Trip to Oregon

We are back from our trip to Oregon. I'll try to post pictures soon. Aidan is such an amazing traveler. She did a great job with only one meltdown on the way out and none on the way back. And really, with 9+ hours of traveling, who wouldn't have a meltdown? She walked in the airport and stayed with us. She listened and followed directions most of the time. She did kick the passanger in front of her in the head on the way back, but, really, he was asking for it. What person sees that a small child is sitting behind him, in a car seat so she is up high, and then decides to lean his seat all the way back, jam his head into the crack between the seat and the side of the plane, and then gets upset that a little foot finds its way up to the deliciously lime green pillow sticking out? And mommy, who was trying to watch and prevent such things, dropped off to sleep for a brief moment after being kept up all night by a screaming child. Oh well. He was really rather nasty about the whole thing and quite passive-aggressive. I have to confess that, as he walked off the plane complaining about Aidan's behavior (and, really, compared to most 2 year olds I've seen on planes, she was very well behaved), I wished that he will one day fly his own two year old and that child will have ADD. Not nice, but I was tired.

The down side of our trip was that Christianne was sick the entire time, I caught a cold, and Aidan woke up screaming the night before we left with something hurting and I had no tylenol to give her. No es bueno. But Aidan loves flying and loves riding the bus and she had a great time. DVDs help too.

We spent our trip visiting our friends Pam (Gomma) and Bruce and my mother (Grandma). Gomma threw a little birthday party for Aidan and invited Nana Penny and Grampy Ted, which was wonderful. Aidan's still singing happy birthday to herself. The trip was marked by multiple, multiple, multiple trips to the park - often twice in one day - and several scoops of ice cream. One day, early in the trip, Pam and I took Aidan to the park and then decided to get "ice cream first" before going home. The next day, Christianne and I had Aidan at the park and then went to get lunch. As we were going back to the car, Aidan veered off and started walking back to the mall saying, "Ice cream first, ok, please" over and over until she found the ice cream shop. We were on vacation, so we ate a lot of ice cream first.

The parks we went to had two things in common: sand and running water. Aidan had a blast! Most days it was warm enough to strip her down to her pull-up and just let her run. She got very sandy. She dug and ran and climbed and slid. We started to see some of the same kids and parents at the park and Aidan made some friends with whom to play. It is so sweet to watch her try to initiate connections with other kids. She has two approaches. One is to just follow them around and do whatever they do. The other one she used was to pull up her sleeves and show them her tatoos (when we travel we put tatoos on Aidan's arms that have our cell phone numbers on them just in case she gets lost). It was so cute. We worked on sharing her toys. It is funny. If you ask Aidan to share, her first response is almost always, "No." But then, she'll think about it for a minute or two and then come back and share. She just needs to control of deciding to do it herself.

She is more and more interactive and verbal with her environment everyday. She's even learning to talk on the phone a little bit (with coaching about what to say). And, her new phrase is "Little bit" complete with gesture of putting her thumb and forefinger together, holding it up by her head, and squinting her eyes. She's done very well transitioning back to home and school and routine. I am glad of that.

Today is school picture day. I hope we get some good ones.

I'll try to get pictures up soon.