Amazing (lack of) Grace
Coming up on the end of my rookie season as a member of the Parent team, I’m still amazed at this entire child development thing. It really can’t be called anything other then a ‘Thing’ as how would one really explain it? Here you have this little mound of flesh and fairly elastic bone dropped off at your doorstep by this unusually large, white, long beaked bird and in a matter of a few short months, the mound is nearly walking and shows uncanny cognitive ability. How does that happen? It must be all the time he spends with his mother as the only parental influence I’ve had is playing with him by throwing Aidan up in the air and catching him until he starts to turn green. There goes my parent of the year award.

Having just passed the eleven month mark, young lord of the manner Aidan is becoming fairly adept at walking but still seems to prefer crawling from one place to another. I’m not really sure why. No, he’s not terribly stable while walking and does seem to have a tendency to start leaning forward ahead of his small, but trying to catch up feet, but still, he must notice that it’s much quicker (and easier on the knees) to walk from point A to point B. Although, being lower to the ground I’m sure it doesn’t hurt as much when he trips while crawling as it may falling while walking – so, left to his own devices, he still selects the four appendage drive over the two. When he does walk unassisted from me to the Mrs across a distance of around 10 feet or so, he does pretty well; Taking a few steps, stopping to steady himself, then takes a few more before stopping again, then, as he sees his target is close, suddenly turns in to the Road Runner, feet seemingly spinning around in circles at the hip as he makes a dashing charge towards Mommy – falling forward as he does as somehow, even though his feet seem to be moving at a speed rivaled only by Saturday morning cartoon characters, his upper body still seems to be faster – but he always makes it to the awaiting arms at the other end.

I’m also noticing that Aidan exhibits selective genius at times. Sure he knows how the buttons on the TV work, how to turn on his mobile in the middle of the night, and how to get his baby telephone to work by individually pressing the buttons on it to get it to make different noises, however – as sure as I am that he understands the word ‘No’ he simply chooses to play the baby card and act as if he doesn’t. For example: Take the Christmas tree – Aidan’s first – he will, at times, crawl over to it and attempt to touch the lights or ornaments and we’ll sternly tell him ‘No’ and he gets it, sitting down, turning away from the tree and moving somewhere else. At other times he’ll simply ignore the ‘No’ and continue on, reaching out and grabbing the tree, or the lights or ornaments, even as I go over and push his hand away sternly telling him ‘No’ – over and over again and even after the 20th time he still tries to reach out and grab the tree. Selective genius.