New toys

Dear Aidan,

What a lucky boy you are.

I was telling daddy this on the way home from Toys R Us. We had just bought you a gourmet kitchen set as well as a car play set. You also live in a neighbourhood that I would have dreamed of living in when I was growing up. I hope and pray that you grow up to be a thankful boy. One who doesn't take anything for granted and truly realizes how blessed he is.

Here is the car play set. You weren't very interested in this when we got home. You were way more interested in the kitchen play set. Daddy saw you carrying a purse when he picked you up at daycare on Friday so I think he was worried that you were playing with the 'wrong' toys. He wanted to buy you more of a boys toy.

And this is the crown jewel. I can't believe my house has all these plastic toys! I refused to do that when I became pregnant. I hate the look of plastic toys, but you seem to love it so that's all that matters, right??? Sigh.

The gourmet kitchen came with a cordless phone. As soon as you saw it you put it to your ears and started talking into it.

My little chef hard at work.

What's in the oven, Aidan?

Tomorrow I mail out your questionnaire for the speech therapist. The good thing is that you started saying 'Um-ma' a few times this weekend as well as 'Cheese'. I have heard from people that once you start talking everything happens all at once. Fingers crossed!

Here's what you know how to do when we ask you to point to certain parts:

- point to your nose

- point to your ears

- point to your mouth

- point to your head

- pinch your index and thumb fingers together

- stick out your tongue

- wink

- shake your head

- point to your feet

- point to your belly button

- spin

- squeeze your hands together into fists

- clap your hands

- stick out your index finger when I say, "How old are you?" to indicate that you are one.

- flap your arms up and down when I saw, "Fly like a bird!"

- rotate your hands side-to-side when I say, "Twinkle, twinkle little star..."

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of it right now.

Goodnight Moon

Dear Aidan,

One of your favourite books so far is called Goodnight Moon. It's funny because when I first got that book as a gift at my baby shower I wasn't all that impressed with it. The illustrations were just ok and there were no bells and whistles such as a pop-up or flaps that you open. However, now I see why it's a cult classic. I think it's all the things that you can point to that's perfect for a toddler at your stage. I've been reading that book to you ever since you were born and I used to point to every single item that is in the poem in every page. Now I make you point to the item when I read it out to you. For example, the page where it reads, "Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Goodnight light, and the red balloon...", I say to you, "Aidan, where's the red balloon?" Then you point to the red balloon. You have the red balloon mastered and I'm in the process of getting you to master the kittens, the bears, the mouse, the house, the old lady, and the cow. You mostly get the bears, the cows, the kittens, and the mouse, but sometimes when you are tired you get frustrated and slam your fingers on the page.

Your cheeks are so red today. You were eating Alphagetti today and you had it all over your face. Notice the double bibs too. You are teething so your drools are more than usual.

There's one thing you love doing and that is getting read to. Once I finished reading this book to you, you grabbed it from my hand, started flipping through the pages and started blabbering like you were pretending to read.

I'm hoping that you will expand your vocabulary more. I got a package in the mail yesterday from the speech therapist's office that your doctor referred me to. I have to fill out this long questionnaire and return it to them before they can see you. The package also had tips on how to help you to talk. One thing was to get some of the things out of your reach so that you can learn to ask for things. So what I started doing was when I'm feeding you cheese I only give you a little bit on your plate and once you are finished eating it I ask you if you want more. I keep repeating the word cheese and even show it to you refilled on the plate, but out of your reach. When you reach out for it I keep repeating, "Cheese? Aidan, do you want cheese? Cheese, cheese, cheeeeeeese." I did it for 2 days in a row and you started saying cheese. Or at least it sounds like it.

First skate

Dear Aidan,

Guess what today was? It was Family Day! I'm so glad that we had this provincial holiday because I'm so over winter and any opportunity for me to spend time together with the family brings a little sunshine to my day.

Daddy was running around most of the afternoon finding skating gear for you so he was pretty pumped to take you today. The only bad thing was that you came down with another cold. Your nose was running all morning and you were sneezing quite a bit. However, you've been a lot worse so we decided to take you anyway.

Daddy dressed you in your new Vancouver Canucks hockey jersey that you got from Auntie Jane for your 1-year birthday. You have an infant jersey that she also got you, but I think it's too small on you. This one is better because it has your last name printed at the back.

You were pretty excited to be wearing your bear gloves. You actually smiled when I put it over your hands.

You had no idea what you were doing in the indoor rink. I don't think you even knew what you had on your feet. But you quite enjoyed banging your skates on the panel.

Look at that trail of drool.

A church friend told me to take a photo of you from this angle and I'm glad I did. It looks so cool!

Honey, say cheese to the camera!

A full-body shot with your new helmet.

You were clapping your hands together and banging them on your helmet. You were quite enjoying yourself.

There's daddy chatting with his buddies. He loves hockey and he can't wait until you are old enough to play. That's one of daddy's passions. He told me that the only downside of growing up in B.C. was that there weren't a lot of ice rinks. When he started playing hockey just a year ago he was a terrible skater, but he improved quite a bit.

All the girls that came out to skate thought you were so cute. Here's Hayle giving you faces.

