The Start of Year Three

Yesterday was Aidan’s second birthday. He survived yet another year in spite of the overall bumbling attempts of his paternal parental unit at fatherhood. Aidan’s blog has had infrequent postings to it over the past year which is really too bad as Aidan has experienced quite a bit of growth and life over the past 12 months. It’s amazing really, watching it all happen – He’s like a real little person these days although starting to show the occasional tendency towards the highly reported and feared ‘terrible twos’.

Since it has been so long…

Hello, my name is Brad. I am Aidan’s father. It has been three months since my last confession, er, posting.

Since we last left our hero he has been spending his time better adapting to his sense of balance, running speed, language skills, and his ability to memorize and lip-sync the dialog from a number of Disney movies. My mother will be so proud of the latter… Not.

Aidan, when wanting milk will now go to the drawer containing his sippy cups, select one, go to the fridge, open it, take out the milk jug and bring them to the nearest parent to pour him a cup – then want to return the milk jug to the fridge.

We’ve been working on potty training for a few months now, starting a bit early I realize, but he’s getting no real pressure to become proficient yet. For the most part Aidan can pee on command when placed in front of a toilet. He’ll even, on occasion, request to go ‘potty’ – mostly it seems to be because he likes to wash his hands or enjoys flushing the toilet so really it’s just a means to a different ends, but that’s ok for now. Aidan is also able to recognize any restroom wherever we go – excitedly pointing in the direction of the restroom door or sign and saying ‘potty, potty, potty’, at which point we make a side trip for a visit.

Aidan is also stringing multiple words together more frequently such as ‘daddy, more milk/pasta/bread/whatever….. pleeeeeeessssssseeeeee’, of course the ‘please’ is only added after either looking at him expectantly or asking ‘More milk, what?’. He’ll say ‘I’m sorry when asked to do so after he’s done something he shouldn’t, or when he trips and falls down. I’m not really sure where the habit of saying it after he falls down came from, and he doesn’t really say it to anyone in particular, just says it, then picks himself up and moves on.

Over the past month or so he’s now grown tall enough to get enough leverage on the house doorknobs to be able to open them on his own. So he’s been taking great joy in being able to do that, and turn on/off the light switches. So occasionally in our house it’s like we have an indoor lighting/thunder show going on as the lights flash on and off with the occasional loud door shutting, opening and re-shutting.

Aidan enjoys playing and helping his little sister Ella; pointing out items which are Ella’s, bringing Ella’s bottle to her, bringing her blanket to her – all if she needs them or not. However Aidan doesn’t really like Ella touching him, it’s really funny to watch. Putting Ella next to Aidan on the floor, she’ll reach out to try and touch him and he’ll inch himself away just out of reach. I’ll move Ella closer, and Aidan will inch his way just out of reach again. I’ll pick Ella up and place her on Aidan’s back, and Aidan goes nuts, trying to get away as quickly as possible.

Aidan has also picked up on the concept on ‘come on’. He will come over, grab my hand and tell me ‘come on, come on…’ whenever he wants me to come some place. That was cute enough in itself, however about the same time he’s figured out how to incorporate this in with his problem solving capabilities. Aidan isn’t yet tall enough to see everything on the tops of the counters, in the cupboards or the stack of Disney DVDs which are kept out of reach (as Aidan has a tendency to destroy the cases as he tries to open them to get the discs out.) so he forms a plan. He’ll come over to me and grab my hand, ‘come one, come one’, directing me to the location he’s interested in. ‘Up, Up’ wanting to be lifted up. ‘Look, Look’ excitedly pointing in the direction of whatever it is he wants to have access to, followed often by the ever popular ‘OOooohhhhh’ as he leans over towards whatever the item is that he really wanted to look at or get close enough to in order to make a grab attempt. Some times this is all preceded, if I am sitting on the floor, by his grabbing my knee and trying to get me to stand up by lifting up on my knee saying ‘Daddy up’.

There have been other advances as well, such as the use of eating utensils. Aidan has started to feed himself: a spoon for his morning cereal, a fork at dinner. This advancement in civility seemed a fairly disappointing one to all those in attendance at his second birthday party, held a few days early for scheduling considerations, where young son Aidan was presented with his own slice of his birthday cake. All in attendance waited, then tried to prompt my genius son to dig into the cake with his bare hands, however Aidan calmly asked and waited for a fork. That’s my boy. Not that he still didn’t get the frosting on his hands, on his face and in his hair.