Ah, Life on The Water

So, yes, I know, it’s been a while since I last wrote an entry for the Aidan/Ella blogs. Since last September you say, wow, really? That long? Well, what can I say other then it’s been a bit busy and while there’s been a fair amount to write about, not much of it has been all that entertaining – mostly sick kids, diapers, lack of sleep, more diapers, a two year old who is coming into his own as a two year old and all that goes with it, and a one year old who, well, is a one year old.

Rather then simply recount the various goings on and how life at the Stutz estate has been going, the following may sum it all up fairly nicely:

Dateline: Pleasant Harbor, WA, Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Initially the idea for our holiday weekend was to start out Friday morning and head out on our 1990 Sea Ray Sundancer 350, our little slice of the maritime family fun. We really had no departure plan and as such our departure plan moved to Saturday, which was fine as our little princess Ella had just thrown up all over her crib shortly before 10pm Thursday night.

This is how our story begins; Chunks of curdled baby vomit.

And it only got better.

As Princess Ella had shown she wasn’t the epitome of health we decided to move our departure to Saturday - assuming that Ella was feeling well enough to go. For the rest of Friday Ella seemed to do OK, or at least wasn’t providing cause for each item she touched to require laundry service.

Friday night my fine bride and I determine that, while Ella has been doing fine, if she’s going to be sick, she can be just as sick on the boat as she could be here at home and at least we’d be able to be on the boat for the weekend.

Friday night also brought us a new issue. Young Master Aidan , approximately forty-five minutes after being put to bed, started crying. Now this isn’t all that an unusual occurrence. Aidan will, at times, decide that he’s not ready to go to sleep yet and will complain until he gets tired and puts himself back to bed and to sleep. Upon checking on Aidan on my way to bed, I opened his door and started into his room when a wafting of a less then pleasant odor made it’s way past the dual oxygen input / output orifices which make up my fairly ample nasal facial feature.

Aidan had thrown up in bed.

Not just in his bed, but all over his bed.
Not only all over his bed, but all over his ‘bankies’ and his ‘bunny-bear’ stuffed animal, his pajamas and anything else that was within a 4 foot radius of his mouth. Then he’d fallen back asleep. Normally you don’t get this kind of experience until college – Aidan, it seems, decided to be a bit ahead of the curve.

So, my tired bride and I removed Aidan from his bed, stripped the bed, Aidan, the pillows, and everything else that had experienced the wrath of Aidan’s power vomiting and began rinsing off all the larger pieces and placed the items into the washing machine, cleaned up Aidan putting him in a new set of pajamas, and putting him back to sleep.

“We’ll see how he’s feeling in the morning.” we told ourselves. Besides, we had reservations at Pleasant Harbor and it was a three day weekend.

Saturday morning started with Aidan again rejecting his morning nourishment intake. “Well, Ella (his younger sister) got over this thing fairly quickly” we told ourselves. “ and even if he doesn’t we could either be miserable here at the house, or we could be miserable on the boat.”

Here, I’ll take pause to pass a long a note of advice to any newer parents who have not yet encountered this type of decision:

• Rethink the decision.
• More then once if necessary.
• Rethink your decision until you finally realize that it will simply be better to stay home with your ailing child.
• Life will be much easier for you and your ailing child once you've come to that realization.

It’s so easy to rationalize a poor decision when it comes to boating and a three day weekend.

On the way to the marina, about a 30 minute drive from Redmond to the Elliott Bay Marina in Seattle, we had to pull over before we even hit the half way point as Aidan was complaining that his stomach wasn’t feeling well. We didn’t make it to a full stop before Aidan again purged his increasingly depleted nutritional content. So off went his no longer clean outfit, and on went a new outfit as I attempted to clean up his car seat by using an available towel and rain water from a near by parking lot puddle, grit and all.

“Well, he must be getting close to done.” we, and at this point when I way ‘we’ I’m really meaning ‘I’ as my bride was beginning to question our earlier decision that we could be just as miserable on the boat. She is the more intelligent one of the two of us. We pressed on.

Pulling into the parking lot of the marina, Aidan again required a new change of clothes.

After cleaning Aidan up yet again, getting him and the two sets of clothes to the washroom to clean off the larger chunks and trying to get rid of the foul odor, getting Ella squared away, packing all the gear into two dock carts, and getting all of it and everyone on the boat, we were off for our fun filled weekend on the water.

Insert foreboding sounding music here.

The two and a half hour trip from Elliott Bay Marina to Pleasant Harbor was fairly uneventful. It’s easy when your mostly sick child is already worn out and sleeps the entire way and the other pretty much just is happy being up and looking around – until it’s time for her late morning nap and she’s just not into the idea.

Arriving at our destination we got situated - just as it started to sprinkle. Aidan, who continued to insist he wanted juice (crystal light lemonade flavor drink stuff), but would then purge it 20 minutes later, decided that he needed to, as I was holding him, purge himself all over my clean sweatshirt. It was time for laundry as we’d already gone through nearly a full weekends worth of kid clothes on the first day.

