For. The love. of God.

Not much to say this week, other than one thing.... THANK GOD we change the clocks this weekend. Aidan has continued to sleep really poorly, and decided that 4AM is the perfect time to get up. Fun. At least we get to trick him into sleeping an hour later.....I feel bad about tricking him, but I REALLY need some sleep. I mean, he goest to bed around 7, gets up at 11 to nurse, and again at 2:30 or 3 to nurse....but in between there are plenty of "I dropped my binkie and the world will end in 5 seconds" moments. Plus, you know, as much as I love getting up before the sun even has time to lose it's morning wood, I'd be willing to give it up for a few days. Of course, all this only means that he'll go to bed an hour later and I'll still get no sleep, but hey, a guy can dream, right?

Also, Aidan seems resolved to never roll from his stomach to his back. I'm pretty sure he's dismissed the whole "crawling" phase an a step uneccesary to his mobility, and will walk at about 10 months out of nowhere. As it is, his current favorite game is when I hold him up and let his feet touch my lap, and rock him back and forth so it looks like he's walking. I should make a movie..."March of the Baby". Now if only I can get Morgan Freeman to narrate....anyway, whenever we put him on his stomach it triggers screaming baby mode the second he realizes what has happened. Up until that point, he' happy, so maybe if we can get him to roll in the .079 seconds he is blissful we might be on to something. Still, I love my little guy and only want the best...I personally could care less if he can roll onto his back from his stomach right now, but apparently that makes me a bad parent in the eyes of the Developmental Gods. Well, screw them-- if he's happy, I'm happy. And as his mother says... there's a fairly low possibility that he'll be unable to do this by the end of college.

Two-fer Thursday!

Yes, that's right, 2 updates in one week! It's crazy, I know...bear with me. So Monday Aidan got his 4 month vaccines. Apparently he took it pretty well (I was MIA due to work). He also got started on rice cereal, which he seems to like...as long as it comes from a bottle. He's not so fond of the spoon part, really. Actually that's not entirely true...he has a lot of fun with the spoon, especially the part where he gets to giggle and spit it all back out. His best trick, though, is trying to fling the soupy milk-cereal concoction all over the place... if the bowl gets too close to him, he nonchalantly looks away and grabs it. Master of mis-direction this one.

With the introduction of "solid" food came the shutdown of his pooper, however. I know, I've gone on at length about this subject, but hear me out. I felt bad for him Tuesday-- the little dude hadn't gone since Sunday sometime, and I could tell it was making his tummy hurt, because every time I laid him on his back (normally a source of great fun for him) he would start screaming and crying. So, I took matters into my own hands. I did the only thing a good, sane parent would do-- shoved a thermometer up his little butt and prayed for the best. And man, did that work. It worked TOO well....it was like watching a Play-Dough extruder set on super-fast. 3 rounds of it, too...just as I got a handle on the first salvo, BAM, all over his changing table. I cleaned it up, and in the time it took me to turn my head to throw away the wipes, he let fly again. This time he managed to get it everywhere...his feet, my hands, the thermometer...everywhere. I cannot believe hemanaged to make the WHOLE ROOM stink, too. From here on out, I'm enforcing a strict every-other-day-at-the-most policy. But next time a logjam needs to be broken, it's DEFINITLY Mom's turn to set the charges.

I'm late!

Well, we're back. I missed last Thursday, but that's ok because I have more than enough to make up for it. Where to begin? Well, let's see... Aidan can now roll from his back to his side at will, whenever he wants. His increasing mobility is frightening the local villagers, but they dare not oppose him. It's pretty funny to watch... he doesn't really accomplish this maneuver in the same way you or I might. Basically, he puts his chubby little legs up in the air, and lets them fall to one side. The rest of his body just kind of follows, and he turns his head last. It's kind of like watching slo-mo footage of a falling building...there is a definite cascade of events and point of n return. To roll from side to back... that's more complicated. I haven't figured out exactly how he does it, despite watching him all the time. It's kind of like he just wills it to happen, and it does. Freaky.

He's also gained much control over his hands. Now he will definitely reach for (or push away) whatever he desires....and when he gets it, WHAMO, straight to the mouth. The first few days he spent putting things in his mouth were pretty funny...if he was feeling like he wasn't getting anywhere by grabbing the thing, he would go land-shark on it. He'd drop his arms to his side, focus on the object, and throw himself at it mouth-first, all gums and fury. I wish I could have gotten that on video, because it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen a human do, baby or not. So not he's got everything he can reach in his mouth. Thus far, I've managed to not let him get anything in there that might hurt him....well, ok, ALMOST nothing. There's this one toy on his highchair, a butterfly with rubber-ish wings. He managed to get one so far in his mouth is was making him gag. He wasn't upset about it or anything, he just sat there, looking at me, making little "I have a hairball" noises and giving me the "man, you really ought to taste this wing....I mean, I've had wings before, but THIS one...it tastes so good I don't even care that it's making me gag" look. I'm not a bad father if he's obviously having fun while he's choking, right?

