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.