It started to sprinkle a little harder.

By the end of day one we’d realized that we’d made the wrong family fun time on the water over an extended holiday weekend decision. Being miserable on the boat could certainly be worse then being miserable back at home. And the weather wasn’t helping. By Sunday Ella seemed to be feeling much more like herself. Aidan had, for the most part, stopped returning each slug of juice he’d taken and there wasn’t much to do other then watch the weather. It would rain every once and a while, but it was Sunday, and Sunday was supposed to be a much better day then Saturday, weather wise that is.

It wasn’t.

Sunday was pretty much a carbon copy of Saturday, with the only difference being that there was the oh-so-brief sun break here and there between showers and that there was the hold out of hope that Monday was actually going to be nice. It didn’t help the outlook when my cousin’s family, with whom we were spending this glorious weekend moored in front of, decided to pack it up and head home Sunday afternoon as their daughter was having her own issues and they determined it best to depart early.

Seeing as how there had been such a purging of the stomach over the past 24 hours, It made sense that Aidan and I venture forth to take a shower at the marina provided shower facilities. The facilities are provided on what can only be described as a converted houseboat tied to the dock, the back room of which makes for a large bathroom with shower and ample space for elbow room. Aidan has seemingly always liked the shower so this, it would seem, would be a quick win to get Aidan into an environment he enjoys and I get to become clean. We’ve also been working on potty training Aidan and are elated when he’s willing or offering to go potty. Aidan was willing to use the toilet in the shower room so I dropped his pants, removed his diaper and waited while he appeared to putting a fair amount of effort into his task at hand. Something didn’t seem quite right. I looked down and there was nothing but liquid, brown goo all over his pants, all over the floor, and to some extent, all over me. Oh, joy.

I spent the next 15 minutes rinsing off all the clothing items which needed it, more or less mopped the bathroom floor with the available paper towels and in general tried to remove all traces of the explosion which took place a few minutes earlier. That being completed, it was off to the shower! Aidan did not want to take a shower. He wanted nothing to do with it. Given the recent events however, there was no other choice for Aidan, he needed a cleaning – so to cleaning we went, wailing, screaming, crying all the way; before, during and after. Chalk up yet another ‘oh, isn’t it great to be a parent’ experience. I may need to get an additional chalk board and chalk given all these experiences. Having completed this wonderful task, Aidan ended up wearing the towel back to the boat which was fine - it helped absorb the rain on the walk back.

By Monday Aidan seemed to be feeling better and, of course, it was time to head home. The weather started to clear up and was actually sunny by the time we arrived back at Elliott Bay Marina in time to wash down the boat, pack all the gear and kids back to the car and head home. Two sick kids, a rainy weekend and $500 worth of fuel later we were back where we started and the vomit and rain filled holiday weekend was over.

So, that pretty much sums up the past 6 months or more. Sick kids, and bad weather. There were some bright spots in there, such as moving and going to Hawaii but those will be saved for later, makeup posts.

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.

Conjunction Junction, What's your function?
The afternoon was giving way to the twilight of early evening. The 30th anniversary edition of the School House Rock DVD played in the background, subconsciously educating the two small children half paying attention to the video as it played on. I sat next to my desk browsing the latest news stories via the wonder that is the Internet when there was a sudden thud behind me causing me to pause and instantly turn around to see what the cause was.

It's what I do. My name is Brad. I'm a dad.


Fortunately it was only a 1.5 year old (going on 15) toddler/adult wanna be, pulling yet another book off the imitation maple laminate bookshelf towering 4 feet above his blond head and letting it crash to the floor before starting to reach for another.

'Aidan,' I spoke towards the blond, oompa loompa sized, on his way to being known as 'Aidan, formally known as Son' figure that stood before me providing a head down, 'I know what I did but I'm going to do it again' look.

'Please do not pull books or anything else off the shelves' I continued. Aidan gazed back at me, smiled, nodded, and then reached for another oversized, coffee table book as I bounded out of my desk chair and took firm hold of his arm, again explaining that books are to remain on the book shelf.


I quickly reached behind me and grabbed my, as would be stated on 'Blue's Clues' my handy, dandy (guide to being a parent) notebook for consultation.

Use calm, firm voice. Check.
Move down to Childs level so as to not intimidate by size. Check
Explain clearly the desired actions. Check.

I read over the list again and validated my suspicions.. there was no listing for 'expect child to completely ignore you and do the undesired action immediately after being told not to'. Must have been a omission at time of print.

I carefully explained to the now semi-frustrated for not being allowed to pull all books off the bookshelf Aidan that he was not to pull the books down and reminded him that, in the immortal words of Bill Cosby, I helped bring him into this world, I can certainly help him out, and that he might consider putting the books pulled down and now littering the floor below back on the book shelf, he might remain a member of the family.

The books were quickly replaced to their original positions.

Followed immediately by a series of Disney video tape cases being removed from another shelf, opened and tapes being pulled out, dropped and scattered around the floor at Aidan's feet.

