer to be held over our shoulders: you want to see the world and be held facing outward! Sometimes you fall asleep in this position, but mostly, you seem to like to take it all in.
You're an attentive little guy, and as such, my shoulder isn't really the most interesting thing you like to see!
So you face outward, and we'll continue to look upward and forward to all the fun that week 11 will (and has already started) to bring!
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