Heard around the house

It's hard to video Aaron these days. He's developed a bit of self consciousness and is very aware of cameras. Sometimes when he recounts bits of his day, he'll tell us, "I cried" with a big whimper. We tried to tape him doing this once and he actually started crying and yelling, I don't want you the video! So we don't record him as often anymore.

He talks A LOT though. It's fun to have conversations with him and he's really into pretend play. He'll pretend to be a construction worker, or more often, an actual truck.

"It's daytime! Time to wake up!"
- Said 2 inches from my face in the pale light of morning

"I'll do it...at night-time" (or "tomorrow")
"It's too...late" (or early)
"I forgot to brush my teeth/kick the ball/say thank you for the airplane/finish my dinner/cut my nails/clean up[insert any activity mentioned earlier in the day] "
- Anytime he doesn't want to do something, usually used when avoiding the potty or bedtime. He's all about excuses. Already.

"I need my Mommy"
"Mommy, I need my Daddy" (while Isaac is standing right next to me)
- Anytime

"What today is it?" ...followed by "What's [insert name of day] mean?"
- In the morning and at night as he reinforces his schedule


"I'm demolishing the house!"
"I drive this truck. You drive this truck!"
"We're going over there..there's a fire! Now the fire is out and now there's water on top. There's ANOTHER FIRE!"
"I'm a grab excavator. I'm a crane..lifting up the wood frames"
"The stabilizers are down!"
"You go first" or "You do it" or "I want YOU to do it"
"Here's some sugar..and some butter. Let's make pancakes!"
"I need you...I need you to fill up my dump truck [or front loader]!"
"Let's get rolling!"
- During playtime

"Milk and cookies go together PERFECTLY. That's what Puo-Puo says!"
- Cookie time

"I cleaned up! Where's my bitamin?"
- After cleanup time

"My little hands look like raisins!"
- After bath time

"I need a story" followed by "My turn to tell a story!" followed by something like this:
"Once upon a time..I went to get an egg, then we made pancakes...and [mumbles]..somethingelse...and then..[mumbles..something else..we did puzzles..THE END. Your turn!"
-During his bedtime routine

"Ok, Mommy [or Daddy] go work"
- Last thing he says before he falls asleep at night - It's his way of dismissing us and letting us know that he won't be doing his jack-in-the-box routine out of bed anymore.


Here's a video I did catch:

We're gonna need a bigger bed

The Situation:
Aaron first started climbing out of his crib last October. Isaac's family was visiting, and his sister and I were trying to nap in the living room while Aaron was in his crib in the bedroom, crying because he was overtired and wanted to play more. We were both lying down with our eyes closed when we suddenly heard little footsteps and the door burst open. He repeated this feat several times that same night, but then forgot about it for a few months. Recently he started doing it again.



On top of that, he got sick for a while and while he was sick, he refused to sleep alone, so he started bunking with us. Unfortunately his favorite sleeping position is in the middle of Isaac and me, perpendicular to us, sweaty head digging into one person's shoulder, legs on top of or digging into the other person's back or side.

Solution, Part 1:
Once he recovered, he continued to insist on sleeping in our bed. So we thought, "Maybe he prefers the freedom of getting in and out of bed at will. "












Result: This proved to be unsuccessful.

Solution, Part 2:
In an effort to lure him back to his own bed, we bought some new bedding that we knew he would like...

Result:
He loves playing in his bed.


But we are still dealing with this.

Every night.

an afternoon in pictures

Catch Up

Aaron's 2nd birthday has come and gone. I wish I've been more diligent about blogging so that I would have something to look back on to remember when he hit milestones or started saying certain phrases or whatnot, but instead I have fuzzy memories. Sadly, I don't remember a lot of milestones. I don't know exactly when he said his first word, or when he got his first tooth. So I'd like to try and post more often to preserve our memories of what he's like right now, but we'll see how that goes.