It's fairly amazing that young Mini-Me moves as fast as he does. Watching him decide that he wanted to be chased and head down the hallway at a full toddler sprint; arms a flailing, legs seemingly detached from the hips, feet thudding down on the floor with each step; I wondered how Aidan actually moves so quickly when all the functioning body parts don't really seem to be in concert with each other. What keeps him from continually falling on his face? How is it that one so seemingly uncoordinated is able to move so fast (and with such apparent glee)?

Summer Vacation
This years summer boating vacation started off with a bang – three out of four family members having colds, the water conditions being horrible for crossing the straight and dense fog – Aidan didn’t seem to care, he seemed to be treating it as if the entire ordeal was one long theme park ride, walking/bouncing around down below, climbing up on the main stateroom bed and flopping around on the pillows for each plunging nose dive the boat took as it lurched from one five foot wave to the next. He thought it was all great fun. Ella, well she slept through all the excitement.

Over all, the vacation was a success. Nobody was inured, Aidan’s parents didn’t throw the other overboard, and Aidan came back with a ‘Tiva Tan’ showing that he did spend a fair amount of time out in the sunshine walking around the docs in his little toddler Tiva’s.

Poor little Aidan though, he so badly wanted to play with all the older kids on the docks – all running around with their shrimp nets, catching a variety of sea creatures that dared to venture too close to the dock. Aidan, wearing his water skiing type life jacket, with I attached to the ‘handle’ strap behind the neck, would move as quickly as possible trying to keep up with the other kids – with I continually hunched over, keeping hold of the life jacket strap trying to keep up with Aidan. One of our fellow boaters was kind enough to donate a toddler sized shrimp net which floated when dropped – and it was dropped a lot so this feature was certainly well used. Aidan thought it great fun to dip the net into the water, play with it for a while, drop it in the water, then look at me and say ‘help’…. After about the 15th time, I finally caught on.

Aidan also visited a number of pools available to marina guests. Hopefully Aidan learns soon that he can not breath under water and that, as he can’t swim yet, walking to deeper water is not a good idea. Aidan didn’t seem to mind swallowing half the pool water as he soon found that he could navigate around the edge of the pool, hanging on to the poolside and seemed irritated each time I attempted to assist him when he was looking like he was starting to lose his grip on the side of the pool – apparently he was well in control of the situation and I was only getting in the way. I guess I should start to get used to that.


Aidan is picking up words left and right these days, I’ve lost count as to how many he actually seems to have a near command and understanding of. He’s added Car, Airplane, Notebook, Ear, Nose, Eye, Shirt, Pants, Boat, Fish, Net, Juice, Ta (Australian used for ‘thank you’ and Thank You kept coming out as Ga-Ga and didn’t seem to have any chance of migrating to the more understood pronunciation. However, after chatting with an Australian staff member at Roche Harbor, Aidan picked up on ‘Ta’ immediately.

Twas the night before, well, the next morning...
... and all through the house, not a creature was stirring - except for Aidan.

I'm not sure what the deal is, Aidan continues to wake up at least once in the middle of the night, generally around 1:30am these days. He'll wake up, take his Aidan sized, white blanket with satin trim and exit his room, turning to shut the door behind him, and toddle down to his sleepless parents room. He's not really awake, but not really asleep either. It doesn't normally take much more then picking him up, carting him back to his room and placing him back on his bed and he's nearly fast asleep. The key word being 'nearly'. He will lay there, not moving, breathing as if he's asleep, but the minute I try to exit the room, WHAM! there it is, the half hearted effort at a whine - the indication that he's not asleep, and I'm not going to be able to leave until he is. Yippie.

This morning was a slight turn on the normal routine however. Aidan, in his setting out on his nightly excursion, didn't quite get his feet on the floor as gracefully as is his norm. Ma in her 'kerchief heard the thud milliseconds before I in my cap leapt up before I had actually woken up - landing nearly flat on the floor myself while the 'I've fallen and I can't get up' cry continued to emanate from Master Aidan's end of the hallway. Still half asleep, my hands and feet seemingly emulating that of the Roadrunner cartoon character, spinning round and round until I was actually upright and moving forward towards the cry - my progress only momentarily interrupted as I became one with our partially closed bedroom door.

Recovering, opening the partially ajar door the full extent, I continued down the hallway like a bumpercar with a drunken teenager behind the wheel, bouncing off one wall, then the opposite railing until I arrived at Aidan's room where, it being too dark to see and not wanting to turn on the light, I resumed my previously unintentional position on all fours and made my way towards the tired cries of one who had fallen out of bed. There was Aidan, sprawled out on the floor, face first and none too happy about it.

I picked him up, sort of, however in my still not quite fully awake state and it being dark, I managed to mishandle my young offspring and he returned the few inches to the floor with a minor thud. That certainly didn't seem to help the situation.