The last thing he did/discovered was how to screech and squeal. He's been a pretty vocal baby overall, so we're not really surprised about this. But this weekend at his grandparents' house, he learned how to really get some volume into those super-high pitched squeals.... you know, the ones that could signify ultimate joy or pure pain, and you won't know which until you come flying in from another room to check? Yeah, them. Sunday afternoon, after we got back from my parent's place, he pretty much sat in his Exersaucer and practiced screaming at his toys until he went to bed. It was...fun. Yeah, that's it. Nevermind our bleeding eardrums which might suggest otherwise. Hey, at least he's got a very healthy set of lungs.....

I'm My Own Favorite Toy

It's pretty amazing to watch babies develop. One day they're this little pile of soft skin and drool, the next they're building nuclear fission devices out of your kitchen pans. While Aidan hasn't quite reached that stage yet, he is changing fast. Recently he discovered a new favorite toy-- his own hands. He caught sight of one last weekend, probably on it's journey towards his mouth. Since then, he's been looking at them a lot, trying to figure out they're his and that they are, in fact, useful for something other than sucking. He hasn't managed to get his thumb into his mouth very often; usually he just crams as many fingers as he can get in and drools around them. But he has managed to start grabbing things, even though he doesn't realize he's doing so. Last night though we gave him a little teddy bear, and he was grabbing and looking at it with real focus.

He's also beginning to talk to his reflection, which I assume he thinks is another baby. It must be strange to have absolutely no sense of what you look like, or even have the concept of "face". Anyway, he gurgles away at the mirror on his exersaucer, which we already have to raise becuase he's getting close to being able to propel himself out of it. He sat in his highchair the other day too.... good timing, as he's about to start real food soon (something that can't happen quick enough.... I hear babies who gorge on rice creal mush sleep through the night, and I'm ready to sign a contract with El Diablo to get him to perform that particular miracle.). He continues to show interest in things that make music, which leaves me torn-- do I encourage this musical love, knowing full well he'll most likely end up inheriting his father's crushed dreams of musicianship, or do I try to get him to do something more lucrative like practicing buying junk bonds on margin? I suppose I have a while to figure it out. It's true though... they really do grow up so fast, and I already feel like a bad parent for not taking enough pictures and video of him. But I'm sure all parents go through that, so I know I'm not alone.

Unless I really am a bad parent, which is entirely possible.

I Need to be Degaussed

Well, it's happened. I finally got a perfect day with Aidan. On Tuesday, he managed to keep it together ALL DAY. No meltdown, no tears, no flailink, kicking anger! Sweet. And yesterday, he *almost* made it... with only 15 minutes to go before Mom got home, he was really close... I think he gets credit though because it wasn't a full DEFCON 5. HE just cry-whined a little, and I walked him around to make him feel better.

But I digress. The title of this post reflects the fact that my son, my beautiful progeny, is TRULY a chick magnet. Mom and I went to the mall last Monday for some President's day goodness. After awhile, Aidan decided he'd rather be held than wheeled around...fine by me, I like that better anyway. So I picked him up and carried him into American Eagle. The magnetic effect was immediate and breathtaking. It's like the chick-dar detected an incoming baby and the masses swarmed. It couldn't have been more Pied Piper, honestly...there was a wet trail behind me as I led around the drooling clerks. And, for his part, Aidan was hamming it up.... using his best "I'm a cute baby? Me? Nooooo, it can't be true" incredulous and wide-eyed cute face to devestating effect. Even the chunky goth teenager I passes gave us an "awwww". That part was disturbing. But the rest was cool...and it can only get better. I can't wait until he can toddle around, and take stuff up to random people that I have to retrieve and return, telling him to wave "bye-bye". Of course, all of this was only possible since Mom was right behind me, thus proving I hadn't in fact stolen this child. So it's kind of a catch-22. I keed, I keed... but it is cool to have him fawned over, because in reality he is a cute kid....I know, I know, every parent thinks they have a cute baby, even the ones who to the outside world appear to have produced a misshapen potatoe with arms. But with him, it's true. He isn't in the least potatoe-like.