So let's see..I can't believe I never posted about Halloween! I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. Aaron was a lion, and he HATED HATED HATED his costume. Or more precisely, he hated the hood because the mane felt funny around his face. So he basically looked like some kind of animal from the neck down, but we never got a picture of the full effect. He did enjoy the trick or treating though. And definitely the candy afterwards. He loves "chock-lit".

We spent Christmas in NJ with my family, followed by a vacation with Isaac's family in Portugal and Madrid, where I got sick again. I always seem to get sick on vacation - I don't think I travel well. Luckily, Aaron loooves his grandparents and his aunt and uncles, so he was happy to hang out with them while I laid in bed. Portugal was okay; Madrid was more fun. I wish we had been able to spend more time there - seems like the people there really know how to enjoy life. They had a huge celebration on the Eve of New Year's Eve and another on New Year's Eve. I gotta say, if you ever fly out there, don't fly TAP Portugal. We were on 4 flights, and every single flight had terrible turbulence. Like throw up inducing to I better pray right now turbulence. So anyway, it was a fun trip; it felt too short as always, but it was nice to come home too.

All this was soon followed by Aaron's 2nd birthday! Isaac and I took him to the Children's Museum of Manhattan, then Shake Shack for lunch, and then Curry-Ya for dinner. It's too bad Aaron's a picky eater - he only ate the fries at Shake Shack and dried onion flakes and white rice at Curry-Ya. He doesn't know what he's missing! The next day my family came over and we took his cousins to the Holiday Train Show at Grand Central. It's just a model train display in a room - nothing huge, but Aaron loved it. He's really into tunnels at the moment, so he loved seeing the trains go in and out of them. We had a lot of fun with his cousins, and he got lots and lots of trucks and toys from everyone. He still loves his trucks.

GUK! Guk! Guk!

Aaron has been walking for a month now. He never really went through that stage of wanting to walk and needing us to help support him. He just kind went straight from crawling to cruising to walking. His personality is starting to reveal itself. He seems to be a fairly easygoing, independent and curious toddler (already?!). His favorite toys are our phones, remotes, thermometers, and empty bottles. He's a very busy, busy, baby. He had a sleepover with his grandparents recently and they kept remarking on how busy he was the whole time. He doesn't enjoy sitting still..which worries me because we have a long plane ride coming up as we head to Asia to visit extended family. But we'll see.

Lately he's gotten really into trucks. We think it's his first word, because he consistently identifies them correctly as "GUK! guk! guk!" everytime he sees a picture or hears a siren. His second and third words may be "ma-ma-ma" or "da-da-da" or possibly, "cop-cop-cop" for helicopter. It's kinda hard to differentiate between "gukgukguk" and "copcopcop". Anyway, here are two videos - one where he's really enjoying his trucks and the other is a little slice of what he does when he's home during the day.


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1 year! and a quick recap

Sorry, I haven't had much time to write lately, so here's a quick recap:

- We went to Mexico with Isaac's family over New Year's. It was a nice, relaxing trip and Aaron got to show off his standing skills for everyone.






- Aaron turned 1 last month! We celebrated with Isaac's family in Mexico, and then we had a small party with my family here.





- He's taken a few steps here and there, but mostly seems unaware that he's walking. Anytime I try to record him doing this, he drops to his knees and zooms toward me to grab the camera, so no video yet. Generally, he seems to prefer crawling because it's faster.

- He refuses to let us feed him, but he enjoys feeding himself and making a huge mess. He mostly uses his hands, but occasionally, he'll use a spoon.



- Sometime since the last post, he seems to transformed from a baby to a toddler (minus the toddling). This hit home for me when I found him in the bathroom transferring his dirty diapers from the garbage can to the toilet. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture at the time, but it was both gross and hilarious. He's been getting into everything lately.




hmm..he needs a haircut!

11 months

Aaron is 11 months old now. He's coming up on a year so quickly!