I did recover, and was able to successfully get Aidan off the floor, console him until he stopped crying, get him back into his bed, wait for the tell tail sign of constant breathing and begin heading out of the room. Then there it was. The floor creaked as I walked over it, followed immediately by the well known, half asleep whimper from the bed. At least by this time I was fully awake. Lucky me.

New Shoes, Part Deux.

As Aidan has continues to grow, his feet have certainly kept up making his first pair of $50 shoes too small. This, of course, meant that his ever grateful for the parenting experience father was about to shell out yet another huge sum for stitched material, which, if laid out, wouldn’t cover a squirrel. Off to our favorite, you’ll be a bad parent if you don’t shop here for your children’s shoes, store sporting the ‘Nordy’ mascot in search of a new pair of tennis shoes. I had done my homework and found that the main thing to look for this go round was flexibility in the shoe. Armed with this knowledge off Mini-Me and I went.

Entering the shoe land of wee, the two of us were immediately approached by a sales girl/lady/woman all of 19 years old who must be participating in the summer employment program. She asked what we were looking for and I explained that we were in need of new shoes and, using the only card I had, explained that they must provide great flexibility. She said they all had good flexibility. So much for my homework. Next on the list was what kind of securing mechanism the shoes should have. I immediately expressed that the shoes should have no Velcro – as Aidan had already figured out this easy method of securing his Tivas to his feet and how to immediately take them off. So regular old laces were the shoe type of choice for me and my young son. It amazed me that of the what appeared to be 500 different types of shoes available, my proclamation of the laces only criteria seemed to limit our choices down to only four pairs.

After exercising my extensive knowledge of children’s shoes by testing the flexibility of each, I decided on a pair which was dark blue in color – so as not to show so much dirt (a brilliant move on my part I thought) and off our little 19 year old pixie sales girl went to the back room to get the shoes in the appropriate size.

Upon returning with three boxes of shoes under her arm, she explained that the pair we had selected were no longer available in the size needed, so we were back to step 1, selecting a shoe from our list of now only three options. One an ugly brown and two white. We went with one of the white pairs, produced by Strideright. A company, I’m told, that only makes children’s shoes - so how could that be a bad choice? Much to my shock and pleasant surprise, these new, larger shoes where less expensive then the first pair! It must have been a pricing mistake! That couldn’t actually be the case – more material for less cost?! Be still my foolish, early stages of parent hood, wallet! We wrapped up our transaction and stayed under the $40/pair mark – still outrageous for such a small set of shoes but, if this trend continues, his first pair of school shoes should be nearly free.

Aidan and I left with Aidan wearing his new shoes, his old ones in the box and a olive green Nordstrom Shoes balloon. So far he seems to like them and, after getting used to the slightly longer length causing some initial trip-ups, seems to be adjusting well and hasn’t lost any of his blazing, I’m going to run down the mall corridor and see if you can catch me speed.

We’re now in the 17th month ...
...and it has been a while since the last Aidan blog entry. It must be about time for a new one. The problem is, as I’ve noted before, there just are not that many ‘new’ things going on in the life of Aidan. He’s just growing up – he hasn’t found a job yet, probably due to those silly child labor laws (no wonder Kathy Lee had to tap the off-shore labor pool) – but growing up none the less.

Aidan has taken a keen interest water. Not that he hadn’t shown a liking for it in terms of his nightly bath, but the entire family took a trip down to the Kirkland shores of Lake Washington on a recent sunny, warm afternoon and young tadpole Aidan spent nearly an hour just playing in the water. Not really figuring that Aidan would really go in any deeper then the cuffs of his rolled up over his knees pant legs we didn’t bring any shorts or change of clothes with us – big mistake. Within the first 10 minutes, Aidan had already wanted to wander further out into the deeper water, sat down in the water, tripped and caught himself, face first, on the sandy shore’s water line. He was very wet and his no longer ready for prime time diaper had sucked up about half of the lakes available water causing it to bulge to the point of looking like it’s seems would split and causing his pants to continually be forced in to something akin to that sported by many plumbers.

Aidan enjoyed the water, dragging his old dad further out into the lake until my shorts were starting to get wet and, as much as Aidan would stretch further out, he was restrained by my tight grasp on his hand and wrist. Then we discovered ducks.

Ducks, of course, were even further out into the water and Aidan wanted to get an up close and personal introduction which, of course, he could not as no-fun dad didn’t want to get any wetter then I already was. After Aidan expressed his displeasure at my decision we proceeded to chase the ducks which had come in a bit closer to shore. Aidan never did catch one.

When it was time to return home, Aidan loudly expressed his displeasure at being removed from the water – and continued to express this opinion all the way back to the truck where he was stripped down and placed, naked (again we had no alternate set of clothes for him) in his car seat, sitting on his t-shirt (which I had removed so as to not have it totally drenched). Aidan continued his discourse of displeasure all the way home. What a delight.

This month’s word usage:
Water, Please (thank you seems to come out Ga-Ga for some reason, but he is at least consistant in using it), Cracker, Teva, Shoes, Pants, Up, Down, Ball, Doggie, Daddy (replacing Da-Da), Pappa, Tree, Bush, Teeth, Eye, Car, Go, Ella, Momma, No, Hot, Light, Pee-Pee, Bath, and, of course, Barney.

