Update on Aidan

Well, we are back from our vacation and adjusting to being back in our routines. Aidan is learning to sleep through the night again and is showing a little reaction to having been with mommies 24/7 for 11 days and now going back to daycare. But, we are all managing. Now, if she would just let us brush her teeth. Speaking of teeth, Aidan seems to be cutting her 2 year molars. True to form, they are coming in VERY, VERY, VERY slowly with lots of drool and finger chewing. She is more and more capable of things every day and every day brings more "myself" (she can say the whole word now) comments. She's also started telling people and animals "No." As in: "No, no Mama. Myself." "Noooooo Lexa! Git down!" "No Mama. Move!" They appear to be talking about daddies at school, as yesterday Aidan greeted me with a warm "Daddy!!!!" when I appeared to pick her up. And she called Christianne "Mama-Daddy" last night. Not sure what to do about that yet. She can go up and down stairs without holding hands most of the time. Sunday, she even carried in some of the groceries from the car, took them up the stairs, and put them on the table. She LOVES to be a helper now. Yesterday, she saw the mother of one of her classmates come in the door and she started calling Lindsay's name, saying "bye-bye," and picked up Lindsay's diaper bag and took it to Lindsay's mother. She's still working on her "ABC song" and is learning to count. She can do 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9. I don't think the numbers are linked to the concept of amount of things yet, but she's learning the sequence. She also knows just how long it takes to count to 10 and when 10 is coming up. When we give her a choice between two things (neither of which she wants to do), we tell her that she has until we count to 10 to pick or a mommy will choose. She usually waits until about 9 to get moving.

I've also decided that she is a child who will tackle the difficult things first. For example, most children learn to roll from stomach to back first. Aidan? Back to tummy first. Most children go through a phase of calling themselves by their name (e.g., "Aidan do it") and then progress to referring to themselves as "I." Aidan? She's been using "I" for at least 2 months (she's 22 months today). Last week she started referring to herself as "Aidan" at least part of the time. It is only recently that I've been convinced that she even knows her name. Most children mimic back two word phrases prior to creating their own. Aidan rarely mimics us and when she does, she usually only picks up on one word of the phrase. However, at 18 or 19 months, she pops off with "I don't want that." At 21 months she says, "Put it in your pocket." Now, she doesn't use sentences often, but she does have her standard two word phrases, like "git down" and "I do" and "I go" and "Here Kitty". Lately, she's started some mimicking.

She loves to sing and knows the words and tune to many songs. The other night, she was asleep and I hear "swish, swish, swish...all through the town." She also seems to dream of things she wants to do because she almost always wakes up with a mission. The other day, she woke up from a nap and as soon as her feet hit the floor, she urgently pulled on my hand and said "keekee, keekee." I had no idea what she was talking about, so she pulled me to the kitchen, pointed to where we keep the dog cookies and said, "keekee, keekee." She HAD to give the dogs their cookies.

Another interesting thing she did on vacation was demonstrate that, indeed, left to their own devices, children will eat when hungry and stop when full. Aidan has developed an obsession with "ice." The tricky part is that sometimes "ice" means frozen water (she LOVES ice cubes and ice water) and sometimes it means ice cream. In Boston, we were out walking and went by a Ben and Jerry's. Aidan launched into her "ice" mantra. We told her after dinner we would talk. She ate a really good dinner at Legal Seafood. We went back to Ben and Jerry's and Aidan ate maybe two bites of ice cream and then didn't want any more. We praised her for listening to her body and for stopping eating when she was full. Her mommies should learn that lesson a bit better, especially this mommy.

Her school is revamping the rooms and we returned from vacation to find new toys in her room, a lesson plan posted outside her room (finally, after 18 months I know some of what she does during the day!), the institution of "splash day" on Wednesdays (formally, only 2+ kids got to do it), and Rhythm and Rhyme days. I'm glad that there is a little more structure and stimulation. As you can probably guess, Aidan thrives on new experiences.

She also believes she thrives on "Elmo" and "People." She became a DVD junkie on vacation, so we are now in the process of severely cutting back her viewing time. She's taking it better than I expected.

She became obsessed with buses while we were away (since we rode on several). She now asks to see a bus every time we are in the car or outside. She's most disappointed when one doesn't come by.

Well, I know you all really want pictures, so I should get those posted.

Oh, and swimming lessons are going well. She didn't cry at all this week and was very excited to get in the pool. Hooray!