Daddy's about to go on the ice with you. Mommy was sooooo nervous.

My 2 favourite boys.

Your first step onto the ice.

Obviously you couldn't do much, but practice makes perfect!

Uh oh. Look who's on their butt.

Even though much of the time was spent holding you and trying to get you to balance on your feet I think you thoroughly enjoyed it. When I took you back to the bench to watch daddy you kept getting up on your feet to try to walk on your skates.

My future hockey star Part 2

Dear Aidan,

On our way home from church daddy casually mentioned that he was going to be going to the family skate tomorrow that was set-up by a friend from church. Tomorrow is Family Day here so I expected daddy to spend time together as a family. I said to him, "How come you're going by yourself to a family skate? How come you aren't taking us?" He replied that you and I didn't have skates. I guess he then thought about it and he decided that maybe he should get you to start skating now. Also, another guy at church mentioned that he was going to get his son to play hockey when he was your age. So the whole afternoon was a quest to find you skates that fit you as well as a helmut. You currently wear a size 6 for shoes so it was quite tough finding places that had skates that small. Daddy had to go to a few places to find you your skates and helmut. In the end you have everything and I am soooooooo excited for tomorrow when we take you. Of course you won't be able to do much, but just the fact that you can start doing sports activities is quite exciting. I want to eventually buy skates too so that we can skate together as a family.

We found size 6/7 skates at Canadian Tire near our house. Here you are wearing 1 pair.

And here's the other pair.

Fits like a glove.

You were so confused what was going on. We tried to stand you up, but you were so wobbly.

While we were getting your skates sharpened you ran around the store like a mad man.

Here you are flipping over (then flipping back) the price tags. You are VERY organized in everything that you do. Everything has to be lined up perfectly and back in its place. I wonder who you get that from...

See? You are starting to flip these back the right way.

Daddy had to go to another location to pick up your helmet. They are for 2-4 year olds. We had to put a toque on you before we put the helmet on. You looked soooooo cute.

We took you to a mirror to look at your reflection. You were so fascinated. You kept banging your hands to your head.

The back side.

Oh no! Mommy wiped the mirrors yesterday. You are leaving fingerprints all over! Oh well...

Mother-in-law's 60th birthday gift

Dear Aidan,

March 4th is your Vancouver grandmother's 60th birthday. Sadly, we can't be there to celebrate this great milestone with her. However, we wanted to get her something extra special this year. I was talking to Auntie Jane this past week and we were discussing what to get her. She had suggested a Louis Vuitton bag that your Vancouver grandma was eyeing or even a gift certificate for an airline. Daddy and I talked about it and we decided the airline ticket idea was a great idea. We had overheard your Vancouver grandparents talking about how they wanted to visit later this year (maybe in the fall?). However, since airlines are so fickle these days and you never know when they are going to go bankrupt we decided not to buy the gift certificates now, but wait until your Vancouver grandparents were ready to book. Your daddy asked me to make a pretend cheque and send it to her now so that she could have something tangible to have instead of our word. I took this opportunity to go beyond what daddy expected. I downloaded a cheque image from iStockphoto.com and used that as my template. I used the font Fling and used that to fill in all the information. I printed it out on a card stock paper that I had lying around in the same width and height that real cheques come in. I then cut out the hologram part in a real cheque and stuck it on my pretend cheque to make it look more real. Daddy was quite shocked to see what I did. I'm using a pretty envelope that I stamped the label in, but I didn't take a photo of that. Daddy is going to be sending this on Tuesday. I can't wait for her to get it.

Finally... an outing!

Dear Aidan,

I don't know when the last time we, as a family, went out together. I guess it's a combination of things- the horrible weather (we had several snow storms), you or daddy being sick, and daddy just being a hermit. This was the first week where all of us were feeling ok (well, mommy had a bit of a headache, but nothing Tylenol couldn't fix!) and the weather was semi-ok. Actually it snowed quite a bit in the morning, but I guess it wasn't as bad as some of the other days we've experienced.

We decided to check out the Home Show downtown. We want to renovate our basement in the near future and we wanted to get some ideas on how we wanted to do our basement. The show itself wasn't as good as we thought it was going to be, but we had fun nonetheless. I was just happy to get out of the house!

This was you sleeping in the car on the way to the Home Show. Thank goodness you were sleeping because otherwise you would have been a total nightmare there.

Look at those clenched hands! So cute, I just want to bit them!

Here's a close-up. Look at that trail of drool running down your chin...

I didn't take any photos inside the exhibition because it was really busy, but really there wasn't anything that really caught my eye. The photos below are photos we took when we were about to leave the show.

We sat down in a corner by the window when we were getting all our stuff ready to go outside and you started banging on the glass.

You were just fascinated with the glass. I don't know why...

Here you are trying to look through mommy's bag. Bag not shown.

There were all these pretty cut-out words hanging from the ceiling. I thought they were nice.

You were having quite the fun playing by yourself.

You even walked around a bit. A little too close to where a group of older women were sitting...

On the ride home. You were exhausted. Can't you tell from your eyes?

After 5 minutes, lights out!

Yes! Time for mommy to enjoy her candy apple. Actually I had it when I got home. It was delicious!