Cheese with that whine?
As we humans have apparently been able to map the genetic code which makes up our species, you would think the next logical step would be to alter the whine gene - that which suddenly kicks in to high gear at about the 15 month mark of life. Aidan has discovered this gene exists, has harnessed it, trained it and put it to work with the tenacity of one having made the move to the dark side of the Force. He's like the official toddler version of Sybil; All bitter beer faced and teary eyed one second, a happy, laughing, everything is right with the world just a few milliseconds later. It's really an amazing transformation to watch, but if you blink you'll miss it.

Sure he's learning more each day, expanding his vocabulary past the word 'No' to include Paul, Water, Ella, baby, mo (which can be 'moore' or 'milk', sometimes both at the same time), down and Barney - but it's all overshadowed by the constant whining over anything not to his exacting standards. Here a whine, there a whine, everywhere a whine, whine.

Then there is the return of the 'I'm not sure if I'm happy or upset, so I'm going to use the happiwine' that which comes across as a confused attempt at either being happy or wanting to complain that your father won't let you run with scissors through a field of broken glass; or was it that he wouldn't let you mangle the dog in an attempt to play with something your own size... it's so difficult to choose, or tell the difference.

Wait until he's discovered that his father accidently deleted all the pictures that went with his blog - then I'm sure there will be some real whining.

Eww, Girl Germs ...
Aidan's been quite receptive of his new little sister Ella since she arrived on his doorstep, left, of course by a large white stork with a little blue hat resembling that of the Maytag repair man. At least that's the story I'm sticking to for now. Aidan, being the kind, gentle, loving brother he is has already learned to kiss his new younger sibling. He will come up to her as she's being held by anyone, lean over, pucker his lips up and get just close enough to her to make a smacking, 'Mmmmma' like noise. I can't blame him for not making any real contact; at his age I'm sure I didn't want to get cooties either.

Here a stone, There a stone, everywhere a milestone.

I’ve found that the life changing (or should that be transforming) events that seemed to come on a near daily basis in the first few months of Aidan’s life, are more difficult to come by these days. Sure, they still exist, but in the form of minor modifications rather then the ‘one giant leap for baby kind’ type. Back in the day, it was cute and funny when Aidan would sneeze – now it is just annoying when, as I am holding him, he does it right in my face (I am sure it is on purpose, but I cannot yet prove it).

Before, Aidan’s first steps were a monumental occasion! Currently there is no stopping him. The only real change in this area is speed. Each week Aidan seems to gain more coordination allowing him to first run, and then run increasingly faster. Sure, his arms and hands are still flailing away at his side, which is fun to watch, but he’s too young to understand if I teased him about it. That will have to wait for next year. On the upside – he’s still wearing his $50 ‘let’s gouge the new parents for as much as we can on baby’s first solid footwear’ shoes. But lest I forget, the $50 did include a ‘free’ Nordy and a Polaroid – worth the Grant I’m sure.

Aidan did have his first haircut this past weekend, which is itself a milestone. He is now no longer looking like the love child being raised by a hippy commune, but more like a well-groomed little boy. He sat in the barber chair with his mother, not making a discontented sound the entire time. What a fine, cooperative little hippy commune looking 15 month old he was. And there I was, the ‘I can’t believe he’s doing that – he must be a new father’ guy, capturing the entire event on video – not missing a snip of the scissors or a falling lock of hair (much of which was saved, sealed in an envelop for prosperity – maybe I’ll have some of it bronzed).

Aidan also has his second wave of teeth coming in, six, possibly eight (depending on viewing angle and available lighting) more poking through. Just what he needs for those unannounced, sneak attack, ‘I’m going to spin around and bite daddy’s face for fun’ moments.

Other mini milestones of note:
• Moving from ‘onesies’ outfits to mini polo shirts and pants
• Adding Teva’s to his footwear arsenal
• Eating more real ‘people’ food, less Gerber.
• Sucking liquid through a straw
• Adding more words to his vocabulary
• Actual understanding when his parents talk to him and taking direction such as (go get your hat)

In the immortal words of Golden Earring…

It’s 3am.... actually, to be more accurate it’s 3:30am that has me so puzzled. What is it about 3:30am? Nearly every night for a week our most recent household addition has been waking up and crying like I just told him that, after watching ‘Supersize Me’, we’re never going to McDonalds again. And it’s always at 3:30am. To be fair, Aidan did start out at 3am, but has progressed to the point where it’s between 3:25a and 3:30a every night. What is it about that time of the morning that awakens the sleeping giant? I’d like to know.

Is he worrying about his college education fund? No point in worrying about that, he’d be better off worrying about how he’s going to get a scholarship as, by the time he’s old enough to go to college, I’ll have long since spent his college fund on fuel for summer boating trips.