He hasn't begun to walk or talk yet, but he's become more proficient at crawling and cruising. He's also begun to stand by himself for a few seconds. Usually he doesn't notice he's doing it, and when we get him to try to repeat the feat, his legs get all noodley. He's also getting taller! I can tell because he likes to pull himself up to stand on basically anything he can get his hands on, and his head used to be level or below certain pieces of furniture even when he was standing, but now he's inching up above those same things.

He has four teeth now, with another two making their way through his gums right now. He's able to feed himself cheerios, and small pieces of food like broccoli, fish, or cheese.

He's biting a lot, but isn't too interested in gnawing on his teething toys. Not when there's paper, books, clothes, furniture, and people to bite instead.


He laughs a lot, and you can see the pride in his face everytime he does something new. Like when he learned how to splash. Or climb into the laundry basket. Or open kitchen cabinets. Or, like just now, when he opened the Band of Brothers DVD case by himself. I have no idea how he does some of these things. I just look over and he's already doing them. He loves cords, outlets, laptops, and everything he shouldn't be getting into.


His main "words" seem to be "ma-ma", "da-da", and "bao-bao". He also likes to babble "ba-ba-ba" and "wah-wah-wah". Today I sang "Baa Baa Black Sheep" to him while he was eating dinner, and he kept interjecting excitedly to add his own "bah bah bah"s to the song.

We've been trying to spend a little more time with his cousins so he gets social interaction with other kids. Aaron and his younger cousin love to shriek and babble at each other, and he also enjoys following his older cousins around (already). Of course, they're both running around, so Aaron's "following" mostly consists of crawling three feet in the direction they've run and then reversing direction when they run past in the opposite direction. Basically it looks like he's pacing, except he's crawling and grinning wildly.

It's all going by too fast.

grrarrr!!

So i guess it's kinda hard to tell what Aaron was dressed as from the previous post. He was a dinosaur!

happy halloween!

Look Ma, No Hands!

As you can see from the previous video, Aaron can sit up on his own now.


He's been able to do this for over a month now, and just a few weeks ago, he started crawling. At first it was more of an army style crawl, where he used his arms to pull the rest of his body along, but now he's graduated to using his legs to help his movement. I haven't gotten a good video of it yet, but I'll work on it and post one later.

It's really fun to watch him explore and discover new things on his own, but we recently moved, so now we're rushing to finish unpacking and cleaning up so we can babyproof. He's displayed a knack for getting into everything we don't want him to and he's also putting everything in his mouth right now, so he requires near constant vigilance. Sometimes I'll step into the bathroom to wash my hands and when I come out, he'll be on the other side of the room where he's managed to rummage through some piles of papers and boxes to find a plastic bag(!) to stick in his mouth.

Here he is playing with a catalog for the first time.

San Francisco recap

We're back from San Francisco! It wasn't exactly a vacation - Isaac was out there to work, but we really did a lot while we were there. During the days, Isaac would work while I explored the city with Aaron, and at night, we met up with friends or family for dinner. Over the weekend, my family joined us from NJ and we celebrated my cousin's wedding with my extended family - most of whom I hadn't seen in 14 years.

Here are some highlights from our trip:

father's day brunch

relaxing and zoning out with US Weekly

Just after having his first solid meal

Enjoying the king bed - much roomier than his crib!


An example of one of the many hills I unnecessarily pushed the stroller up. After the trip where I pushed Aaron up three hills like this and then down one very steep hill to get where I needed to go, I wised up and consulted Google Maps (in Terrain view).




This was helpful, but could've used more detail. Maybe hills don't look very steep according to this map, but try pushing a stroller up them in 90-something degree weather! (It was unusually hot while we were there)

Cable car ride

The view from the Golden Gate Bridge

I think Aaron enjoys being out, but he's way too young to appreciate most of the touristy things we did. He definitely enjoyed playing in our hotel room though.