Is he suddenly distraught with the earlier then anticipated ousting of the NCAA tourney by the number 1 seeded Washington Huskies? Well, unless he gets that scholarship, no need to worry about a school he’ll be looking at from the outside in.

Maybe he’s concerned about his reputation at the local Mall play land as his hair is looking like a mop and his mother doesn’t want to cut it quite yet.

Maybe he startles himself awake trying to figure out why his parents force him to sleep in what ammounts to a giant sock with a zipper up the front.

I'm not sure why Aidan wakes up at this less then desireable hour but I’m determined to get to the bottom of this issue… which could be the issue itself. His diaper is generally awfully full at this time of the morning. Maybe we should be feeding him more steak and fewer martinis at dinner time.

Milestone: An important event or turning point.

Aidan’s has experienced a number of milestones since the last January blog entry. He now walks with ease, even over uneven terrain – although he does have the occasional trip up which places him face down in the grass or dirt, but for the most part he’s lifting his feet up, navigating obstacles and is generally ready to start training for the Olympics. This mile stone was reached one evening, just matter of factly. Sure Aidan had been taking steps for nearly a month and a half before this time, but Aidan apparently decided that it was time to just become an upright human. He stood himself up, steadied himself, then followed me around the kitchen island and back to the front room again. From that point on there has been no turning back. It was so fun to watch for the first week or so as he would walk around, sometimes less steady then others, watching him recover from a near loss of balance, walking around with his hands up in the air like a circus performer on the high wire. He didn’t quite make it to the fully walking point before his first birthday like I was hoping he would, but hey, I’ll take a week or so after his birthday, that’s close enough for this proud parent. And he’s making use of the $50 shoes before he out grew them – that’s something of a relief.

Aye, Carumba!

We’ve also discovered that Aidan has a liking for Mexican food. We’ll go out to our favorite Mexican restaurant and I’ll order my usual combination plate number 24. I’m not really sure why I order the combination plate each time – it comes with refried beans and rice, neither of which I’m a big fan of, but it’s easier to say ‘I’ll take a number 24 with beef’ then it is to explain to the waiter that what I really want is two tacos and an enchilada. However, Aidan apparently likes the refried beans and will eat nearly the entire portion which is brought along with my #24 platter. He can’t seem to get enough of the stuff. He’ll crane his neck and head forward while sitting I his restaurant provided high chair, mouth gaping open with his lips doing that cute, protruding outward, baby bird like thing that they do wanting yet another bite of the brown, mushy protein goo. Yum yum. As a side note, he also seems to like the taste of margarita found on the straw I’ll give him out of my glass. Yup, that’s my boy!

Language

Another milestone, or maybe not a milestone but a work in progress which has made progress in the past couple of months is that of communication. I always used to wonder how these new parents all around me knew what their infant son or daughter was saying when some incomprehensible utterance came pouring out of their tiny lungs. Now I know. They make an assumption based on situation. For example, Aidan will use the sound ‘Daa’ to either mean Dad, Dog or Down. You really can’t tell the difference, if there is one, between the three, it all depends on if there is a dog near by, if I’m the only one in the room and Aidan is already on the floor, or if I’m carrying him and he’s simply tired of my mindless dribble and wants down. He his however developing a nearly understandable series of words: (na-naa) Banana, Momma, Da-Da (again could be dog, depends on who’s closer), Maa (More/Milk - again depends on the situation), Craa (Cracker) and of course the one word that is very clear, and sometimes loud, ‘No!’. There are others, I think, which must mean something as Aidan seems very insistant and makes the same exact sound over and over again – I just am not bright enough to figure out what it is that he’s saying. He’ll eventually get fed up with trying to make me understand and moves on to something more entertaining.

Aidan has also started to pick up some basic hand signals –waving bye-bye, waving bye-bye at a 90 degree angle and thus looking like he’s milking a cow for ‘milk’, touching his two hand’s fingertips together for ‘more’. It does make life a little easier with the onset of communication. Limited as it may be, it’s a start.

Back in the saddle again...

I know I had decided to only blog my new fatherhood for the initial year but there always seems to be some new event that takes place or some new milestone which has been reached and should be documented. As such, I’ve decided to add the occasional blog entry if for no other reason then to traumatize my fine young son with during his teenage years.

Here it is, nearly the end of the month of March. The weather didn’t really seem to come in roaring like a lion, and neither did Aidan. March could only be classified as the month of illness at the Stutz compound. Poor Aidan was down the flu for nearly two weeks. The first couple of days our normally happy, energetic, smiley boy was just a lump of flesh sitting on the couch slipping in and out of a fitful state of sleep with one eye while the other tried to keep focus on the television. Television eye generally gave in and joined sleep eye for an hour here, an hour there until both eyes would open half way, Aidan would look around, barely moving his head, then back off to sleep he would go.

Once our poor, little sick offspring seemed to be on the road to recovery, then came the flushing of toxins. I had no idea that any single person, let alone one which was 1/6th scale, could expel so much fluid out of every orifice possible. The eyes were running, the nose was running, there was nothing solid being contained in his stage 5 pampers at all. For nearly a week and a half we tried to simply replenish his fluids as fast as he would expend them. Oh, the joys of parenting.

I’m beginning to understand (not that i wasn't already suspecting this was the case, but I'm more firm in my conviction at this point) why all other parents, be they recent or seasoned veterans, are always asking the newly nuptialed ‘When are you going to have kids?’ It’s not because they have a genuine interest in your starting a family to either carry on the family name or cost you thousands of dollars on a white gown which will be worn for, at most, a few hours – it’s because all those other parents either want you to have to go through and experience the same misery they did. They had to go through all the tears, all the sleepless nights, all the thousands of diapers, all of the fluids being shot out every escape hatch like an erupting volcano or Old Faithful when they’ve passed their pressure limits.

Yes, it’s month 14 and we’re having a ball.

Last Post
When I started writing this blog I thought it would be a fun and interesting thing to do - what did I know, I was still awash in new parenthood bliss. I told myself that I would continue posting until Aidan was one year old - documenting along the way my experiences in dealing with being a new dad, with coping with sleepless nights and the different events that happened along the way.

It has certainly been an eventful first year; one starting out with Aidan's arrival and his having to be brought to life after being born as he wasn't breathing and blue, to tonight where Anya just put him to bed for his last night as a pre one year old. When he wakes up in the morning it will be past the time he was born and he will officially be a one year old. It's been a long road this first year, yet it seems to have gone by in just the blink of an eye. From the tiny newborn who wouldn’t open his eyes to the toddler who rarely closes his mouth - and all the many diapers and milestones in between.

It's been a fun, entertaining, educational, sleepless, many times frustrating but overall very rewarding experience which I thank Aidan for. It's been a great 12 month ride and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

New Shoes
We decided that Aidan was starting to out grow his baby slippers which had started to show quite a bit of wear and tear in addition to starting to be a little too small. My fine wife decided to go out and find him some new shoes, real shoes for his now walking around feet.

Someone $#%@#$^%^ explain to me how tiny infant/toddler shoes can cost more then the cross training/gym shoes I buy for myself??? How does that happen? Sure, little Aidan was provided with his own personal 'nordy' stuffed animal and provided with a picture of him wearing 'baby's first shoes', but come on - I'm sure aidan's parents would be much more pleased to do without the .05 worth of stuffed animal corporate advertisement and memento of a shopping trip in lieu of a lower price on shoes that don't seem to have much more material to them then a Brazilian thong bikini. Is there some 600% profit margin on baby shoes? Are the retail outlets simply preying on the new, insecure partents who feel they must get the best for their children for fear that by not doing so will either hamper their physical maturity or cost them later during pre-teen theropy sessions? That would be my guess.

Hey, Mr. Gates: 'Where do I want to go today?' How about to a store with baby shoes tagged with a realistic baby shoe price? Try writing some software for that will ya?

They are cute shoes though and they'll be great for the next month or so that he's actually able to fit into them.

First Christmas
Here it was, the first set of winter holidays with Aidan in tow - and it was one for the memory books. All those well seasoned parents who were extolling upon me how exciting it was going to be for Aidan and his new parents - how much fun the first Christmas with our young son was going to be... I'm now convinced that they all need to check themselves into a re-hab clinic as they must certainly be on some kind of mind/memory altering substance that can't possibly be legal.

To start off the two day festival of joy and merriment, Aidan came down with a cold – a nose running down all over the front of his face, watery, red eyes kind of cold; And the first evening went down hill from there. We were off and running. To Aidan’s credit, he really is a pretty good little boy when he’s sick. He seems to whine more when he’s well then when he’s sick. We whisked him to our first stop of the evening where Aidan enjoyed the company of Anya’s cousins and their gracious hospitality, then off to his grandfathers for more merriment and mingling. Aidan, runny nose, watery eyes and all put up with the unusually late hour in fine fashion. Although I think he was asleep in his car seat before the front tires actually made contact with the street on the way home.

Aidan didn’t really seem to get what was going on, not that I really expected him to I guess, but it would have been fun if I’d grasped the concept of opening gifts. I’d tear a corner here, rip a corner there – hoping that Aidan would, in his usual manner, grab the available loose piece of paper and pull on it to help unwrap his gifts. In his less then high energy state, he didn’t seem to have any interest in anything other then sitting on the floor, half heartedly pulling on some discarded ribbon. Poor little kid, his first Christmas and he was not feeling well enough to enjoy it..

Day two came and we were off and running again, Aidan seemed to feel a little better, but not much. His eyes were still red and watery; his nose still running. He did let his mother and I sleep in until 8am however – which I’m sure will be the last time we’ll be able to sleep that late on Christmas morning until he’s 16 and he’s too cool for Christmas mornings.

We started off Christmas at his maternal Grandmother’s, where Aidan enjoying a morning of crawling around, chewing on everything he could get his hands on including a bowl of nuts that Aidan seemed to particularly enjoy getting his hands into, grabbing as many nuts as he could in his hand and helping them escape the evil confines of the bowl and releasing them on to the floor. How thoughtful. Aidan didn’t seem all that interested in the opening of the gifts, even when prompted with a torn wrapping paper corner, he seemed more interested in aiding an abetting the escape of the just recently recaptured nuts.

Next stop (after a quick detour home for a short nap) Aidan’s Aunt Kristy and Uncle Chris’s house where there were more toys to play with and cats to chase around the house. Aidan seemed very interested in the cats. The cats had a slightly different opinion of Aidan but put up with him trying to grab their fur fairly well. Aidan showed off some new dance moves at the sound of a mooing cow toy which mooed Christmas carols. The second the cow would start into it moo melody Aidan would sit up, bring his hands up to his sides, bent at the elbows and start twisting his torso back and forth to the music. He’s sense taken up doing the same dance to pretty much any music he likes including commercial jingles and grunge rock tunes heard on the radio. At least he has a diverse set of musical tastes.

That about wraps up Aidan’s first Christmas. I’m sure he’ll be more into it next year, however he has been enjoying all of his new toys everyday since – his train with the small, soft rubber wheels, his new toy teddy bear, the musical mooing cow that Aunt Kristy decided that Aidan should have, his rocking horse and he’s even taken a spin around the neighborhood in his new radio flyer red wagon ATW (All Terrain Wagon, although Christopher decided that it was really for Aidan Terrain Wagon, which works just as well) with it’s large off road tires and high ground clearance. I’m sure Arnold Schwarzenegger must have one parked next to his Hummer.

Merry Christmas to all and to Aidan a good night.

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.

Welcome to Month Eleven
It has been a while since my last entry into Aidan’s Father’s blog – not because there haven’t been notable events which have transpired since the last posting, not because I’d forgotten about it – I’ve just been lazy. I know – hard to believe. So, let’s pick up from where we left off – scene 10; that’s where Aidan had his first experiment with sleep training….. (fade to black)

(fade in to flashback) nothing but tears and wailing until that which was contained within the stomach, um, was no longer. (fade to black)

It’s been so much parental joy since that time. Aidan has developed a gag reflex which my not so blushing any longer bride – the rosy cheeks are more from frustration then the joy of new motherhood – can certainly attest. Recently having just fed our young, fair haired buck of an offspring Anya apparently noticed an odd look on Aidan’s face, just before all that had just gone down, came back to visit. All over his bib, all over his highchair and all over himself.

Bounding to the assistance of my wife’s displeased cries I removed the highchair tray to take it to the kitchen sink to wash it down. No longer then I had turned on the water then a second, disgruntled cry came from the a joining room – Aidan had apparently not finished during the initial round or Gerber purging. Now it was also all over the carpet. Yippie. I’m not sure this was covered in the fine print when I signed up for this duty.

After some extensive clean up (I’m certainly glad I decided to get that mini carpet cleaner – It’s really come in handy) all was back to normal.

We’ve also returned to the issue of sleep training – I mean why not? It was so much fun the first time around. This time we were armed with the knowledge gained by Anya’s reading of an article on how to sleep train your child. Ok, we’re armed and we’re prepared with a pan of action: Take Aidan to his room, sit with him and read one of his books to him while letting him eat from his bottle, then place him in his crib and (advisory: there will be a bit of crying and fussing the first night) allow him to fall asleep on his own – getting used to falling asleep in the crib.

An hour and a half of non stop wailing and one parental observer shift change we finally give up and provide him with another bottle which, like magic, puts him to sleep in under 5 minutes…. Round One goes to the infant. Who know the little guy had so much staying power – I’d have thought his tear ducts would have dried up around the 45 minute mark but no; he was still going strong.

Not to be deterred night two came and went without much fuss – Aidan was asleep within 30 minutes, just like the article said. Of course the article also said the entire training process could take up to 9 days before your little bundle of joy-most-of –the-time became used to his new routine. Night three only took 15 minutes. And it’s been fine ever since – even for midday naps. I’m attributing the rapid acclimation schedule to the the fact that my son is a genius. At times he even has the wild Einstein hair providing further, uncontestable proof. Although, seemingly for the sole purpose of putting my ego back in check, Aidan still has an affinity for indoor, potted tree dirt. I’m so proud. To add further ego trampling, young master Aidan has just somehow taken one of the keyboard keys off of the laptop sitting next to me, put it in his mouth, gagged on it, and spit up on the carpet.. yep, proud doesn’t begin to be a proper descriptor.

Genius I Tell Ya
My son is a genius! At only 10 months old he can wave ‘bye-bye’ and clap on command! I have no idea if that is normal or not, and really don’t care, I’m going with the ‘genius’ explanation. Then again, he’ll turn around and start trying to eat an aluminum pie tin just after doing something genius like – maybe it’s selective genius. He is very close to walking however. He walks himself around the house behind his little walker toy and will occasionally take a few steps on his own before falling. Hopefully he’ll be walking on his own before Christmas, we’ll see.